> it enabled you to buy something deemed illegal by the authorities (drugs) in a safe manner and the products bought were higher quality than what you could buy on the street. Why was it a problem to begin with and why where significant resources used to shut it down? (Again, not defending it, and the founder was probably a scumbag, I am just asking the question)

Because there was all sorts of white washing like this. "It's drugs, but safer, and without the violence and crime!"

If you think that violence, crime are magically gone because of Silk Road, you'd be considered ignorant or naive. Production still happens in the same places, the poverty, corruption and violence-stricken areas.

It's just invisible to you now, because you don't have to worry about your dealer stealing from you, getting mugged, or buying from an unknown source, or being arrested.

All those people in Mexican and Colombian villages subject to the tyranny of the cartels... oh well.

All good then, I suppose.