I have no sympathies for the real "Dread Pirate Roberts". He was running an enterprise whose primary purpose was to facilitate criminal activity, and he profited handsomely from it.
DPR himself may have been a mean guy, assuming there is anything to this alleged murder-for-hire plot. The reality of the situation, however, is that a much greater harm has been done to society by drug prohibition itself. Millions of people incarcerated, millions of people exposed to drugs of unknown quality, and a widespread trend of soldiers attacking civilian homes in the name of the drug war. The DEA has the power to simply declare drugs to be illegal, then arrest people who possess them. The DEA is not only a police force, but also a military force (even receiving help from NORAD and the NSA) and an intelligence agency. People in foreign lands and here in the United States are being killed by our government in the name of this prohibition.
Do not think for a moment that the law is some kind of moral compass. Drug laws have a sordid history of racism, corporate hand-outs, and widespread corruption.
Legalization can't change this. What it might change is a shift towards less dangerous drugs to mob up the recreational drug market. SR however is not even slightly going in this direction, so the whole objection to the criminal nature of silk road is baseless.
1. Dosage are 30x smaller 2. Users can tell the difference
I have no doubt in my mind that meth ruins lives.
But hey, no need for honesty to enter the debate. Not when it undermines betterunix's precious libertarian religion.
The libertarian religion is so strong that the Libertarians on this site are, predictably, not just defending SR. They're lying about what was on it, defending the hiring of hitmen, and generally making clear that Libertarianism is solely about self-interest and has ZERO underlying ethical frameworks.
Fine, but the site sells and even has categories for things like hitman services, ATM skimmers, fraud how-to pamphlets, and lists of stolen credit cards.
"Morality may not be legality" is a trendy thing to say but there's significant overlap, and that statement is meaningless anyway when much of the behaviour that we're on about is both immoral and illegal