Quote from: Just2ice on July 01, 2012, 04:58 pm@LouisCyphre: Agree on the pricing being set by organised crime.I'm not entirely sure about the connection you made with the Victorian gangland war and the drop in MDMA pricing. As far as I know, there were many factors that led to that, chiefly the dispute between the Morans and Williams.The MDMA pricing was one of the key points of contention between Carl Williams and the Moran brothers. Williams was deliberately undercutting the Morans, the attempt to compete with the new price drove it down further, but only after a whole lot of shooting didn't settle the issue.Quote from: Just2ice on July 01, 2012, 04:58 pmAgree with the power vacuum thing.That part is easy to predict. Organised crime is fairly predictable in some ways.Quote from: Just2ice on July 01, 2012, 04:58 pmI disagree with you on the consequences of selling MDMA on the cheap. First, we're pretty anonymous here. If sellers are using Tor right and have good security processes, there's an excellent chance of them avoiding the gangs. Never 100%, of course.If you're only selling online, then yes, but if you're buying online and selling to friends it's another matter. It won't take long before word will spread through to wider and wider circles.Quote from: Just2ice on July 01, 2012, 04:58 pmSecond, Silk Road at the moment is strictly small fish. We're nothing compared to the street dealing.Yep. The easiest way to determine that is that SR is a subset of the use of Bitcoins and the total market cap of Bitcoins isn't really large enough to tempt the truly international dealers (like the Mexican cartels) into bothering with it.Quote from: Just2ice on July 01, 2012, 04:58 pmThird, ideally speaking we shouldn't be giving in to the gangs.Of course not, they're just vicious thugs like some pissant 3rd world dictator. Unfortunately, just like 3rd world dictators, they do tend to get their way through brutality, violence and murder. Tactics like that tend to intimidate a lot of otherwise harmless drug users.Quote from: Just2ice on July 01, 2012, 04:58 pmA lot of what you said is the same as what I said... If I were a seller I would sell it for more than its worth and less than the street price. How about... $80-100 for 1 gram MDMA? I would do this in an attempt to get other vendors' price lowered.That would be very encouraging.Quote from: Just2ice on July 01, 2012, 04:58 pmThe risk of getting caught is always present, for buyers and sellers, with serious consequences.Yep. Especially if an attempt is made to portray SR communication as a conspiracy to traffic in whatever.Quote from: Just2ice on July 01, 2012, 04:58 pm@LouisCyphre again: Even if there was more competition on SR, I have my doubts whether pricing will go down. It'd be nice though.I think it would depend on how much competition there was that delivered to which regions. If the number of vendors reached a certain point then they would start lowering prices to differentiate their product from their competitions.SR is essentially one of the finest examples of an almost entirely unregulated economy. Aside from attempts to manage any scammers or genuine disputes and transaction fees to keep the site going, there's none of the normal government impositions on trade (e.g. tax, tarriffs, exclusive deals, etc.). It's entirely down to who delivers the best product in a secure and consistent manner to which section of the market. It's fascinating to watch (in as much as it can be watched here on the forums).As SR grows and a percentage of the new members become vendors, we should see some gradual fluctuation as they try to compete with each other and the existing vendors. The rate at which that increase occurs is unknown, especially when many people have multiple accounts.To simplify it a little, once the growth rate has across the globe has increased considerably, it should end up as a buyers' market if the vendors active at that point in the future have an uninterrupted supply of products across the board.The SR vendors could try making their own cartel to throttle supply and drive prices back up, but human nature dictates that another vendor will take advantage of that by undercutting them. Then the members of this hypothetical (and more than a little unlikely) cartel would begin to lose their nerve, would compete with the lower price and the cartel would fall apart.One day a sociologist (and/or an anthropologist) is going to log into these forums and come on the spot at the sight of this twisted bazaar.