Quote from: johnwholesome on February 11, 2012, 03:56 amNot meaning to be a party pooper or anything, admire the enthusiasm, but you are aware that those numbers (prolly inflated) will end up in some congressional report or DEA intelligence paper.......... just sayin....I already thought about this. The DEA are not going to depend on numbers they discovered on an online forum. They are going to have to research them themselves with test packages sent throughout the mail. "Hurr Durr, Kingpin Pine said the numbers are X, Y and Z, millord".In fact, I think you should assume the DEA have already sent hundreds of packages throughout the mail system with substances that would ID for cocaine et al, even though they are synthetic i.e. not drugs, just similar chemical structure to them. They would do this in order to ascertain the probabilities for the interception rates for different kinds of packages, which would be useful intelligence. If they haven't already done this, then they are as thick as fuck, which seems rather unlikely.They can do a far better data analysis because they can coordinate with the Postal Inspectors directly.No, this data gathering exercise is for us, the buyers and sellers of the Silk Road. Knowing the numbers, is a big part of the Game in any business. It allows you to work out your margin of safety, the profitability of your potential business model, and the kinds of risks that buyers are realistically taking and lots of other useful stuff. Even rough averages such as this one are critical to consumer confidence.Intelligence from *already open data sources* cannot compromise the Silk Road. As long as identity anonymity is respected, more knowledge helps us, not harms us. In fact, this kind of information helps us a lot lot more than the DEA because the biggest obstacle to global implementation of a decentralized drug trafficking service is confidence.The word Credit comes from the Latin 'credo', which means trust or confidence. The entire capitalist system ultimately runs off confidence or trust. Not naive trust, not faith, but trust established through contracts and deals i.e. reciprocal relationships and reprisals for uncooperative behavior.More transparency = more intelligence = more customers = more resilient marketplace.Edit: The business environment today as I see it:Most people still assume, subconsciously almost, that each and every piece of mail gets analyzed. When that myth is fully dispelled with the new up and coming vertically integrated business strategies by sellers on the Silk Road and Black Market Reloaded and direct sales from the manufacture/farming of drugs to the consumers directly, it's curtains for the DEA, not to mention each and every drug cartels who doesn't have a handle on the source of their product.