If those that protest politically against this fiendish war are true in their conviction they should come here, to this forum, and say so, and in saying so STAND by their words. Else what are we to think of those who protest in the abstract yet lack when faced with the concrete, the actual realization of their aspiration?By some counts, the Silk Road and the other Darknet markets are the most successful drug related social experiment in close to a century. Even have them taken down forever and that cannot not change this basic truth. Some of you might consider that hyperbole but this is why; consider what the government drolly labels Continuing Criminal Enterprise. I have examined many of those networks, and I can tell you that even the least excessive and most honorable ones such as the Japanese Mafia are responsible for the deaths of many people. Executions are as regular as clockwork, it becomes like taking out the trash to enforcers.We are all, the most fierce DEA agents included, pragmatists when it comes to legal drugs for medicinal purposes. We know that every year, at a minimum thousands of people die from drugs that are legal, pure, and taken correctly. We accept this in the same way that we implicitly give license to coal mining, even though when thinking about it for two seconds it is realized that many hundreds of coal miners must go to their deaths throughout the world and even with the best safety practices in the United States the number hardly strays from double digits per year and in fact three and four digits was the norm until relatively recently.Whether recreational/non-medicinal use of drugs is as advantageous as electric power for hundreds of millions of people is beside the point. There is a tradeoff. An socioeconomic calculation. There is a bargain society makes in all kinds of areas for which the sacrifice is human life.We know, absolutely, that the Silk Road cannot have directly murdered competition as is the norm with offline drug networks. We don't think it is true, we know it to be true because it isn't even theoretically possible save under exceptional circumstances, and even then it is unlikely. Unless a vendor already knew another vendor from previous experience, they cannot have known each other *because of the Silk Road*. The staff of the Darknet markets could only find out the real identities of other competing marketplaces if they have been intercepted by law enforcement. The nature of anonymous marketplaces must have already prevented coercion that otherwise would have taken place. Competition becomes capitalist, about market share, not biological competition over geography in which the survival of the fittest is the real determinant of market share. Few drug dealers (outside of Mexico) live in fear of their lives because of government agents, even though they are hardly killed by them infrequently. No, by far the main cause of violence is a medieval honor system where "respect" and "territory" lead to positive feedback loops that only terminate when "enough" testosterone powered young men have been sacrificed or mutilated. It should not be found provocative in the least that some Mexicans worship Jesus Malverde, a drug dealer, as a saint, since anybody rational comes to the conclusion there is something of a Aztec quality to the entire Drug War, whether it is drug dealers vs government agents or drug dealers vs other drug dealers, it's men with guns killing other men with guns. Praying to Malverde is... lucid in comparison to the Democrat and Republican hand wringing that goes on.That is not to suggest there are no problems with the Silk Road's business model that could cause harm. For example drug impurities. Or simply children ordering something with a high level of toxicity. And these sorts of problems could be silent but real because if it goes horribly wrong it's an event unlikely to lead to negative feedback of any sort. However it may revolt the DEA, these problems are much closer to the coal mining or allergic drug reaction trade offs than they are of gang-bangers shooting up entire neighborhoods and contributing to the decay of whole zip codes.Ultimately, since this is a very new concept, we shall see the development of 3rd party quality assurance mechanisms, even possibly age validation and discrimination. The majority of Silk Road vendors and staff are keenly aware that for both ethical and financial reasons some regulatory methods are necessary to reduce harm. The attempts to develop these are still in nascent form, feedback threads and scores, but it is a start where before there was empty space.Ryan Haight died in 2001 with IOP supplied Vicodin being the cause of death. The result, the Ryan Haight Act, was put into law with the stated intention of preventing other teenagers from obtaining drugs without prescription. Regardless of how you feel about the Silk Road, the Ryan Haight Act had failed to accomplish its objective long before the Silk Road came into existence.I'm sure that both SR and LE people remember The Dark Knight since it was such an interesting movie and raised genuine moral dilemmas for us to take home. It may seem bizarre that I quote it in this context, but I think it's actually quite appropriate.QuoteJoker: Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it. You know, I just... do things. The mob has plans, the cops have plans, Gordon's got plans. You know, they're schemers. Schemers trying to control their little worlds. I'm not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are. So, when I say... Ah, come here.(He takes Dent's hand into his own)Joker: When I say that you and your girlfriend was nothing personal, you know that I'm telling the truth. It's the schemers that put you where you are. You were a schemer, you had plans, and look where that got you.(Dent tries to grab the Joker.)Joker: I just did what I do best. I took your little plan and I turned it on itself. Look what I did to this city with a few drums of gas and a couple of bullets. Hmmm? You know... You know what I've noticed? Nobody panics when things go "according to plan." Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it's all "part of the plan." But when I say that one little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!The reason why this moment resonates with us, is because we know it to be true. The Plan is horrible.What are we, you going to do? Stand there with the status quo? Make wishy-washy liberal arguments about legalizing marijuana as if black markets for alcohol and tobacco somehow don't exist? It is not adequate. Make the conservative argument that for reasons of social dysfunction, morality basically, that the greater good is served by caging well over a million people? Well by my count at least 7 million family members suffer as a result, the individual in question, then the mothers, grandmothers, fathers, grandfathers, to say nothing of siblings. That's not adequate either.Now that the system exists, it perpetuates itself regardless of the original logic. So far as I can see, the Silk Road is the only genuine answer that contains both economic and moral parameters. Capitalism is far from utopian, there are people in my own family with serious legal drug dependencies but let's work with this new possibility instead of these tired liberal and conservative memes that have flailed around for decades and got nowhere. My contribution, admittedly very tiny is PGP Club, what I want to ask you is: What is yours? I would like all kinds of people to come to SR; drug war antagonists or supporters, and explain precisely why you support or abhor the Silk Road and what you are doing about it. Because being an armchair general, which is what a lot of conservatives and liberals amount to, simply doesn't rate. That is tantamount to tacitly accepting the Drug War death cult, a nihilistic philosophy if there ever was one.--