alt Hacker News"he took it a bridge too far" is a massive trivialization.
The guy operated a marketplace for illegal goods in order to enrich himself. The illegality wasn't just incidental, it was literally his business model -- by flouting the law, he enjoyed massive market benefit (minimal competition, lack of regulation, high margins etc) by exploiting the arbitrage that the rest of us follow the rules.
Said a different way, he knowingly pursued enormous risk in order to achieve outsized benefits, and ultimately his bet blew up on him -- we shouldn't have bailed him out.
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>minimal competition, lack of regulation, high margins etc
Those benefits don't come from nowhere. You're basically getting compensated to take on the risk, same as any other business. The difference in this case is that the risk is that a bunch of thugs with guns will show up and either kill you or put you in a cage in addition to the usual financial ruin.
Many criminal gangs from biker groups to foreign cartels are doing the same thing and reaping profits in the $100Bs scale annually.
Your argument is not an argument for incarceration, it is an argument for abolition of prohibition and regulating the sales of some psychoactives.
The same stone would hit the fentanyl epidemic, it would hit the pushers of ”zombie drug” laced cocktails, it would hit cross-border trafficking, to name only a few. Society would massively benefit. So would the economy.
> he knowingly pursued enormous risk in order to achieve outsized benefits
Like it or not, this makes him a heroic figure in the eyes of many people.
> we shouldn't have bailed him out
Bailing him out comes at no cost. Letting him rot in prison provides no benefit to anyone.
I'm afraid that the current administration is fond on this business model. Borderline criminal business models behind curtains.
Not sure it was high margin as much as it was low fees on a large number of transactions, coupled with bitcoin appreciation this meant he made a lot of money.
>The illegality wasn't just incidental
The illegality of drugs is a government reaction, since governance failed to do anything with the problem by action. No-one deserves a life-long sentence in prison for that. This market, as well as minimal competition, lack of regulation, and high margins was created by the same power which sends people to jail.
"Exploiting arbitrage" is not high on my list of concerns.
The rest of it is.
Trump is a bit of an agorist is well. It's part of the American wild west mythical psyche, to the point America made a sport from moonshine running cars. Not hard for me to see how he half won and walked away with an unconditional pardon.
> he enjoyed massive market benefit
Life imprisonment, no parole.
You have to be a complete and utter wanker to think his punishment was justified.
》 we shouldn't have bailed him out.
I don't have a horse in this race but the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear "we shouldn't have bailed him out" is silicon valley bank and its depositors. That to me was the biggest show of hypocrisy by silicon valley.
There were no victims of his conduct.
The idea that possession of drugs is or should be illegal is purely arbitrary, and is used thus to justify massive violations of human rights. It is literally insane that the state claims authority over what you are allowed to do to your own body.
No victim, no crime.
His sentence was excessive and cruel to make an example out of him. There’s a serial child rapist in the same prison serving less time.