> Some of us see a major difference between selling heroin to someone, and building the marketplace from which these victim's freely bought drugs.

Let's say I "build a network" of mules, planes, trucks, trafficking routes, and people who handle the distribution of drugs. I provide all the logistics to make the drugs go from supplier to end user.

So, a marketplace of sorts... in the real world, not on the Internet.

But, I don't actually sell the drugs to the end user on the street corner. That's someone else.

But a cut of each of those sales rolls up to me, and without me, those sales aren't happening (sure they could happen via someone else, but this particular network exists because I built it and I run it)..

I am what is referred to as a "drug lord".

How am I not responsible for heroin getting into the hands of vulnerable addicts?

Pray tell, what is the difference between operating an electronic market where people can buy drugs and operating a physical one (say, a street corner) where people can do the same?

> Some of us see a major difference between selling heroin to someone, and building the marketplace from which these victim's freely bought drugs.

I kinda do see your point, but I think I reach the opposite conclusion. If you are one person on a street corner it's one thing, if you enable a whole electronic marketplace you have a much larger effect.

Then again we should decide whether it's a bad thing to sell drugs, but if it is I would see him as more culpable than a random street dealer.

Yeah, that’s the part the legal system has a hard time with. We don’t have definitions or suitable penalties for these things

I mean, I’m not sure Pablo Escobar ever sold drugs or murdered anybody with his own hands. Metaphorically though there was a ton of blood on his hands. Charles Manson allegedly never killed anybody himself either. But we generally agree these guys were bad for society.

I’m generally lasseiz-faire about drugs, and I generally put the onus of responsibility on the person choosing to ingest them.

But there are some drugs, like opioids, that kind of transcend that. They cannot reasonably be safely used in a recreational manner, and are objectively a cancer to society.

I don't see the difference between building a marketplace in which people freely buy drugs from you and building a marketplace in which people freely buy drugs from people who aren't you.