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Comment by NathanKP | Hacker News Reader

Your target customers are probably going to be young people, college students, and the like. Businesses and older people may be more worried about the security of their package. You might try making a YouTube or Vimeo video about your service. Make it sound cool and efficient. It might get you a few customers.

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Or drug dealers looking for mules.

very funny:) I have considered all those things, I think they are mostly knee-jerk reactions. You could pretty much make similar arguments against any web-initiated transaction, but as has been demonstrated by the incredible success of e-commerce I think concerns about safety are mostly just that. I don't see why a drug dealer would want to risk so much by trying to use such a service, on so many levels it will make no sense.

Why doesn't it make sense? Drug dealers spend megabucks moving drugs. A largely anonymous network of couriers with no idea what they're carrying would be ideal. They wouldn't move a ton at once, they would spread it out over many smaller shipments. Since the oversight is zero and the cost is so low it would be worth whatever extra hassle it might add. Imagine an undercover fedex that didn't ask questions. I'm sure you'd be the go-to network for a while until you got shut down.

I wonder if you could successfully apply an onion routing protocol to the distribution of physical objects, with an economy built-in around risk tolerance. Mundane shipping could then be subsidized by the more expensive contraband.

Distance yourself by connecting client & courier directly with a distributed P2P app (like Tor), and sell the authenticity and financial escrow services. Keep no knowledge or record of the actual transactions.