Comment by mrandish | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mrandish | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> The only difference between DPR and Pabla Escobar is that DPR was running his drug business in the 2010s instead of the 1980s.

Asserting moral equivalence between someone who ordered dozens of innocent women and children not just killed but dismembered - solely as a lesson for others. Orders which were actually carried out multiple times and DPR who was never charged, tried or convicted of conspiring with a supposed online hitman to kill a competitor (who both were actually FBI informants - clearly making it entrapment). Yeah, that's quite a reach.

Sure, DPR was no saint but why push for the absolute maximally extreme interpretation? Even asserting he "organized and operated a global criminal drug ring" is a stretch. My understanding is he ran an online marketplace which drug dealers used to sell to their customers. I'm not aware that Ross ever bought or sold drugs as a business or hired others to do so. There is more than a little nuance between 1) buying drugs from distributors, delivering drugs to buyers and collecting the money, and 2) running online forums and messaging for people who do those things. At most, #2 is being an accessory to #1.

> My understanding is he ran an online marketplace which drug dealers used to sell to their customers. I'm not aware that Ross ever bought or sold drugs as a business or hired others to do so.

Ah yes, he accumulated over $5 billion in Bitcoins by entirely legal means. He didn't facilitate the wholesale distribution of illegal (and dangerous) drugs at all. He never contributed to the massive distribution of Fentanyle-laced dopes to the United States, Europe, and elsewhere. He was just the online guy!

You've mischaracterized what I said.

> he accumulated over $5 billion in Bitcoins by entirely legal means.

I never claimed he didn't break the law. I said the opposite, that he's guilty of being an accessory to drug dealing.

> He didn't facilitate the wholesale distribution of illegal (and dangerous) drugs at all.

I said "he ran an online marketplace which drug dealers used to sell to their customers."

> He was just the online guy!

I said he's "no saint" and in an earlier post in this thread I also said he deserved a jail sentence and that "ten years was enough" for what he was charged with and convicted of as a first-time offender.

I challenged your assertion of "no difference" between DPR and Pablo Escobar as extreme and your response is to mischaracterize my position as DPR committing no crime instead of responding to my actual position that he's a criminal who is guilty and deserved ten years in jail but not two life sentences plus 40 years without parole. There is a middle ground between "completely innocent of anything" and "no different than Pablo Escobar." I don't understand why you can't acknowledge such a middle ground might exist - and that it is my position.

Well in any case, Ross Ulbricht got what he deserved. Now he'll spend the rest of his life wearing an ankle bracelet.

Are you sure this is the right forum for you?

Regardless of Ross Ulbricht's crimes, the pro's and con's of the pardon deserve considered discussion.

Are you bringing thoughtful and interesting considerations to this thread?

For example; will he actually wear an ankle bracelet for the rest of his life under the terms of a full and unconditional pardon?

You appear to be confused about the difference between a pardon and parole (and even parole doesn't entail monitoring "for life").

Also, your response didn't respond to what I said (which was about previously only responding to a straw man I didn't say). I like to think we strive in good faith for a little higher level of discourse here on HN. Try to do better.

Bravo to you - I don't think I could have been as mature and respectful as you in the face of these repeated refusals to respond to what you actually said.

Thanks for saying so. I'm human like anyone else but practice helps. We all need to be the change we want to see. Also, my internal goal is rarely to convince anyone who disagrees with me. My focus is articulating my position clearly along with my reasons for currently holding it. Then to understand their position and reasons. This is sometimes surprisingly difficult. Other times it's enlightening and occasionally leads to adjusting my own position.

I try to interpret what others say with maximum charity and construe their arguments in their strongest possible form, even if they weren't expressed that way. I'm interested in discovering why we disagree, not winning debate points. The hardest discussions are often those where they never seem to understand my position or are unwilling to respond to it. This leaves me with little choice but to meta-up to the 'protocol level' to re-establish productive communication.

In the conversation above, I suspect, based on hints in the last response, that the root issue may have been that a moral equivalence between Ross and Pablo Escobar was neccessary to make Trump pardoning Ross a maximally negative talking point against Trump.

If so, the discussion could never really be about what it appeared to be about: the relative criminal or moral weight of Ross' crimes or the appropriateness of the sentence. Which is a shame because it prevented ever reaching more interesting ground. For example, I wish the pardon had been a commutation instead because Ross was justly convicted of significant crimes before he was over-sentenced. The wrong which needed to be righted was the sentence not the conviction.

Tbh you probably don't know what your talking about. Silk road and fentanyl in drugs didn't over lap. Fent really showed up a couple years after the market was shut down.

Are you for real using today’s value of the Silk Road bitcoins to say he amassed $5 billion dollars.

Sorry, that’s just dishonest. Those coins were worth less than 30 million at the time of his arrest.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/10/25/fbi-sa...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com