Quote from: arabianights on October 02, 2013, 08:55:05 PM

I had the same initial reaction as almost everyone else here to the hitman claims - and personally now I've thought about it, I would never get a hitman for reasons explained later.

But instead of just condemning him for it, you should at least try to see where he was coming from. If many thousands of silk road users were revealed, I guarantee there would have been at least a few deaths and many lives ruined.

For a start, any users in Singapore or Malaysia or many other East Asian countries could have been looking at the death penalty.

Then there are those with addictions to benzodiazapenes and barbituates, and possibly some other drugs, where sudden forced cold turkey will kill them. You will be reading about some of them shortly.

Then there are the many addicts to other substances who are going to accidentally OD in the near future. To be fair this is going to be less likely than normal simply because silk road (by and large) was just so damn good - more likely is the addicts will not get enough and be, er, warm turkey (is that right?)

Then of course the many many many more addicts who will just have to go cold turkey. If you were buying drugs to sustain an addiction from silk road you were almost certainly a functioning addict, something that the anti drug groups try to pretend doesn't exist. To be a functioning addict you need a reliable supply. Lose that and many of these addicts are going to lose jobs and family. There will be suicides, not to mention suicides from withdrawal, including PWS.

All those are predictable consequences of stopping major drug suppliers, and are one reason the war on drugs is simply evil. But releasing the names of users would be far far worse - especially in places like america where they drug test employees. Anyone on that list would get that at a very minimum. More likely, just fired. And that's ignoring the police investigations, where tbh at least in America they will pay lip service to respecting your rights. Albania, not so much.

Combine all that and unless you always believe killing is wrong, no matter what, there is a perfectly reasonable argument for cold blooded murder.

Even so, I wouldn't order a hitman myself and for three major reasons - the users brought this on themselves by taking the risk of signing up for silk road. This, I think, would severely shift the balance of responsiblity away from me such that I wasn't forced to make a deal with the devil. Secondly, I would have no idea where to hire a hitman and am skeptical "real" ones even exist. Thirdly, the above analysis assumes the two options are murder or nothing. In reality there were plenty of other options that could be taken and he should have tried one of them.

P.S. @ the person who thinks it's appalling to think murder is an acceptable form of justice. Of course it's appalling. But you know who's supposed to enforce justice? The government. Do you think that I can take some guy to small claims court if he sells me oregano for $200/oz? It is precisely this, being forced to take justice into your own hands, which causes the worst practical side effects of the war on drugs.

Hey the use of drugs is debatable.
I mean people will always find a way to get them.
Might as well get them from a source that is not violent
Otherwise it defeats the purpose.
No murder is not justified.
It would have cost him cheaper in the end to make a deal with the guy and write it off as a cost.
Instead of murdering someone.