StatusNomadicus
Well-known member
spoken like the usual boot-licking NPC that you usually are, on this forum. your worship of the State and all its decisions are very strange in a world where Argentina's peronist cabal destroyed a massive country with huge resources and intelligent people. the USA is perpetuating a forever-war on Ukraine and the Middle East (and still messing-around in S America and Africa, always) and laundering money to elites in other countries as "foreign aid." the national USA debt is past 34 trillion and we can barely print enough money to pay the interest to China and others. would you criticize any of these policies, that harm the average citizen of Argentina and the USA?
if you criticize them, what for? can the federal/national government be making unethical choices, or only when your "guy" is in office? would you criticize Biden or Trump for doing what the other one did, and if so, why not?
the State is a leviathan that will do anything to retain and grow its power; this is human politics in all of history. the reason Ulbricht got double-life sentencing was because the Federal government was lobbied, judges were bribed, intellectual property (IP) laws were changed, and he was to be a symbol of what the global elite want the world to look like: private individuals should not be allowed to exchange goods and services without the government being able to read, censor, control, and tax this conduct. the entire point of the system of global elites is to make it so people watch the "news" and feel they are informed about the goodness of their tribe/country, while aristocrats lobby legislators and executive-branch staff to gain a monopoly on more and more of the economy and society.
Ulbricht offered a website where you could trade with someone else across the world, in an anonymous transaction, with a mostly-anonymous currency, for various things. it wouldn't matter if SilkRoad was a proto-Etsy where people in Bolivia were crafting t-shirts for meme fans in Kazakhstan; the premise would be the same, where the State can't allow decentralization and deregulation of even the most basic acts.
Napster and Kazaa and BitTorrent in the past 30 years have shown that massive corporations will use politicians to exact ruthless reprisals on lowly individuals who are rejecting the system they've been forced to exist in. have you ever downloaded music, movies, photos, articles, magazines, etc. online without paying the creator? then you ought to go to prison for life, right? if you haven't, you're either a fucking weirdo or a liar, or ignorant of how many international and national laws you are currently breaking without even knowing. have you ever rented in Argentina pre-2024 in Dollars, not Pesos? sounds like you need to go to Argentine prison, right? have you ever exaggerated your tax liability, or valued your properties/deductions at a different amount than the government would say? again, prison, right?
you think you're so different than Ulbricht, but you aren't. we all break arbitrary, victimless crimes every year. if the Argentine and US governments agreed that any pets were a carbon harm to the environment and they made pet ownership illegal for "the good" would you comply? or would you secretly have pets and go to a black-market veterinarian for your healthcare needs? these are all eerily reminiscent of the Nazi and Soviet strategies for totalitarianism; make some things/people illegal, create a fear of wrong-doing, and seize power in the name of law and order.
Ulbricht was made an example of, yes. this is the only thing you've described honestly. but for every 'bad' website you think exists (which you have no clue what percentage of criminality was ongoing, by the way), there are also harmless services/sites that are in violation of some law, somewhere. Ulbricht was implementing the peer-to-peer deregulated and decentralized way of life that humans are pursuing in the 21st century, with the advent of cheap internet and globalization. this takes power from the State, and he probably knew, like Snowden did, that any challenge to the professional lobbying corporations (Dreamworks, Raytheon, etc.) will be met with government violence, since their coffers are almost always filled by the corporate elite who want 'rules for thee, but not for me'
have you even ever listened to the other side of the Ulbricht argument, @Vero? i would guess not, based on your overall lack of nuance and compassion for people who you view to be 'bad' or 'evil' in your Sowellian desire to be on the "Side of the Angels" all the time. for those who aren't robotic serfs who will continually praise their subjugation, here are many arguments for why Ulbricht should not be in prison 2013-2024 for making a website:
THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE FOR ROSS ULBRICHT
Serving life without parole for all nonviolent convictions. In prison since 2013. Widespread support for clemency. #FreeRoss
freeross.org
he didn't "own" anything on that website, in the same sense that earlyretirement doesn't "own" anything here on this forum. you always ignore my challenges to your contradictions an instead argue some childish view of the world that could have only come from the TV Man.
you have no clue what was happening on the SilkRoad, and you don't care - your 'side' convinced you that he's evil and now is paying; a cartoonish view of the world where good triumphs over evil, that only a moron like Marx could have fabricated with his proletariat-overthrowing-the-bourgeoisie idiocy
i would happily be using the SilkRoad today in Argentina to buy products from around the world for competitive prices, fast shipping, using cryptocurrency, and user reviews to guide my purchases. SilkRoad is the Amazon.com of this century, but it made the mistake of not asking for permission to pay taxes to a corrupt government that wages war and aids in genocide. why should i pay taxes on my purchases, when the government does nothing but over-regulate and stifle my free trade with other peaceful humans? i don't want my money going to the endless war in Ukraine, funding Neo-Nazi battalions, nor bombing hospitals in Gaza. i want out of it. so the SilkRoad would be great, and it might actually get products here to Argentina, unlike the shitty options i have right now (Amazon won't arrive, iHerb.com gets cancelled/delayed, MercadoLibre requires a DNI, etc.)
in China, this forum would be an "illegal website" because it doesn't report every word to the communist party leadership and allow them full control. should we shut this down, then? because your worldview is what is causing people in China, NK, Cuba, Venezuela, etc. to be crushed daily under the boot of tyranny and thought control.
the greatest books to eliminate the desire to be subjugated like digital serfs in 2024 are: 1984, Animal Farm, War is a Racket, Atlas Shrugged, A Conflict of Visions, The Israel Lobby, Superabundance, and of course movie-wise watch V For Vendetta every 05Nov.
of note for you, Vero, would be reading Erasmus' Praise of Folly through the lens of how stupid your boot-licking mindset would be, compared to the folly demonstrated in that book. it's also hilarious, even if you still continue to disregard everything opposing your worldview, and ignore me
