The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) really though it was hot shit after shutting down the original Silk Road. But the Internet doesn’t take kindly to censorship and markets cannot be stifled. Since the original Silk Road was taken down others have popped up to replace it. And online advertisements for unpatentable drugs have actually increased:
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) closed down the original online illegal drug market, Silk Road, in 2013.
But new figures suggest the trade has actually increased since then.
And other research indicates one in four British drug users has accessed hidden websites.
This is a beautiful thing. Silk Road, in addition to providing for the wants of drug consumers, also reduced the amount of violence in the drug trade. Nobody should be surprised by this since violence is much harder to perpetrate when both parties in a transaction are anonymous. It’s also much harder for the biggest perpetrators of violence in the drug trade, the police, to storm the homes and kill the dogs of drug consumers if they cannot identify them.
It’s always nice to see the state’s control slipping through its fingers. The war on unpatentable drugs is untenable because markets always win. Agorism is such a powerful tool against the state precisely because it relies on markets, which are the manifestation of human action.