Silk Road forums
Discussion => Off topic => Topic started by: mugwump on March 08, 2012, 04:49 pm
-
Dear SR,
I'm fairly new to the forums and Silk Road in general, albeit being deeply interested in psychedelics. I don't really know any of you personally so it's a bit difficult for me to know what motivates you in life and that kind of thing. However, I've lurked in the forums since the beginning and I'm deeply saddened for a recurrent discussion. Guns, Guns, Guns.
Some of you seem to thing that they own Silk Road, what it is, and what it symbolizes. You're wrong. You seem to think that Silk Road is a place where anything goes.
With that being partial true you seem to ignore some of the implications of a high quality online-available drug market. There was a time where drugs were associated with violence, criminality and so forth but we all know that there is more to it than that.
Some of us don't smoke joints while listening to hip hop; some of us smoke'em while listening to Ligeti. Some of us don't drop acid in order to act stupid in front of a camera and then upload it to youtube, yada yada yada. Not trying to repeat that outdated distinction between art and mass culture, but you get the point.
The drug consumption is far from being homogenous and the only trend that it is here to stay, is that there's room for a platform where high quality products are readily available for those who want to explore their minds without having to deal with the (often) dirty drug dealing in the streets. Silk Road may not be such a place in the long run but it demonstrated that the need for such place does exist.
The more naif of you want to make SR synonym with a absolute free market, where the law simply doesn't apply. Feel free to think about it that way, but in the long run you'll see you've failed. SR at this moment functions like the Pirate Bay: anything goes and everybody is welcomed aboard.
The thing is this: I'm quite sure that you can agree that there's more to downloading than Pirate Bay and that in that regard Pirate Bay's products quality are not exactly the best. Pirate Bay continues to exist, but we all know that the juice is on private trackers, irc, so forth and so on.
From what I can see, you guys insist that selling Guns and similar shenanigans will make some sort of point (albeit trivial, teenage minded and dangerous) but don't give a fuck about higher values, and don't care about changing drug politics and that sort of thing.
Silk Road can be much more than a free-market; what it can be depends of what us as a community expect/want of it. People want to experiment drugs in a safe and intelligent environment, and that opportunity started with SR. Some of you may be short sighted and still miss the point, but that is what makes so SR so special.
-
hi mugwump,
I too am fairly new to the SR and this forum, been here about a month. I still am not quite sure what to think about the 'Weaponry' section of SR or the whole new hidden market offshoot called 'The Armory'. I believe it was started with the same intentions as SR but it seems to be exchanging guns exclusively (correct me if I'm wrong, I am not an Armory member so I haven't looked, but what I have read seems to support this).
I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with exchanging guns over the internet, as long as the intention of the person buying them is not to commit a crime of violence with them (which obviously cannot be stopped if this is the case). However, this still comes down to personal responsibility.
Drugs can kill you and others if used improperly, guns can kill you or others if used improperly. Education, training and safety are key. We all have a right to bear arms, but I am not sure if we are enabling criminals with more opportunities to get their hands on more guns than they would have had otherwise...
This really needs to be a Silk Road Cultural Conversation -- do we want to have guns/weaponry as a part of our culture?