It might seem futuristic, if not outright sick, but the truth is out: Drugs are being sold openly through an underground internet portal called the “Silk Road” and home-delivery is receiving five stars from elite customers who claim to be liberal anarchists.
The currency used on the Silk Road is called Bitcoin, and bought from dealers of this virtual currency on the portal. As long as both purchasers and vendors agree to honor the system, there is little any government can do about it short of deploying military intelligence onto the scene. Civil authorities are plainly unable to track transactions as there is no exchange of known currency, and it is difficult to trace.
Similar to Amazon and eBay, Silk Road has user rating systems and vendors receiving ratings and feedbacks from satisfied or dissatisfied customers.
Going by the nature of the merchandize that ranges from Afghan hashish to Ecstasy, customers are more than ecstatic on their reviews, usually being high and happy. However, it leaves law enforcement coffers high and dry.
The digital black market has its own rules and prohibits the sale of weapons of mass destruction, or asking for contract killings or anything which has the purpose to harm or defraud like stolen credit cards.
The Silk Road is not directly accessible, but one has to get entry through TOR, a client designed to protect online privacy. A quick look at the website answers the question of who uses TOR, and the answer on their sidebar include “Friends and family,” “Media,” “Military and Law Enforcement,” whistleblowers and activists against corruption etcetera, etcetera. Of course, it does not mention that drug dealers constitute a major portion of the users – what use a user puts the power of TOR rests solely with the user.
The anonymous administrator of Silk Road, also known as Silk Road, is reported to have recently addressed the media on an email saying “Our community is amazing…They are generally bright, honest and fair people, very understanding, and willing to cooperate with each other.”
Since transactions on Silk Road take place through crypto-currency of Bitcoins, the rate fluctuates frequently, in fact changing every day. Silk Road members are apparently followers of the philosophy of Agorism, a philosophy that sees the State as an evil that maintains a system of exploitation by criminalizing and permitting things at the discretion and interests of a ruling oligarchy.
As recently expressed by the administrator of Silk Road, “The state is the primary source of violence, oppression, theft and all forms of coercion,” and to fight such injustice Silk Road raised the call in a written email, “Stop funding the state with your tax dollars and direct your productive energies into the black market.”
And if you need to be delusional to do that, you now know where to find the mind-altering stuff.
