I think the attacks on some of these black and gray markets has increased violent crime in the real world. I wish the federal government would stop shutting them down and instead use them as tools to build cases against people breaking the law.
For example, for a while most prostitution and sex work seemed to be online, on places like Craigslist right next to ads for used furniture and jobs. And it seemed to be really effective in getting prostitutes off the streets.
Now that those markets were shut down, I'm seeing here in Seattle we're having pimp shootouts on Aurora and the prostitutes are more brazen than ever. Going after Craigslist has had a negative effect on our cities and has increased crime, and I suspect going after SilkRoad has had a similar impact.
I wish instead of criminalizing addiction we'd fund harm reduction centers and rehabilitation services.
I would much rather the police be focused on stopping violent crime rather than these victimless crimes.
Legitimizing drugs/prostitution makes is easier to regulate and ultimately make safer. Shoving this stuff into a black/gray market is what ultimately creates violent crime.
> I wish instead of criminalizing addiction we'd fund harm reduction centers and rehabilitation services.
We tried that in SF, I was a supporter. Seeing it first hand with a with a family member in public school flipped me. Dumping money into people who aren't ready to convert back into tax payers (even in the most basic sense) while schools got the back burner was enough. Not to mention the tents.
> Seeing it first hand with a with a family member in public school flipped me.
Why is this an either or?
SF spends about $1 billion dollars on schools [1] and while the program ran it had around a $40 million dollar budget [2]. For an area that houses huge tech companies, this doesn't seem like an extreme budget to be working with.
> Not to mention the tents.
Ok? And what options would you give these people, just be homeless somewhere else where you can't see them?
correct. my comment was intended to point out the disturbing misplacement of priorities, given that the budgets for educating the citizens of the future and for fetty smoking bums are comparable.
While I think anecdotes are valuable and should not be easily dismissed, we have decades of research and evidence supporting the benefit of harm reduction centers. They reduce risk of overdose morbidity and mortality while not increasing crime or public nuisance to the surrounding community.
It's just really hard to swallow the findings in this paper (all non-US cities) when you can see such a visible change on the streets in SF since the pandemic.
By all official accounts crime is down in SF, but many agree something has changed in the way homeless carry. I would dare to use the word "entitled" to describe the cavalier way large encampments and bicycle chop shops are set up.
I never did any drugs but when I was growing up, it was understood that you needed to keep your drug use somewhat secret, behind closed doors, hidden from the public, I expected there would be consequences from the police if I decided to do drugs out in the open.
Now I see guys doing extremely hard drugs out in the open on the street and on buses. it is a jarring. They're usually not trying to inject or exhale on me ( though the meth smoke guys on some buses don't seem to care ).
Yeah although this is more a consequence of how SF decided to handle it. Rather than decriminalising they're just enabling users.
Look towards other countries with similar policies (Portugal, Netherlands, etc.) in their cases they saw a decrease in drug usage and fatalities. The difference is they decided to not encourage their behaviour by allowing open air drug markets to flourish, with kiosks just down the street handing out the necessary paraphernalia.
no victim means no crime. victimless "crimes" are just 'arbitrary rule' violations (like going 56mph in a 55mph zone) or infractions. the twisting and distortion of language by the state is counterproductive to society.
How does that make any sense? So you could never pass a law to reduce risk because in most cases, breaking it won’t create a victim?
Speed limits are done to reduce the risk of you killing someone. Do you really think you should be able to drive however you want and until you actually have an accident, it’s fine?
if you cause no harm, how could it be a crime? an infraction, sure. a rule violation, sure. but calling a small rule violation which never causes any harm to anyone the same thing as rape, murder, assault, carjacking, etc, is just pure degeneracy of language.
The crime is increasing the risk to other people. Why does that not make it a crime in your opinion?
If I try to shoot someone but miss and they never even notice, is that fine because there’s no actual victim?
Edit:
To be more precise, the crime doesn’t even need you to increase the risk to anyone. Just thinking that you’ll increase the risk is already a crime, even if you’re wrong. If you buy a prop gun but think it’s real and try to shoot someone, that would still be attempted murder, even if it couldn’t even have worked. But you’re punished for trying to kill someone, it doesn’t matter wether you’re incompetent at it (well you get a bit less for the attempt compared to the actual successful act but it’s still a crime).
And another edit because coming up with weird hypotheticals is fun:
Imagine planting a bomb with a one hour timer on a marketplace and when it goes off, the marketplace was empty of people by chance.
Does that mean that the worst punishment you should expect should be for property damage because someone needs to clean up the ground? Obviously you committed a crime, even if there’s no specific victim this time.
an attempted crime is an intent to harm another. even my autocorrect could finish that sentence.
but we have a separate crime category for those already. "attempted murder" etc. those are crimes because they intended to be a crime, but they just failed for incompetence. it's a lot harder to prove in court (rightfully so).
i would say that i agree with you about attempted crimes, if that helps.
So what’s the problem? Attempting crimes is a crime too.
Edit:
You initially wrote:
> no victim means no crime. victimless "crimes" are just 'arbitrary rule' violations (like going 56mph in a 55mph zone) or infractions. the twisting and distortion of language by the state is counterproductive to society.
So you think not being allowed to bomb someone while being unsuccessful is ab arbitrary rule and should not be called a crime?
The inflow/manufacture of narcotics won't be affected at all. You'll still have a constant new influx of junkies, and it you'll essentially by funding this widescale and expensive solution forever.
Much better to simple make drug trafficing and manufacture a capital offense. It's been extremely effective in a lot of jurisdictions. Even if you're squeamish about the death penalty, a back of the envelope calculations will tell you you're saving a lot more lives than you spend due to decreased overdoses, drug wars etc,
It's a tiny island nation with a single sea port, single bridge, and single airport. Meanwhile western nations are so porous they can't keep millions of undocumented people out.
Having garbage bins in my neighborhood, keeps garbage from being put on the ground.
There are other neighbourhoods where the garbage bins don’t help at all
I don't think much changed, really. The contraband and services offered on these marketplaces has always been backed by criminal enterprises. Mostly the markets provided level of indirection that made purchasing palatable and gave a false sense of safety.
Online markets for sex work allowed women to operate far more safely than "the street" allow. I had friends who were affected by the crackdown on craigslist etc.
I sincerely didn't mean to minimize the harm to sex workers, which is devastating.
My point is rather that an online marketplace in the absence of decriminalization and reform can only provide a marginal increase in safety. Sex workers marketing on Backpage, Craigslist, Onlyfans, and IG still face a great deal of risk of violence, pressure from pimps, and prosecution by law enforcement. It's a deeply complex systematic issue which can't be fixed by a website.
For drugs in particular, darknet marketplaces primarily rely on unspeakably violent criminal enterprises upstream. The consumers, sellers, and communities implicated in this supply chain are all losers in this system. The cartels are the winners and the global "war on drugs" establishment are a close second place.
Still, in the case of sex work, I think you are simply wrong. Your overall sketch is the "movie version" or police/puritanical version of sex work, a version that equates trafficking and voluntary transactions (not that those transactions can't exploitative in other ways). The majority sex work isn't filled with violence except on the level of the literal street. Notably, my friends and acquaintances who used Craigslist back in the day didn't deal with any pimps and a moment's thought would show pimps are only needed when someone sells sex at a physical location.
Also, afaik, onlyfans is a virtual only platform so workers there face the same physical dangers as people on zoom calls.
> a moment's thought would show pimps are only needed when someone sells sex at a physical location
Pimps are needed whenever there is coercion involved. It seems unlikely to me that only street prostitution requires coercion. I think we'll soon learn that most of the women on OnlyFans are there because of a violent and manipulative man.
Thank you for the kind elaboration. I wonder if you could share any writing on the social justice issues surrounding sex work? My knowledge is limited and informed by only a few pieces I've read over the years.
Illegal online marketplaces absolutely do reduce "turf wars". It's argueable that there is harm reduction compared to street dealing. Then I suspect it creates new consumers so there is that too.
Sure, but the point is about secondary effects. If pimps are "competing" online then they need to compete on, well, marketing and UX. If they compete in real life then it is about who controls physical territory.
There are lots of studies about the unintended consequences of prohibition.
By this, do you mean "reducing the total amount of prostitution occurring" or "making prostitution less visible"?
Your third paragraph implies the former, but I suspect the answer is actually the latter. There is probably less total prostition now, but what's there is more visible.
You talk about "increased crime" in reference to pimp shootouts, but you know prostitution and sex trafficking are crimes too, right? If thousands of women and girls are suffering but you can't see it because it's all organized online, that's not necessarily better.
Coming from a country where prostition is legal and drugs heavily decriminalized, all with plenty of help programs for people who need it. I can only say that the problem is not the platforms but forbidding things that people won't stop using is simply delusional.
For example, for a while most prostitution and sex work seemed to be online, on places like Craigslist right next to ads for used furniture and jobs. And it seemed to be really effective in getting prostitutes off the streets.
Now that those markets were shut down, I'm seeing here in Seattle we're having pimp shootouts on Aurora and the prostitutes are more brazen than ever. Going after Craigslist has had a negative effect on our cities and has increased crime, and I suspect going after SilkRoad has had a similar impact.