Ross Ulbricht's cruel and unusual sentence has far, far more to do with his agorist philosophy (and the threat of Bitcoin) than the drugs he didn't sell, although there's a tremendous effort to paint him as nothing more than a vicious drug dealer in it only for the money.
Bolding mine. Boggling mine as well. Are you freaking kidding me?
Check google. Big time drug dealers get life sentences all the damned time. Maybe in your ideal world, drug dealing is not illegal. Hell, Don, you and I could get together and have a rousing discussion, in agreement with one another, about the legalization of all drugs. But in our current reality, drug dealing is illegal, acting as a middle-man in drug deals is illegal, setting up systems to disperse illegal drugs is illegal, what this man did was illegal, and the sentence he received is not out of step with what others have received for similar crimes. But you want to say they're punishing him for his philosophy, or because he made money with Bitcoin?
Please.
Arguing that there shouldn't be laws against what he did is reasonable. And yes, I find the judge's "social fabric" remark disturbing - although not for reasons related to the crime or sentencing of the accused. But he did commit a crime, his sentence is not unusual, and no one was arrested for "an agorist philosophy" or a "stack of bitcoins." No one was arrested for an altruistic attempt to take violence out of drug deals, either. The fact that he set up drug deals for a cut of the profit online instead of in person is unusual, but the act itself is pretty common and is - like it or not - illegal.