Silk Road forums

Discussion => Philosophy, Economics and Justice => Topic started by: AUS-SmartDrugs on March 28, 2013, 02:53 pm

Title: The Silk Road Marketplace - Historical Implications on Economic Transfiguration
Post by: AUS-SmartDrugs on March 28, 2013, 02:53 pm
What we’re involved in here is much greater than the buying and selling of drugs...

If we are to take but a glance at the current state of the world economy, a commodified market of currencies where there's around 70x more 'money' than there are goods for purchase. Where consumer bank interest on cash deposits is normally lower than the rate of domestic inflation, where most fiat currencies are privately owned and interest rates are set by private institutions. It's evident that something is inherently wrong.

Most of us, caught up in our rapid consumerism driven by false advertising don’t even understand what money is and where it comes from. Some of the current generation are getting their YouTube education and speaking with authority about the evils of central banks and the fractional reserve banking system but still remain oblivious to their unhealthy relationship with ‘money’.

A big bubble pops every decade or so, and wealth becomes more and more concentrated. We start screaming “We’ve been robbed”, and indeed we have - but what have we been robbed of?

Money you say?
Well, what is money?

It’s something with purchasing power, something of value that we exchange for other things we feel to be of value. What makes it so interesting is that this purchasing power, this money that we are ‘slaves to’ is only valuable in so far as we perceive it to be...

Now we can talk about changes in economic and social governance all day. About feudalism, mercantilism and early capitalism - outraged are the Marxists, apologetic are the Keynesians while Libertarians kneel prostrated to their free-market gods. Putting all alliances aside one thing is indeed certain: that every era of economic and social organization finds its place in the chapter of a history book.

We all feel the instability and shortcomings of today’s system and know its last days are approaching. Freedom can’t be taken from the masses, the masses must sacrifice it - and they do because they feel that they must; for it’s difficult to sleep with an empty stomach or on the hard mattress of a cellblock bed.

Drugs, our freedom to experiment with our own state of mind through the use of chemicals and plants. How threatening to the system is our non-participation! Labour must be obedient and industrious and available. Therefore remove any freedoms that jeopardize the proper functioning of the factory - incarcerate those dealers for their victimless crimes in privatized jails!

However, the tides are turning! Even if our SR hits an iceberg and sinks never to be seen again, another ship will be built from the rubble; all the more robust.

But what is it exactly that ensures the ‘Silk Road anonymous marketplace’ a mention in the academic journals?

As the decades roll past and mankind witnesses the end of drug prohibition; SR’s main legacy wont be as the pioneer of online narcotics sales but rather the impetus behind the development of a new transnational unregulated economic system.

Scene: Year 2060 inside a primary school economic class.

Teacher: “Kids, what was a fiat currency?”
Student: “It was a national currency back before the invention of Bitcoins”
Teacher: “What was a Bitcoin?”
Student: “It was the world’s first completely uncentralized peer-to-peer currency”
Teacher: “How did it become popular?”
Student: “The government and the banks tried to control the people so they created their own electronic money”
Teacher: “What did your grandparents buy with their electronic money?”
Student: “Things that the government didn’t want them to have, like drugs”


Bitcoins (BTC) has its own flaws and the bubble is likely to burst, but out of the debris a new system will undoubtably rise, again, more robust and reliable than the last.

Technology has paved the way for a new system of trade where the sovereign nation state is becoming increasingly less significant and influential. Commerce in the future will be fueled by Bitcoin’s grandchildren and when the historians, anthropologists, sociologists and economists look back they will see where it gained its momentum.

Much like how mafia gangs gained power in the 1920s through alcohol prohibition, the deregulated crypto-currency gained power around 100 years later through the ongoing prohibition of drugs.

And what was the first marketplace that granted this initial international crypto-currency a true audience?

None other than: The Silk Road Anonymous Marketplace