Ross Ulbricht, who called himself the Dread Pirate Roberts and created the Silk Road online drugs market, has just been sentenced to life in prison. In a letter to the judge, he pleaded for clemency, claiming that “I learned from Silk Road that when you give people freedom, you don’t know what they’ll do with it.” The judge didn’t buy this claim, and retorted that “You were captain of the ship as Dread Pirate Roberts, and you made your own law.” This seems like a strange claim at first glance. We think of criminals as lawbreakers not as lawmakers. What did the judge mean?
Criminals can’t trust each other
As I discuss at length in this article on Silk Road, written for Aeon, criminals have great difficulty in trusting each other. Almost by definition they are likely to have untrustworthy characters. If one criminal is cheated by another, he can’t go to the police, or sue in civil court. This often leads to violence, but also means that criminals who can figure out ways to cooperate together will do better than criminals who can’t. As the research of Diego Gambetta demonstrates, the Sicilian Mafia has elaborate rules and customs, many of which are designed to support cooperation among mafiosi, and to make it harder for outsiders to successfully pretend to be mafiosi. David Skarbek’sresearch shows how the “Mexican Mafia” gang is able to use their control of prisons to police agreements between gangs on the street (since gang members anticipate going to prison sometime, they don’t want to incur the wrath of the Mexican Mafia).
Online anonymity hurts criminals as well as helping them
At first, it might seem as though buying and selling drugs online is a great idea. The Internet can make you anonymous (especially if you are using a ‘darknet’ designed to make your actions untraceable). You are probably less likely to get caught than if you are buying on a street corner. You also have a better idea of where to go to find drugs and/or customers, and are less likely to be robbed or beaten up. However, anonymity has its downside. If you are dealing with an anonymous criminal, you are going to have a hard time retaliating if she cheats you. She will have a hard time retaliating if you cheat her (she sends you the drugs, and then you refuse to pay). Anonymity makes it hard for the police to catch you, but it also makes it hard for criminals to use their traditional tools of persuasion and deterrence.
Read the full piece at The Washington Post.
- Publication Type:Other Writing
- Publication Date:06/01/2015