Good point, you are absolutely correct. Then I suppose life “with the possibility of parole” would have been a more appropriate sentence, though I don’t know if that’s typically given. In any case, I feel prisons ought to release prisoners if they demonstrate exceptional rehabilitation and remorse, as Ross has, though of course that’s a difficult line to draw in practice.
Life imprisonment – with or without parole – for a non-violent crime still seems excessive. If they'd convicted him of conspiracy to murder for hiring the hitman then that's a different matter.
> He acted as an enabler to countless violent crimes.
I don't like this argument of imputing transitive guilt. If guilt is imputed indirectly, then all of us are guilty of many things, like atrocities that our countries have perpetrated during war.
> Also punishing a people for actions of their government is a war crime
Right, because we recognize that indirect, transitive blame is ethically problematic.
> He actively and deliberately enabled those activities for self benefit.
So did the Sacklers with the opioid epidemic, arguably even more directly than Ulbricht. Which of them is in prison?
"Enabling" is exactly the kind of weasel word that I find problematic. It has no strict definition and can be broadened to suit whatever is needed to condemn an action you happen to dislike in any given scenario.
He only allegedly needed to hire a hitman because the government invented the whole blackmail scenario behind it. You can't make this shit up, Silk Road was extra evil because it lead to the government creating hitmen and reasons to use them.
We need gangster hoodlums on the street because lookie here sonny, an online marketplace is dangerous and if it isn't dangerous enough well feds will make it that way.
