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On the black market a person’s kidney could sell for more than $260,000 (though a kidney from a
Chinese man or woman would go for only $60,000), and a good liver was $150,000. Almost every
part of a person’s body was for sale, and for a hefty profit. Bone marrow, for example, sold for as
much as $23,000 a gram (compared with $60 a gram for cocaine). A family who couldn’t get that for
their dying son in the broken U.S. health-care system would happily pay for it on the Dark Web.
“Yes, if the source consents then it is ok,” DPR wrote, then noted to his employee that “morals
are easy when you understand the non-aggression principle,” citing the same libertarian argument he
had used so many times in his debates at Penn State. Anything goes in a free market, the principle
states, as long as you’re not violent toward anyone else without cause. (If someone tries to harm you,
then you have every right to defend yourself and your personal property, Dread explained. An eye for
an eye was the way of the libertarian world.) Selling a liver or spleen on a Web site was entirely
moral and just, he noted.
In addition to allowing organs on the site, the Dread Pirate Roberts had also recently approved
the sale of poisons on the Silk Road.
“So uhh we have a vendor selling cyanide,” wrote another of Dread’s employees. “Not sure
where we stand on this, he’s not listing it as a poison, but its only the most well known assassination
and suicide poison out there.” The employee followed up with “lol.”
DPR asked for a link to the sales page. The listing pointed out that while cyanide could be used
to kill yourself (in about seven to nine seconds)—the person selling the acid had noted that with each
order they were including a free copy of the e-book The Final Exit, which was a how-to guide for
suicides. Cyanide did also have some legitimate uses, the seller pointed out, like cleaning gold and
silver, and was “the perfect medicine to treat leprosy.”
After a couple of minutes deliberating, DPR said to the employee, “I think we’ll allow it.” And
then he reiterated the site’s mantra: “It’s a substance, and we want to err on the side of not restricting
things.”
The Silk Road, after all, was just the platform—no different from Facebook or Twitter or eBay
—on which users communicated and exchanged ideas and currency. So who was DPR to err on the
side of anything but yes? It wasn’t as if Twitter dictated what kind of opinions people could and could
not write in the little box at the top of the screen. If you wanted to spew brilliance or idiocy in 140
characters, then so be it. It was your God-given right to say what you wanted on the Internet, in the
same way it was your God-given right to buy or sell whatever you wanted and put it into your body—
if you chose.
That had been Ross’s goal with weapons too when he started the Armory, though he recently had
been forced to shut that site down because it had proven too difficult to get guns through the U.S.
Postal Service. As a result, not enough people were willing to buy weapons on the site, so he
reinstated the sale of these arms on the Silk Road (as a temporary solution) while he explored new
ways to help people traffic them back and forth anonymously. To the Dread Pirate Roberts, whether
the merchandise was guns, drugs, poisons, or body parts, it was the people’s right to buy and sell it.
“Absolutely,” the employee replied in agreement. “This is the black market after all :).”
“It is,” Ross responded, “and we are bringing order and civility to it.”
While these decisions were still difficult for Ross to make, the line where Ross ended and DPR
began was beginning to blur. And just like other ambitious CEOs who ran other start-ups around San