34856893457934

libertarian theory. When the tête-à-tête went round in circles too many times, he would simply end the
conversation by saying, “Well, we will just have to disagree on this.”
Those disagreements, combined with the attention the site was now getting from the media and
government, had turned the lovebirds’ once-in-a-while wrangles into a once-a-day war. “You have to
quit,” Julia would yell. “You’re going to end up in jail for the rest of your life, and how am I
supposed to get married and have a family with someone who is in jail?” To which Ross would
calmly reply, “I can’t get caught because I’m protected by Tor and Bitcoin.” He would then begin a
rehearsed diatribe about his legacy. The site, he proclaimed, would be his greatest contribution to
society. He was helping people, keeping them safe from the streets, where drug deals could get one
thrown in jail or, worse, hurt or killed. Didn’t Julia see that? Didn’t she want to be a part of it?
As if they were repeatedly reading from the same script, a verbal brawl would ensue, and then
one of them would storm out of the apartment or into another room. A few hours later, love would
magnetically draw them back together. They would make up and fall asleep in each other’s arms,
Julia dreaming of a white picket fence and a couple of giggling children running around in the yard,
Ross’s reveries of the Silk Road growing so large that one day he would overturn the drug laws and
be lauded for the positive impact he had had on society.
The next morning the pugnacious lovers would start all over again.
The site had also started to affect other areas of their relationship. Julia wanted to go out dancing
or be taken to a nice restaurant with all the money he was now making from his commissions. And yet
Ross was perfectly happy eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while tapping out code on his
laptop. Days would go by where he wouldn’t shower, would barely talk to her, and would just sit in
his chair in their bedroom (often naked) on his computer.
Julia had begun worrying so much about the state of their relationship, and Ross’s well-being in
general, that she had started to have panic attacks on a regular basis. She peered at men in the grocery
store and wondered if they were undercover cops who knew that she lived with the man who had
started the Silk Road. She cried in the shower. She loved Ross so much, but he appeared to love his
Web site more.
Life went on like this for weeks, each day echoing the last, until one evening Ross came home
with fervent excitement in his eyes. Enraptured, he told Julia he had to show her something. He
opened his laptop, fiddled around for a few seconds, and then spun the computer around for her to
see. Over time he had made every effort possible to convince Julia that the hard drugs should be
listed on the Silk Road, using his salient argument that the government should have no right to tell you
what you could and could not put in your own body and that crime and violence would fall if there
were no drug wars. While she didn’t necessarily agree with his viewpoints, she understood his
reasoning, and it made sense in theory. But there would be no convincing Julia of the merits of what
he was about to show her.
“Look,” Ross said proudly as he pointed at his laptop screen. “There are guns that just got listed
on the site.”
Julia stared in disbelief, a feeling of nausea enveloping her. “Ross,” she said pleadingly. “This
isn’t normal.”
“Why isn’t it normal? It’s our constitutional right to have guns, we should be able to have—”
She interrupted him: “Tell me why would someone need to buy guns anonymously.”