Is Ross Ulbricht a Hero?

By Robert Wenzel

There has been much discussion in libertarian circles as to whether Ross Ulbricht is a libertarian hero. See, for example. here and here.

I have long considered a hero as someone who does something that does not directly benefit himself but will benefit others, especially when there is great danger or assured death involved for the person doing the heroic act.

For example, if two men are in a foxhole and a handgrenade lands in the hole, and one man jumps on top of it to save the other, that is a heroic act.

If we accept the general narrative about Edward Snowden, that he released information about NSA spying to alert Americans, then he certainly is a hero, since he knew at the time of the release that he was putting a target on his back and that the US government would stop at nothing to get him.

In the case of Ross Ulbricht, things are a bit different. He was running an illegal enterprise, but there is no indication that he believed he would get caught. Thus, he wasn't, in his mind, putting himself at risk for "the greater good." He was doing what other drug dealers do, calculating risk and hoping to come out on top. That his calculations were in error does not make him a hero.

Now, I have seen some claim that Ulbricht was somehow taking on a noble experiment with his launching of Silk Road.

But what could this "experiment" possibly be? Proving that the internet can be used for the exchange of goods? Amazon proved that a very long time ago. Proving that the government will aggressively go after drug dealers? Well, we already knew that. The only way we can possibly look at Silk Road as an experiment, and this is a stretch, is that it was to see if a very smart guy, Ulbricht, could outsmart the government, and we all know how that experiment turned out.

This wasn't heroic stuff. It was a misguided move by Ulbricht, encouraged by some who think it is easy to take on the state, as long as you have a few secretly encoded bitcoins in your magic digital wallet.

Indeed, when there was an opportunity for Ulbricht to be a hero, he turned it down. He cried and as Bionic Mosquito points out:

It seems to me that a hero suffers his consequences; he does not back away from the principle that drove him to act. Ulbricht has backed away, however:

I believed at the time that people should have the right to buy and sell whatever they wanted so long as they weren’t hurting anyone else.  However, I’ve learned since then that taking immediate actions on one’s beliefs, without taking the necessary time to really think them through, can have disastrous consequences. Silk Road turned out to be a very naïve and costly idea that I deeply regret.

This is not to say that there is anything wrong with what Ulbricht said in court. I would probably do the same thing, but it is not the heroic thing.

It brings to mind a scene in a recent episode of the popular ABC television drama Scandal, In the series, Olivia Pope's mother is a terrorist. She is locked up in cell that appears more impenetrable than a supermax prison. In the season finale, a piece of paper is put in front of her that, for complicated reasons I am not going to go into here,  the government wants her to sign. The paper is a statement where she declares that she is completely unaware of any deep secret black bag operation within the government. She is aware that there is such, but the government tells her that if she signs the statement, she will be allowed to go free. She immediately responds:"Well, give me a pen."

There is nothing wrong with saying anything to a government to set yourself free to fight another day. That said, there is nothing heroic about it.

If Ulbricht wanted to be a hero, he could have said something like this before the judge sentenced him.

I stand here today convicted of running a marketplace where individuals were free to exchange goods. I find nothing wrong with that. There was no coercion, there was no evil doing. It was a marketplace where only those who chose entered, and only those who chose transacted.

In contrast, I stand here against my will, next to armed men who will not let me leave of my free will, in front of prosecutors who desire that I be incarcerated for a very long time and before, you Judge ,a person who is about to order that I be incarcerated for a very long time. You are all doing this because of an online non-coercive market I created. I ask: Who is the coercer here? Who is doing evil?

But, note well, you have not won. To take a line from the movie The Mack, and put it in a completely different context,"Anyone can control a person's body, but controlling the mind is the thing,"

You control my body, but you have not taken control of my mind. I will always stand up for liberty.

And this Kangaroo court that is the place of my conviction has created more advocates of liberty. Just like in foreign lands, where the killing of one revolutionary leads to the brother, sisters, parents and friends of the dead revolutionary joining the cause, your horrific treatment of me has created new powerful advocates of liberty, among my parents, friends and others. They see how I am being treated by the state for running a free market, they are becoming embolden to join the fight. They have been awakened to the true nature of the state. I know my mother, she loves her son, she also recognizes justice, and justice denied. She is witness to the evil that has gone on in this court that results in my body being in chains. She is now driven, by these actions of the state and this court in particular, to spread the word about me and liberty until her last breath, both here and around the world. Your horrific treatment of me has also awakened many others. Every attack by the state against people like me only weakens that state.

In the end, liberty will win. Attempting to crush me, only creates another platform from which liberty can be advocated. So make it good, sentence me to death for my non-coercive actions, show the world who really is about force and the stamping out of freedom. I stand, always, for liberty, liberty, liberty!!

Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher at EconomicPolicyJournal.com and at Target Liberty. He is also author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank. Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics