Life is shit but I’m back

Okay I’m back. I always ruin things for my self. As soon as this blog began getting mentions and a decent amount of traffic I just gave up. My twitter has become a baron wasteland of generic self-indulgent bullshit and this blog is just a graveyard of attempted writing. The past few months or so I’ve been cripplingly depressed and filled to the brim with anxiety. Panic attacks are shit. Sleep Paralysis is quite frankly horrifying. Suicide is surprisingly difficult, and MDMA can only do so much, until your hanging off your kitchen counter crying, and just begging that the vitamin C in this last orange juice re-fills your final drips of happy chemicals. The good thing is, I’m starting to rise out of this dark place. Well … I do still feel fucking horrendous most of the time, I always have done. BUT, I’m going to stop letting it affect what I do. Sitting around binge-eating and getting drunk is just burying me deeper into the void…

Doing things can’t make it any worse, even if the simple task of getting out of bed before 3pm feels like climbing mount Everest, I’m going to try and push through. On that note…. FUCK IT. I AM BACK. I don’t want this blog to become a cesspool of melodramatic and over-personal horse shit, so I might as well got it all out of my system now….

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The thing is,

I quite literally have no idea what is going on. I shut my eyes for a moment and a month has passed. I blink and another year has passed me by. No matter what I do life keeps it’s momentum. It feels like I’m stuck in a perpetual machine that just keeps getting faster and faster as I get older.

I feel trapped in this constant arrow of time. I’ve tried to clamber out of it numerous times and just get sucked into drug addiction, anxiety and depression. Even with these vices, life keeps going. Faster and faster. There’s nothing I can do about it.

I’m not even happy. I’m not even sad. I’m sort of stuck in this neutral state, as life flies by at an incredible speed. I’m scared to blink. Because if I blink I might open my eyes and be 40 years old, just sitting there at some friends wedding, reminiscing of “The good ol’ days.” Knowing, deep down inside that I could have done better.

I could do better but the impulse spending and self-destructive hedonistic lifestyles dulls the pain. It kills the nihilism within and makes me forget that everything I do is pointless. For a short amount of time I can truly believe I am an infinite being with boundless energy. There is no life, there is no death and all that matters is what’s happing right now in this specific moment in time. I can be someone and the world is a beautiful place.

The party ends and your system is clear. The world is dark. Peace love and unity only exist for three hours at an underground rave. Outside of this, the world is rotting and nobody wants to admit it but humans are disgusting creatures. Death pain and misery round every corner as we slowly destroy our civilisation through excessive and mass consumption.

Everything happens and then it’s gone. What’s the point?

All you have left is memories which is the only redeeming factor of the human condition. I am thankful for this as I have met some incredible people and had some incredible times over the years. Nothing can change that. I’ll miss it when it’s all gone. Every friend, every enemy, every fight, every love, every cigarette, every night, every comedown, every laugh. Every loss.

–THE LONELY WEST is finally back <3– 

The Silk Road Ideology: A simulation of a free market economy

In February 2011, Ross Ulbricht opened a black market website known as the Silk Road. Little did he know, it would soon facilitate the selling of $8million worth of narcotics each month. With high quality drugs being shipped around the world 24/7, this multi-million dollar enterprise sent shock waves through the media. It thrived and it’s customer base got larger, along with it’s huge middle finger pointed at drug regulation and law enforcement.

Better known under his pseudonym “Dread Pirate Roberts,” Ross was seen by many as a hero, constantly preaching his libertarian values to his loyal users.

“Silk Road was founded on libertarian principles and continues to be operated on them. It is a great idea and a great practical system…It is not a utopia. It is regulated by market forces, not a central power (even I am subject to market forces by my competition. No one is forced to be here). The same principles that have allowed Silk Road to flourish can and do work anywhere human beings come together. The only difference is that the State is unable to get its thieving murderous mitts on it.” –  Dread Pirate Roberts

The way I see it, Ulbricht was trying to change the perception of how we see our government and economics system. He created virtual space were a simulation of a free market economy can flourish. The effects this had on the black market, used as evidence for how a free market economy could benefit society.

“Ross Ulbricht’s Linked-in bio”

What a better way to put this simulation into practice than the drug trade. An unregulated market with HUGE demand. As long as there is a demand for drugs there will ALWAYS be a supplier, regardless of how much the government try to intervene. If there is no way of stopping drug supply, then why not allow the supply of it to be safe and regulated? After all, the drug trade will never cease… People like taking drugs. As it stands, the drug trade is a risky and un-regulated business. Mindless violence caused by criminal gangs for the sake of untaxed revenue.

The silk road bypassed all of this and allowed the consumer to be safe. Away from the dangerous streets, we the people acted as it’s self regulator through the use of the sites feedback system. This forced vendors to sell un-adulterated they could get sales. As if they weren’t up to scratch it would be reported by the consumer.

These are the basic concepts of a free market economy. A decentralised economic system (Bitcoin) were the consumer acts as the products regulator. Ross Ulbricht and many people using and regulating the site believed in this libertarian philosophy. What better way to show people that it works, than creating a free market economy for people to use in a huge public sphere such as the internet.  With the amount of users and lack of violent crimes through the use of these sites, it’s clear that it did work.

It took them two years from the sites creation, but the FBI finally managed to shut it down. Now that’s a story in itself. I remember vigilantly watching various forums as the drama un-folded. Feeling some what part of a collective revolution as the people tried fighting back against the government. Here’s the kicker. We won. Just a mere month after it’s closure, a Silk Road 2.0 launched, lead by and equally as self-righteous “Defcon.”

The middle finger to law enforcement only got bigger and bigger as more sites started spawning from no where, all offering the same black market services. The problem was that the FBI shot themselves in the foot. By seizing the Silk Road it only added more media attention to these sites, bringing in more customers and more demand. It also gave people the incentive to fight back against the government in a sort of digital “V for Vendatta.”

It took another year, but just yesterday the second silk road was taken down, along with a few other darknet sites. ALREADY, just hours later, a Silk Road 3.0 has spawned. You only need to look at this list, to see the sheer amount of black market websites being created regularly.

So was Ross Ulbricht a hero? What about Defcon? If you believe in libertarian philosophies then Ross Ulbricht is definitely a pioneer in getting the message of a free market economy out there. Regardless of how many sites they take down, the message is still there. The ideas left behind by Ross are still ingrained into the people who supported the cause. A domino effect has started. Maybe one day we will live in a free market economy and we’ll look back at these times fondly as the start of a revolution.

Here is a video made by Ross Ulbricht’s mother during the Silk Road case in 2013.

–THE LONELY WEST–