Out-Innovating the State: Entrepreneurship and the Fight for Liberty

A key question for libertarian activists is the extent to which the circumvention of unjust laws imposed by the state can serve as part of a political strategy.¹ A prominent, if somewhat extreme example from recent times is Ross Ulbricht, who went as far as actually breaking a whole plethora of narcotics laws by operating the darknet (i.e. black market) site “Silk Road”. As a result, he was convicted, in February 2015, of a whole raft of offences, including conspiracy to traffic narcotics.

At the time of his conviction, Robert Wenzel offered the following, critical opinion of Ulbricht’s actions from a libertarian perspective:

The trial of Ross Ulbricht, admitted founder of Silk Road, is over. He has been convicted on all the charges brought by the government. It is a terrible tragedy.

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Ubricht faces somewhere between 20 years to a life sentence. To be sure, from a libertarian perspective, there does not appear to be much that Ulbricht is guilty of. He simply provided a market for indivi…