A more complex system, with checks and balances, seems far more robust and stable than a dictatorship, such as the Silkroad was, that is a good point. For questions of responsibility or guilt or blame, it shifts this from an issue of individual responsibility to shared responsibility, but that seems like mental trick to evade responsibility by diffusing it so much that nobody feels they are responsible.<p>Ironically, the operators of the Silkroad probably would have preferred to use that legal system and its checks and balances to deal with threats.<p>But they were denied access to &quot;legal&quot; methods, mainly because they were operating a market for illegal and dangerous molecules that many people like to ingest (these bad molecules should not be confused with the many <i>legal</i> and dangerous molecules like alcohol, nicotine, saturated fats, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, etc)