Ladies and Gentlemen,
I started reading cyberpunk fiction back in the 1980s.
In particular, I liked the depiction of drug use in _Hardwired_ by Walter Jon Williams.
Back then it was possible to use street drugs but still have a middle-class life.
We listened to the warning that the War on Drugs was a war on civil liberties. We got older and we accepted that we had to pass urine tests and hair tests to confirm that we had not been using lately. But it got worse and worse and worse.
Now the War on Terror is eradicating the remnants of civil liberties.
I can't believe in cyberpunk fantasies. I can't believe in a Walter Jon Williams world any more. The War on Drugs was ridiculously effective. It killed off civil liberties.
The fact is that street punks must survive first. Even if you're nihilistic and suicidal, you have to make sure to die on your own terms. Getting access to street drugs nowadays entails too many compromises, too many sacrifices on your personal independence.
(Note: I am fully aware that some people can use Tor to browse bitcoin-based markets. Apparently these people live in countries where parcels are not searched. I live in a country where parcels are searched thoroughly.)
However, having survived without drugs for many years, it has become clear to me that drugs were just part of the picture. A cyberpunk ought to have dangerous drugs and dangerous weapons.
Our black markets are simply not up to the task of equipping people with both drugs and weapons. Even if we had weapons, we would not have a serious chance of attacking the plutocrats. We *could* try revolutions, but the plutocrats would probably co-opt the revolutions.
We could try to build an alternate society before the old one collapses. E.g. we could learn how to rig up solar panels and how to distill rainwater. But that is not easy: many governments want to tax solar panels and criminalize rainwater collection.
And a word about sex. The original cyberpunk stories were soaked in Baby-Boomer-style sexual hedonism. That is crap and it will not work. Sexual hedonists are not going to succeed at any kind of revolution; they are going to be too busy visiting the STD clinics.
My head hurts and I don't have decent painkillers because the damn doctors don't want to over-prescribe.
Even if Putin crushes the evil Yankee empire, the aftermath will not be pretty. A Russian-Chinese alliance will not be very joyful. It will not have a lot of room for civil liberties. Maybe Putin will let us have solar panels.