Aaron Swartz = a very questionable "breaking and entering" charge and some computer "crimes". Otherwise, publicly, an extremely upstanding member of society.
Popcorn Sutton = very very very openly an illegal distiller, and seller, of untested/unreglated alcohol that he self-documented via video and distributed the video as well as a self-published manual. Had multiple arrests and convictions over the years for the alcohol production, drug charges, assault with a deadly weapon. He was then arrested for trying to sell to an undercover officer while illegally possessing a firearm as a convicted felon. Popcorn illegally distilled alcohol for at LEAST 35 years.
To me, doesn't sound like this guy was at all on the same level of soft law breaking as Mr. Schwartz.
Do you believe this distiller's actions to be just and moral? Are you opposed to laws or something?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist
I do not believe it is wrong to sell "drugs" without government intervention
Bootleggers aren't 'innocent'. They're extremely territorial up to the point of property destruction and even murder. They evade alcohol taxation, they often don't report the income from their sales (because, well, duh they don't want more attention). In some instances they are often involved in narcotic/meth/marijuana/heroin trafficking, sometimes have gang affiliations, have murdered law enforcement officers, etc.
Popcorn was convicted, and served time, for some of those offenses decades before his last arrest and continued to carry on with his illegal activity. If you think selling potentially toxic alcohol, tax evasion, drug dealing and violent assault are absolutely 'wrong'. Those are the things we KNOW he did.
His last arrest, in my opinion the alcohol charge should have been dropped as entrapment, but he was a felon in possession of a firearm which is a crime (and a sensible one, given his prior conviction of assault with a deadly weapon) and he should have been fully on the hook for that.
It's unfortunate he felt the need to take his life but his case is in no way similar to that of Aaron Swartz. Aaron made a bad decision and did a largely digital crime, Popcorn was overtly a career criminal.
I don't know Popcorns case in detail but if the assault you listed was in self-defense every thing you list is illegal but not wrong.
All alcohol is toxic. Exchange and consumption are consensual, that's what matters.
all alcohol is toxic but sometimes your alcohol is actually accidentally methanol and then you die now, not later
As long as you ignest methanol with enough ethanol mixed in, it's not lethal. You would have to separately capture the small amount of stuff coming out before the "heads" to make deadly methanol. Soundslike this could happen only if you make an industrial quantity batch, and are completely reckless about the basics.
Bootleggers aren't 'innocent'.
Replace with marijuana and you get the same. Declare taxes on cocaine sales? People know what they want, moonshine, and he provided it. Do I think everyone should mix stuff on their bathtub or garage and sell it to people? Nope, but people that buy moonshine know what they want and he had his own brand /customers. So, while illegal no harm comes from them to the average person. (A CEO uses a legal, but paid for via lobbying, loophole to save 1000x more in taxes than all moonshiners steal combined)
When's the last time you've heard of a burnout pot-dealer murdering people, murdering police, modifying their cars to outrun police to the point of actually spawning a sport (nascar).
When's the last time you heard that marijuana made someone blind or destroyed their liver and kidneys by containing methanol and lead?
Sure, moonshiners are sometimes direct to customer, but some will have distributors because you can throw tens, or even a hundred or more gallons in the bed of a truck or a van. Simply getting enough materials to manufacture large quantities is a great way to 'get got', buying sugar in sufficient quantities will get state BATF called. You have to obtain large amounts (for a private individual) of grain and sugar (which usually means paying people to set some aside for you and buying their discretion, or having customers go buy in smaller quantities for you for pay or for a discount on their liquor), transport it to a storage area, transport it and horded containers to an often remote location to cook and distill where the scent can travel for many many miles and the heat signature is readily visible from piloted aircraft and UAVs, fill containers, transport containers to one or more caches, then actually deliver to customers or sellers. This is comparable to a 'guerilla grower' however the risk to reward ratio is considerably less than a grow-operation. Then of course you're selling something of unknown purity, that may contain lead or methanol which can do damage within hours of consumption and over relatively short periods can cause irreversible damage or death.
For grow operations that are outside, you mostly need to go set up some trail cams, plant your crop, watch it (and be willing to protect it with lethal force), and transport it at harvest. Sure, you can then carry more in value out on a single person than a moonshiner might make from an entire run. Moonshine has to be competitive with state or retail sold alcohol so 20-30$ a quart for 150-190 proof. Sure a grow operation is making a lot more money even at wholesale pricing, a quick google search shows 18.5g of 'average mid weed' is a cup of volume so 74g of week is roughly the same volume of a quart jar, even if you assume half that due to moisture volume, someone could easily walk out of the woods with 5kg of weed in a 65 liter hiking backpack which is far more than your average dealer is going to be moving in a reasonable amount of time.
Yes, a 'guerrilla grower' is an order of magnitude higher on the threat list than most moonshiners BUT a moonshiner is an order of magnitude higher than your buddy from high school that sold a little weed to fund his habit, or had a few plants growing in his closet and sells almost exclusively to people he's known for years and is likely buying from a single individual or has a couple of grow tents in his walk-in closet.