> First, I have never actually seen any comments here disavowing themselves of responsibility.
Pulling from the comment I was replying to:
> ... many poorer and financially illeterate people have been tricked ...
That's quite literally disavowing responsibility.
> ... but there is an extensive body of law intended to protect people from outright falsehoods
This is true and the law hasn't quite caught up to crypto scams but think about it this way: even if the scammers get prosecuted--possibly even go to jail--you're 99% likely never getting your money back. And even if you do it'll probably be after wasting years on the effort. Obviously there's a deterrence value to prosecuting scammers and I support that hpappening but you'll almost never get your money back.
> Maintaining a certain level of trust is a pool from which we can all draw. It has in fact been shown that growth in low trust economies is systematically lower than in high trust economies.
I 100% agree and this is something that libertarians and anarchists gloss over completely.
No, half of this thread believes we should protect people from predators. The other half feels that people who can't recognize predators are natural and deserving prey.
I want protection from myself because society is impossibly complex for a single mind to understand.
If I buy edible stuff I trust that it won't poison me or kill me. If I drive a car I expect it respond to my commands and I expect other drivers to have a minimum amount of knowledge that they can actually assume and understand the risks of driving.
The protections that the SEC and other bodies expect in this area are quite reasonable if you understand that there is no such thing as "personal" freedom; your well-being and successes and failures tie into the rest of society at large. Maybe if you lose part of your savings that might be tolerable for all, but if in the process of making a bad investment you leave yourself and your family homeless, get into drug addiction, and create a large burden to those around you, it's hard to consider that to be a simple personal issue.
Look, if someone comes to my house claiming to be raising money for charity and I givethem money, the following statements can all be simultaneously true:
1. I should take responsibility for checking that they represent a genuine charity;
2. If they are a genuine charity, I should take responsibility for checking that most of my gift will go towards the recipients of the charity and not to operating the charity itself;
3. They should take responsibility for being truthful about who they represent and where the money is going.
Responsibility isn't a zero-sum game. We can encourage everyone to have more financial literacy and awareness of scams and frauds while simultaneously holding grifters responsible for their crimes.
I'm not taking either position here, I'm taking both positions. See also "the difference between advice for individuals and codes of conduct for communities."
Our personal advice is to protect yourself from fraud. Our society's code of conduct is, "don't commit fraud."
> even if the scammers get prosecuted--possibly even go to jail--you're 99% likely never getting your money back
The point of prosecuting scammers is not restorative justice[0], but instead punative. You want the penalty for scamming people to be high enough that even the scammers that don't get caught move onto a different grift.
Whether or not punative justice works is very context-sensitive. It requires the crime itself to be something done because it makes money - opportunistic crimes or crimes of passion will not be deterred by high punishments[1]. However, I absolutely do buy the idea that scammers are highly-calculating thieves that can be deterred in this way. They operate highly organized criminal enterprises with their own internal and external security concerns, and respond highly to perceived risk of prosecution[2]. This is why they like to target old people, the marks are easier to scam and less likely to admit being scammed.
That's not to say that we should fall back upon the "personal responsibility" angle, either. It's easy enough to say that it only happens to the financially illiterate, or the elderly, or what have you. This is wrong; there are plenty of scammers out there just waiting to push whatever button you have that will make you send them money. The problem with pushing "personal responsibility" as an angle is that it's a victim-blaming narrative, and one that makes it easy to fancy yourself invulnerable. "I can't get scammed, because I took personal responsibility."
DO NOT DO THIS.
You will laugh at the people who bought into FOMOCoin or sent thousands of dollars to a refund scammer... only to click on, say, a fake FedEx tracking link you got e-mailed and wind up getting hit with some 0day malware that drains your bank account or encrypts your files in seconds. Personal responsibility will not save you from your own sense of invulnerability, because there is no level of responsibility one can take that will ensure that you never, ever get scammed. You can only ever make yourself a less desirable mark.
[0] i.e. putting the thing you stole back
[1] Related note: governments love to insist upon high punishments for crimes more often committed by people on the margins of society (e.g. poor/black/Mexican/some other power minority). At one point, we at least punished businesses the same way, but then Enron happened and the US decided killing an entire accounting firm just to prove a point was going too far.
[2] In one revealing case, Youtuber Mark Rober was able to shut down an entire tech support scammer group on Telegram by merely saying he had their dox[3] and was planning to drop them on a few law-enforcement agencies.
[3] 4chan slang for "personally-identifying information".
> You will laugh at the people who bought into FOMOCoin or sent thousands of dollars to a refund scammer... only to click on, say, a fake FedEx tracking link you got e-mailed and wind up getting hit with some 0day malware that drains your bank account or encrypts your files in seconds.
Terrible comparison.
FOMOCoin is not pretending to be something different than FOMOCoin. When somebody invests in a shitcoin, they know exactly what it is they are investing in.
When you click on a fake FedEx link, you believe you're clicking on a FedEx link. You've been deceived by blatant deception.
A better comparison to your FedEx example: Investor believes they're investing in FOMOCoin when in fact they are investing in SHITCoin or no coin at all. It was a trick.
>I 100% agree and this is something that libertarians and anarchists gloss over completely.
I assure you, libertarians and anarchists, or at least the ones who have actually bothered to go beyond the surface, are not unaware of this. You're wielding those monikers as if anyone to bear them would be a fool by definition. It is clear low trust has adverse effects on growth. What is not clear is that unbounded rapid growth is a desirable state of affairs, or that an equilibrium is so important everyone must bow before a central authority/planner with a hand on a brake.
There is nuance your comment as written completely neglects.
It’s true upending our system would be the death of it
But it’s unfalsifiable gibberish itself to believe our system is some pinnacle of human society
Many problems that plague states that lean into socialism can be traced to capitalists meddling in their affairs through international politics
More rules for thee not for me policy by nations of people who would meltdown over externalized forces dictating their way life. Hardly proof in a vacuum socialism is a sign of the end times when it’s held up apes who can’t communicate except by throwing poop
Your truth is rooted in the empowerment it provides you. No one else has an obligation to your figurative sense of power
Pulling from the comment I was replying to:
> ... many poorer and financially illeterate people have been tricked ...
That's quite literally disavowing responsibility.
> ... but there is an extensive body of law intended to protect people from outright falsehoods
This is true and the law hasn't quite caught up to crypto scams but think about it this way: even if the scammers get prosecuted--possibly even go to jail--you're 99% likely never getting your money back. And even if you do it'll probably be after wasting years on the effort. Obviously there's a deterrence value to prosecuting scammers and I support that hpappening but you'll almost never get your money back.
> Maintaining a certain level of trust is a pool from which we can all draw. It has in fact been shown that growth in low trust economies is systematically lower than in high trust economies.
I 100% agree and this is something that libertarians and anarchists gloss over completely.