What's the libertarian / ancap solution to scammers?
Yelling and pointing them out is only partially effective because it's not possible to warn (or even convince) the whole world.
Ostracizing has the same issue - there are always more fools in the sea for scammers to harvest.
Civil lawsuits are similarly flawed because the successful scammer will be better funded than the victims.
Seems like an opportunity for a̶s̶s̶a̶s̶s̶i̶n̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ prediction markets...
Violence
It might be a faulty assumption that something needs to be done.
Trust no one. Learn personal responsibility. #bitcoin is going to make this imperative because you can't rely on a central authority fixing it for you.
If you have a central system for tagging scammers the scammers will find a way around it. The marks will trust people who aren't tagged. You've only created a way for the scammer to get free credibility. Look at what happened when verification on Twitter became $8 as an example of this playing out.
Pay to post. Sats go to client dev team. Maybe?
In a free world, scammers provide an opportunity for stupid people to learn from their mistakes. In a libertarian world, people will realize there is no government to protect them so you have to do your own due diligence. You don’t have to do as much due diligence on FTX when it’s reasonable to believe that the SEC is looking out for you.
Vigilante justice sounds good to me.
DYOR
Natural selection, let nature take care of it, there's nothing like falling into a scam to learn, maybe someday people will learn.
Fraud is theft by conversion. So, if the scammer does not deliver on his part in an exchange, the victim has the right to restitution.
If we really knew an effective solution, we wouldn't have governments.
I don't know the answer to this, but I do know that the people who put their money into these things are not innocent creatures who thought they were investing in a real world changing innovation, they're greedy idiots who deep inside knew it was a scam but greed beat them.
So maybe in a libertarian society where scammers don't go to jail these people would probably be more careful about where they put their money, maybe the lack of 'justice' would make people less stupid about where to invest.
A fool and his money...
A plot point in Hulu’s “The Great” show when she tried to make murder illegal. Lol.
1. Education - teach the benefits of respecting the life, liberty, and property of others
2. Self government - respect the life, liberty, and property of others
3. Self-defense technology - discover, create, and use self-defense technology
Perhaps there could be insurance against this kind of thing? And endurance agencies would have a lot of resources with which to destroy scammers.
Scammers are stealing private property from others. Fraud is a form of theft.
It ultimately depends on where the scammers reside and where the victims reside. Even with current legal systems involving governments, it gets really hard and often nothing happens.
But sometimes you can send people after these thieves. I happily hunt down scammers and I get super excited when they are in the USA; Within reach of cooperative enforcers.
Only with the death betting market will politicians back down
I would love to bet some sats trying to guess the date of my beloved president Lula's passing
Yelling, pointing, ostracizing is the best combo.
No need to save them all from getting scammed. Some is good enough.
The illusion of protection by the state causes many to drop their defenses against scammers. Drop the illusion and a great many will quickly learn they’re on their own against the cons.
Earned attention and semi-algorithmic reputation in trust networks. If a business or individual, A, earns your trust, you, B, add A's public identity to your trust network profile, and those who trust you, C, can measure the earned reputation as the product of C's trust of you and your trust of A.
Crude code idea:
`C.estimateTrust(A) => {
var trust=[], weight=[];
this.trusted.forEach(B => {
if(! B.trusted.hasOwnProperty(A.id)) return;
trust.push(B.level*B.trusted[A.id].level);
weight.push(B.level)
});
return Math.sum(trust)/Math.sum(weight);
}`
This could be more elegant than a simple weighted average, like a way to mitigate campaigns, but it's an idea.
People been talking about smashing orbs, but I've yet to see any evidence of it happening. We're a long way off from scammers getting merc'd.
You will never save everyone from getting scammed. There always will be someone gullible enough.
But you can reduce the number of scammers by:
- Pushing them out of your friend-circle which will incentivize people to act in good faith to keep friends. To not be alone.
- Also in the world operating on #bitcoin the prosperity of every single individual would be so much better, much less people would have the need to become scammers.
- Education would be better too. This would mean less gullible people in the first place.
I think we can't even foresee all the positive changes if we lived in more free, less controlled world.
This isnt libertarian/ancap thinking.
The whole premise is mob centered, Statist enforced litigation, and an attempt at humor calling for violence.
Build tools that allow individuals to access information updated by others, regarding scams. Expand muting, and blocking tools.
Education, individual empowerment. Stop trying to stop the scammers, start trying to empower the people, removing the target.
What is supposed to deter scammers from operating with impunity if no one can punish them?
Unfortunately it seems there will always be incentives for people to scam, some may need to scam out of necessity. Punishment is only one tool in the belt and it doesn’t have much efficacy, or why would we be talking about it? An it especially has little effect on those that are desperate.
Like others have alluded to, the scammees need tools and education to defend themselves. At the same time scammers need a barrier to entry and punishment if caught?
