This may be an unpopular opinion, but I really don’t believe in the user bearing the ultimate responsibility for themselves. Not in today’s world.

I’m willing to bet 90% of you did not read the TOS of the last service you signed up for. Of course, there are some that read everything, but most probably don’t.

In the normie world that number is closer to 99.99%.

Being 100% responsible for your own actions would mean you’d have to read all the TOS and decide for yourself whether you should continue.

But we know nobody does this.

There are certain things we cannot verify for ourselves and where LAWS actually make sense. We live in a society that is held entirely by laws, not by good will or whatever imaginary thing people believe. Without laws we would not be here. We would not have a court system (no matter how dysfunctional), no enforcement of property rights without violence. Society would be hellish. Tribal warfare.

To say Worldcoin should be left up to “free markets” is total bullshit. Yes, I agree, it would be NICE if people did the right thing for themselves. But we’d be lying to ourselves if we didn’t acknowledge that NOBODY read their TOS when they scanned their eyeballs. And even if they did, they would probably not understand the implications of this action.

Hence, we turn to laws. We already have consumer protection laws that actually work and do protect us from certain things. Lead in the water, horrific death from negligence. Fire retardants, safety codes, seatbelts, all the things we take advantage of without actively thinking about took some terrible events to make into law. Look up how and why seat belts become law in US if you don’t believe me.

Besides, even if every one of us were perfectly capable of making a fully autonomous decision, there will always be groups of people who aren’t - elderly, young, disabled, divergent, whatever the proper terms are today…

Worldcoin is taking advantage of the developing world first for a reason. The lure of money is tempting when its tough getting by as it is.

Besides, your free markets aren’t all that free anyway. When the system upon which “Free markets” are based on is itself corrupted, the market isn’t really free. Just look at the Robinhood fiasco. So much for free markets there.

We could argue about the last points for hours, because people will say, yeah but you had a choice! Well, yes and no.

Point being - “free markets” are not an excuse to ignore the realities of the world and the necessary constraints society puts in place for all of us to function. Let’s not delude ourselves into thinking free markets are the answer to everything. They are not.