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0 pointsravenstine4y ago0 comments

Those people are probably going to be tricked anyway. Many things in society are tricks. Google is a trick. Self-help is a trick. Fast food is a trick. MLM is a trick. Political ideologies are tricks. Everyone wants to be lied to, or rather everyone wants to believe in something, and they'll throw away their money just to maintain that belief. While aspects of the world of cryptocurrency are tricks, it's hardly unique to it or the responsibility of others to prevent people from being tricked.

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micromacrofoot4y ago

This is what I mean... if I were in a thread of horse enthusiasts I would not get a response like this. This is a fairly typical example of crypto gaslighting.

There are massive amounts of time and money spent on getting people to eat less fast food and avoid multi-level marketing scams because they're predatory industries (some more than others). Crypto is a predatory industry too, and defending people from it is completely reasonable.

jakelazaroff4y ago

I don't know what you're trying to say here. Fast food is a trick? Does it not prevent me from starving?

It seems like you're saying something like "stop trying to prevent people from being scammed, because reasons." What are those reasons? If I see someone trying to scam others, why shouldn't I warn those people?

ravenstineOP4y ago

Fast food is a trick because it is highly marked up and designed to be addictive moreso than most healthful meals. Yes, there is trickery in fast food and snack foods in general, and if you don't believe that, there's plenty of material on how the food industry and really the system in general have used the institution of fast food to keep people poor and sick. This isn't to say that everyone in fast food, even those in its upper echelons, are acutely aware of this, but discounting the involvement of conscious thought, it is a manifestation of modernity that developed to trick minds.

> stop trying to prevent people from being scammed, because reasons

No, that's not what I'm saying, at least in your brutal interpretation.

Should society allow anyone to be scammed? My answer to that question is a clear no, especially when it comes to fraud. Society functions orders of magnitude better with a level of self-control than it would otherwise.

Does this mean that society should protect people from themselves? Or rather, if someone believes they are going to get rich putting their life savings into cryptocurrencies because they lack foresight or technical aptitude, should we do what we can to prevent people from being this foolish despite the existing level of trickery that we are willing to tolerate? If people need to be saved from cryptocurrency, then why aren't we saving them from payday loans, or guzzling HFCs in sodas, or wasting time smoking weed, or gambling at casinos? All of those are examples of tricks (yes, they are tricks) designed to extract wealth and lifeforce. Hell, our monetary system itself is a trick. At times we may point them out as evils, but we don't take them so seriously because life can't be so safe. Unless something radically changes in our societies, for all intents and purposes, we are allowing some of us to hang ourselves by our own rope.

Yet somehow crypto bears more fault for some? To me, that doesn't follow. If I create an NFT for my soul, put it up for sale for $1000, and someone actually buys it, are they being scammed? If I fork Bitcoin into a new cryptocurrency, publish a bunch of poppycock about how it will be the next big thing because I got rid of its limits, and I sell those coins and run off with the money, is it of no fault of the customer that they believed such a specious lie?

No and no, in my opinion, because it's not reasonable for society to protect people to such an extent as it would neither be sustainable nor good for every business to be scrutinized to the degree necessary to provide said protection.

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