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Indeed, and this is basically what Shorena argues above. That because we can buy-and-sell accounts then of course we can buy-and-sell trusted accounts. But I hope it's become quite clear that this makes the trust system effectively a system in which we can buy and sell trust.
Just to make this clear. It does - at least to me - but I dont have a solution.
I think that's what the OP was driving at, and I think it's a well-reasoned point. I'm not sure how/why buying and selling trust isn't just as "okay" as buying and selling accounts. As far as I can tell, it's effectively the same thing.
As it was argued by SaltySpitoon, the difference is that one (selling account) is commonly accepted by the community while the other is not (selling trust directly).
Yes, and this is more of an observation about the state of affairs with respect to the community more than an actual difference in principle between the two topics. As I had replied above, this is just as likely to change-as not-depending on how widely the facts of the OPs satire here get noticed.
@Shorena in re whether or not default trust accounts are bought and sold. You may be right that it doesn't happen often, but how would we really know? I don't understand what you mean about "there'd be no incentive", it seems to me that if you have a default trust account and you have a buyer willing to pay a lot for it, the incentive is there, whether or not the two people reach a deal is some sort of empirical matter.
Yes, exactly. Lets just assume that I want to cash out big time here. I would probably start with spamming up to the max number of posts I can get payment for, Bit-X is currently not limiting the number of post I think. I might even be possible to convince marco to offer me a special deal and get paid in advance. I do write constructive posts, that is somewhat established. The next step would be to take a loan without collateral and just offer my credibility, which would probably not be worth much, but a least a bit. Finally selling the account at the same time or shortly afterwards secretly on another board (hackerboard maybe?). The sale would ofc include the private keys to addresses I posted in the past to make sure the new owner can perfectly argue (with signed message) that they are still the same person and that the loan was done by a hacker. Considering that the loaned amount would not be much, they would probably curse a bit and just repay it to stay on DefaultTrust. I should probably add my PGP key to convince Quickseller and others as well as every message I every received encrypted by them. A complete all around shorena sell out, mail, (empty) wallet, PGP key, german lessons, everything included.
I have next to no incentive to tell BadBear that I am about to sell the account and it should be removed from DefaultTrust. In fact I have an incentive to do the opposite. I find this very troubling, same as our trolling friend. I do not think that banning the sale of accounts in general is a valid option though. In the above scenario it would not make a difference whether selling the account would be allowed or not.
To make this perfectly clear: I have no plans to do what I described above. Its just a thought experiment.
I agree with you here. The incentive is there. And what's more, you wouldn't even have to be going "all in" in this way. It'd be easy enough to do a soft version of this where you don't burn all the bridges or take out loans or any other sort of disreputable action before you go. You'd just make bank off selling your default trust.