Even if we don't have regulations, we can still have agreements everyone follows. And maybe after a while of some members causing too much havoc, without government regulations we'll simply, as a society, agree on being much more strict about that sort of thing. Maybe eventually it will be considered normal for many people to have some small bounties on them in the black market, and for people to keep track of how much they are pissing someone else off, lest it reaches high enough for someone to offer to work for said bounty. Who knows.
I'm not saying that whatever Bitcoin will have at the next stage will be good, or bad. We don't really have a clear answer to that, since it won't be anything like the typical Stage 8. I am saying that, to me, anyway, the next stage should be very interesting to watch.
Self regulation has just a sordid of history as everything else we've discussed. Without government regulation, there will always be people that say 7% WPR, and there will always be people more than willing to send an anonymous person with "solid forum reputation" their money. While the FCC doesn't have a 100% track record, a lot of these schemes done here are no where on the same level of sophistication as Madoff or Sanford, and would have never, ever pass the smell test. This whole idea of "getting the weak hands out," "the strong survive," and "we'll take care of it ourselves" is simply not good for business. I've read countless people say that what pirateat40 did was good for the BitCoin economy. No, it wasn't. Anytime someone gives up on BitCoins means that person is not going to accept or demand payment in BitCoin, one less person that will spread the word of how useful it is, one less consumer willing to spend with this currency. This is a numbers game, a sad state of mobocracy, but it is what it is; we can be the smartest people in the world with the best idea ever but if no one wants to play with us, we are doomed.
Honestly, at this point, there's not much we can do but hope for the best. We set our path, placed our bets based off of what we thought, and tossed the dice some time ago. However the dice may land, let's just hope we bet right.