ooh, ooh, pick me. I know this one.
It's that when you pay an escrow, you're paying for a neutral, third party.
I'm thinking out loud here, but does the escrow necessarily need to be a third party?
What if I want to trade with a higher trust alt of the person instead? I would imagine that people would pay extra for that privilege.
Even if you do use a third party that is a different physical person that person could still collude with the other person and scam you.
The problem is that the seller and escrow must not collude.
Does it really make a difference if they are the same person? it might increase the risk they collude but even that is kind of hard to say.