You are missing the point. If I trust someone with some amount of money then I will send first to them when trading with them, no escrow necessary. Any dispute would get resolved the exact same way if scenario 2 were to happen.
It is not necessary to use escrow in every trade you participate in assuming that one party is sufficiently trusted.
What if that one party used to be sufficiently trusted, but later on it came to light that he was tricking people into letting him escrow deals he himself was involved in? That might be enough to make you not want to deal with him in the future, no?
Fuck Daniel. I always knew he was up to no good.