Quote from: greyhawk on November 14, 2012, 09:35:56 AM

@Joel. Here's a question. Please take a look at this thread (it's really short): https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=124195.0

Would you argue that the alleged scammer in that case should not be scammer tagged, because the affected victim knew of the risk of this happening with Paypal transactions?

Of course not. Someone who commits fraud can't blame those who believed him! In this case there is no common mistake, there are two different mistakes. Also, one party is committing fraud on the other party and the other isn't, so there's no equality of blame between the parties. So these aren't even remotely analogous. (However, both parties in this case did more or less equally defraud PayPal, for what that's worth. This is more like the classic 419 scam. It's fine to blame the victim for falling for a 419 scam, but it's important not to let that in any way excuse the fraudsters.)

The big difference is that in the case of Patrick and those who loaned him money, they *didn't* both know the risk. They *both* believed the risk that actually harmed them didn't exist. If you read the transcript, they agree that Patrick's business model provides him sufficient equity in his loan portfolio to cover losses associated with a Pirate default. They either didn't understand or didn't appreciate the significant *indirect* Pirate exposure the portfolio had. If either of them had realized this, the agreement would never have taken place. The critical difference is that they both have the same culpability for making the very same mistake in the very same way.