I think the lesson to be drawn from this is that decentralized and anonymous systems will never really be able to implement even a semblance of fair business practices. There will always be the need for a way to track participant actions that affect the business. While this forum and bitcoiners proselytize about the benefits of "decentralization", they accept wrongdoing, fraud and plain corruption as "sleight of hand". We all accept this "He did it because he could, lets forget about it" mentality over such things. This is one of the biggest hurdles for the concept of decentralization to truly become useful. Because if you are going to be vulnerable to the same scheming and collusion, why really bother to change the present system. Lets just keep morals, ethics aside and everybody go mooooooon.
You can just as easily steal and defraud with cash, anonymously or otherwise. This isn't something unique to decentralized and anonymous systems. This is also just another example of why morality isn't always black and white. Is it ok to steal? Most people would say no. Is it ok to steal to feed your dying children? Most would probably say yes or would do so if they were in that situation. Is is ok to use multiple free coupons for something that explicitly states
only one per customer? Who cares? Of course you can argue that it's not fair to everyone else but if something can be exploited it will and for those that get caught doing so there's likely going to be consequences. I don't think there's ever going to be a system that can't be cheated somehow though. People are pushing for things like blockchain-based voting systems and whilst I think they'd be better than the current very outdated 'counting-by-hand' system that most govs seem to use blockchain systems can still be cheated at the user end. People will just start selling their votes and without in person ID checks our some other system fraud will still be possible, but just think of how many votes were lost in the post or how many of the people counting engaged in fraud or unfair practices and there's no real checks or balancing with the current system.
It’s absolutely 100% fair free market anarchy..
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In a decentralized world you have to think of what is possible without bounds of morality, and expect whatever to happen accordingly..
Keep your eyes out for scammers and others to take advantage of every and any opportunity..
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This is crypto.. Stop thinking in a world of rules and control and start thinking in a world where all possibilities and opportunities will be taken advantage of by someone, and protect yourself accordingly..
I think this would be a very good subject for another topic! In a way I really like what you said here, but at the same time I totally disagree. From what I've seen, I think theymos would completely agree with you point of view here.
There's always a least two points of view. For instance, some people including many here believe total anarchy and no governments would be the better system. Personally I don't. I think big gov is bad and should be scaled back but I think if it was just an 'everybody-for-themselves' free-for-all then it would be a pretty nightmare-ish scenario to me and bodies would soon start piling up on the streets, but hey, the rich guys living in their fortresses protected with tanks and guns would be ok and everyone else can fight it out on the streets.
Does it make any of you that never got into the CM campaign angry that he was 3X a better poster than you? Lol..
Because that’s basically what it boils down to..
You can look at it like cheating a lottery. Imagine ten equally great posters apply for ten spots on the campaign. One guy enters with 8 accounts and three of his get it, whilst the others who don't have essentially been cheated by the odds.
He stole money from other potential participants, and cheated the company that is requesting the service (as they stated that they didn't want to enrol alts). Just because you can't name them, doesn't mean they don't exist, like suchmoon said. He might have stole 2 BTC from you. How would you feel about that?
He didn't steal anything. It's only stealing if it was someone else's property in the first place. He cheated the rules and took a potential spot away from someone but it's not stealing. If there's only two cans of beans left on the shelf in a store and someone gets there before me and buys two they haven't stolen them from me. They got there first. Maybe it's only one can of beans per person and maybe they jumped the que to get them or maybe they got their wife to also go in and get a can or two as well. It's 'unfair for sure but that's life and it's certainly not stealing.