Quote from: nutildah on October 08, 2014, 08:11:07 PM

Quote from: KWH on October 08, 2014, 07:08:40 PM

Trust is not meaningless, it is a good starting point.

Unless you are trading with a bought account, in which case trust is absolutely meaningless.

And how can you know if you are conducting a trade with a bought account?

You can't. Ergo, Bitcointalk's trust system is meaningless.

Selling of accounts is nearly impossible if not completely impossible to control. You will have a hard time proving an account sold or bought if the account owner wants it that way. No one knows for sure everyone with whom they deal. This is the way the internet works and has so from the beginning. Simply insist on escrow for your trades it will protect in the future, problem all but solved. As has been stated many times, Trust is a starting point not an end all, be all.
I know this is hard and one has to do a little thinking but a little common sense goes a long way. Let me give you an example:
Account "Fred" has 20 positives. When looking at 15 of them, they are left by the same newbie and the trades are for $5 Paypal for the equivalent in BTC and all made within a week time frame. Could it be possible this was "bought Trust?" Possibly alt account of the buyer?
My thinking process would lean towards yes. The next conclusion would be either stay away or start following the Trust trail for more information. Also, after 15 trades for $5, would I trust a deal for $500? No I would not.
Account "Alice" has 5 trades from 5 different people on the Default list. All were buys over $300 each over a 1 month time period. If I wanted to sell a $300 item to this person, would I? After reading ALL Trust and it checks out, I would use escrow and proceed.
Same account but "Alice" has not posted for a year. I would suspect a stolen or sold account and either use escrow or pass on any trades.
Some Trust is spiteful and malicious but normally it is easy to spot.
Bottom line: You need to protect yourself, sold account or not, use your brain and don't rely on others telling you what to do. If you don't like the Trust system, don't use it. To say it is meaningless is, well, meaningless.

Quote from: nutildah on October 08, 2014, 08:35:09 PM

Quote from: hilariousandco on October 08, 2014, 08:30:09 PM

No, it makes sense. Your argument doesn't though. You seem to think that trust is only meaningless because accounts are allowed to be sold, but whether they are or not makes no difference to the trust system because accounts will still be sold regardless. Banning the sale of accounts changes absolutely nothing, apart from maybe making people like you think they're now a little but safer, when they're not.

OK so lets just do away with pretending that the trust system actually matters then, can we?

The entire component should be removed from the forum since it is already prone to being abused.

You're like the American government trying to defend an indefensible position. You won't accept that there is an underlying flaw in the root of your logic.

Same can be said for your position. After placing new rules to protect that are unenforceable, you now have a false sense of more security.