The thing is, it's one thing to have a legal system that can provide for redress and restitution in the case of actual fraud. It's quite another thing to have a legal system that prevents voluntary transactions simply because some of them might be fraud.
The legal system can't reliably provide for redress and restitution in the case of actual fraud, because the legal system can't pull money from thin air. In something like a classical Ponzi scheme, the fraudster simply does not have enough assets to give everyone back what they're owed.
> Yes, thanks SEC for preventing free people from entering into voluntary transactions.
Allowing free people to enter into whatever voluntary transactions they would like is basically the definition of anarchism. It's surprising to see people advocating for anarchism on HN this often, especially in obscured fashions like this rather than explicitly. Anarchy was never the vision for our society and is not generally seen as a desirable end goal.
Anarchy was never the vision for our society and is not generally seen as a desirable end goal.
According to who? There are two or three of us who absolutely see anarchy as a desirable end goal. In the case of a lot of hackers, it's more specifically "anarcho-capitalism" or "voluntaryism" as opposed to what a lot of people call anarchy (what I'd probably call left-anarchism or socialist anarchism). But anarchy of a sort nonetheless.
> According to who? There are two or three of us who absolutely see anarchy as a desirable end goal
2-3 people? What claim are you even contesting? I said it's not generally seen as desirable, not that there exists nobody on this planet who sees it as desirable. Are you somehow under the the US population is generally anarchist?
Sorry, I though the intentional hyperbole there was completely obvious, but it looks like you read that dead-pan / literal. Never mind, I don't have time to invest in this right now.
I think anarchism is more a lack of any government that prevents involuntary transactions, such as theft. If you have a government that only prevents involuntary transactions, while allowing all voluntary ones, what you actually have is minarchist libertarianism.
(But a minarchist also includes fraud in prohibited transactions, which does take out some of these ICOs.)
If you are getting scammed into a transaction (by providing you fake or consciously misleading information, misleading possibilities of monetary gains, etc.) - is that really a "voluntary" transaction?
I think "voluntary" should mean that both parties know what this transaction would realistically mean for both of them and the actual risks involved. When you are being scammed (by many of the ICOs (not all of them)) - that does not sound like a voluntary transaction to me.
Charles Ponzi didn't coerce anyone.
419 scammers depend on your voluntary stupidity.
Telemarketers don't hold a gun to your head.