The policing needs to be done by the individuals who think handing their bitcoins to just about anyone on the internet is a good idea.
I agree with you that in general the individual is 100% responsible for everything that he or she does.
Oh yeah, who is going to pay for the policing? You?
I could contribute some time to do some research or give some advise on a bitcoin business, yes. As you see, many communities on the internet rely on free contributors. If you look at bitcoin.org, I don't think the core devs are paid much, if anything at all, so they're obviously there for other than monetary reasons. Some people do contribute in a community without expecting or demanding a monetary return.
People trading off their personal responsibility to others for a fee is what leads to this kind of behavior in the first place. They no longer know how to protect themselves.
Isolated speaking I do agree with you. But the reason I think we would need some sort of policing on this forum is to avoid bad press. Personally I've already had trouble businesswise and privately dealing with bitcoins, because of some of the huge scams that's been going on in the community.
I'm all for personal freedom and personal responsibility, and I think bitcoin is a good vehicle for this, but don't underestimate the power of the established governing systems.
It's better to 'work in the shadows' and create a great system, and then have some big players enter this community offering great services, imagine if only one really big company entered, then others would follow, and once enough big companies are involved with bitcoin businesses, it would be so much harder to shut down.
For now, we have this Rommney extortion case, we have the Bitconica case, and countless others. So many times when I mention Bitcoin I get the response: "Oh, isn't it the tax evading currency, the currency where you can buy hit men anonymously online, the currency where you can steal a lot of money?" And so on. I'm kind of tired of it.
People in general are sheep, and therefore they need policing, society would hardly function otherwise. However, the problem is always that the policymakers can become corrupt or no longer work for the best of the community, which is something that's happened in many countries.
So I think we should lay low, and try to avoid all the negative press, so we don't get known as the 'drug currency' or any such thing.
In my opinion, Anarchy is exactly what we need. People need to wake up and stop relying on third parties to provide them with their morality and responsibility.
So, in a real community, there should be no police ? If someone came to your house and robbed you, there should be no legal process for the thief? He should not be put in jail in x years? He should merely be shot ?
What about grocery stores ? If there was no legal system, there would be no consequences for someone that stole something in that store. Perhaps we would have private security companies torturing the thief in a sound isolated room, then kicking him out on the street naked ?
There would be no investigation when a female was raped, only the rich would have money for private investigators that could do DNA-sampling and so on.
I think we want freedom, but not true anarchy.
Democratic processes are sound and fine, but in the case of Bitcoin, I would rather trust the judgement of 5 scholars or core devs than the mob on this forum when it comes to the trustworthiness of this forum.
