Fine! Don't try, then. "Someone is going to do this shameful thing, therefore there is no reason why I should not do this shameful thing" isn't quite the logic of a sociopath, but only because a sociopath sees no need in the first place to excuse to himself his own immoral behavior.

If your attitude is "if you can't do it right, don't do it at all", that's fine. But a predictable consequence of that attitude is that, when the cost of "doing it right" is high enough, the only people who do it at all are the people who don't do it right.

The incentives are broken, and telling the people who point out that the incentives are broken that they're just making excuses for bad behavior doesn't actually fix the incentives.

I’m pretty sure no one in this thread is saying that but you?

It’s an observation that market conditions seem to disadvantage anyone who DOESN’T do that, so unless you like spending a bunch of effort and time (and being less competitive overall because of it, and likely go nowhere), maybe spend your effort somewhere else if you don’t like to be that way.

There are a ton of markets like this. If you wanted to open a ‘good’ check cashing place for instance, go right ahead. Just don’t be surprised if you lose your shirt trying it by not being like the other, less scrupulous players.

You appear to be taking a very uncharitable interpretation.

This thread reads to me as there may be perverse incentives due to nature of dating and capital markets that make it nearly impossible to compete while valuing security.

Exactly. If “do think X” is my goal, and there are zero successful moral paths to doing thing X, then the only option is to not do it.