It's not the duty of anyone except myself to understand the risks of my own actions.

What the responses that people are sending to you are trying to point out, is that while this is an honorable rule of thumb, it doesn't scale. You cannot build a society this way, or none of us would be able to function reasonably.

It is unreasonable to build tools for other people to use, that will break the user's expectation of consistent, reliable and safe use.

This is a not an abstract idea, this is a fundamental legal concept in the west.

If everyone using Ethereum was expecting these fees, and are fine with it, then good for them, and no harm no foul. But this approach will not scale to larger communities, and it is unreasonable, cruel, and legally wrong to put the burden of "they should have known how to avoid this" on the larger populace, which is, of course, what crypto evangelizes the ultimate end-goal to be.

This is where comments like soared comes in. "I hope you don't use public transit, electricity, plumbing, or breathe central air." A human being simply cannot function in society if we have to study local EPA data to know whether its safe to breathe along our commute to work, that our electricity will be safe to use with all of our devices, that my car won't explode if I press a button in a different way, and that I won't go bankrupt if I use my crypto card to pay for a meal.

Expecting everyone to research how every tool works before they use it fails Kants categorical imperative, because it is simply impossible for everyone one of us to research every tool we use given a finite lifetime. Hence the responses you are receiving here.

> Imagine if you had to...

Given the historical context of these systems working reasonably well for decades, I've decided to take for granted that I won't get rugged by my public transit, or my electricity company, or the food in the grocery store. Still, I do assess tap water before I drink it, even in the US.

If you're the type of person who likes to blindly trust systems without studying them, that's fine; you can wait to partake in crypto until this sense of trust has been built. No one is holding a gun to your head and saying "run arbitrary code against your crypto holdings." Yet people do it. This is their fault. If they don't want to take the time to study the code, then they should have waited until the community did the due diligence for them to whatever is their own personal level of satisfaction.

I believe you have missed the point of my post. I have updated it in the hope that perhaps I have made the point clearer.

This is a good maxim for oneself, but a poor one when trying to understand or improve systems.

Such a great point! I wish more people embraced having two philosophies. One for them as an individual and one for policy making/discussion. E.g. I never want to myself rely on the social safety net. Yet at the same time, I want nobody, no matter how bad their decisions are to die because their basic human needs like food and shelter aren't met. I think a functioning society, especially a democracy, requires these two mindsets from their citizenry.

Honestly, I agree. It can both be true that 1) a system could be improved so as to reduce harm to the average user and 2) ultimately the users are responsible for assessing risks before participating in the system.

The problem is as soon as you argue for (2) everyone reacts like you're the most evil, heartless person on the planet.

Because the system you're passionately defending via the "personal responsibility" angle has so far demonstrably shown itself to be susceptible to the same externalizes of greed, avarice and "fuck you I got mine" misbehavior as the current system and people are lining up in droves to have their chance turning the grinder as long as it means they get a ticket to the sweepstakes.

And the responses you're giving of "just be risk aware/just read the source code/just know what you're getting into" doesn't change that, doesn't educate the people who probably and realistically could benefit, and it doesn't change the fact that there is a LOT of obfuscation, misinformation and mishandling of trust going on in order to separate people from their actual fungible money.

I just feel like they're not incompatible. I think we can help these people who get screwed without assigning the costs to unknowing, unrelated passers-by.

I think we can too.

I just don't trust....90% of the people, platforms and providers who claim that's what they're doing via crypto.

I agree! It's a huge problem and it's right for people to point it out.

Hope you don’t use public transit, electricity, plumbing, or breathe central air.

I don't understand how that contradicts what I said. I'm not arguing against public goods. And I'm not arguing against improving systems for those who don't do due diligence.

I'm just saying take responsibility for your own actions and your own decisions. The world doesn't owe you anything. Such statements are not incompatible with improving the standard of living for everyone, even those who are actively liabilities.

There is no risk really, it’s just a bad experience to have to deal with sometimes 50$ tx fees, and sometimes 5000$. Just when I really need to send Eth you never know if you can afford a tx

But I believe it is the duty of everyone to not cheat/scam other people

Sure. No contradiction.

or how I wish markets actually worked.