It's comforting to want retribution, like a cozy blanket of anger, but (and I reserve the right to change my mind on this at some point in the future) I'd much rather try to find ways of pushing the right buttons to get thieves to become positive contributors to society.

That said, I'm in no way suggesting that payment services need to take up this responsibility at the expense of protecting legitimate users.

The only way to do that is to take away the carrot. They know perfectly well what they are risking and what they gain from it. Take away the gain and suddenly crime is much less attractive.

Very few "normal" human beings are highly rational and empathetic; it stands to reason that thieves, trolls, and fraudsters are no different, thus it's not safe to assume that they know everything they're risking or all of the consequences.

If we were talking about something other than credit card fraud I might agree with you but the whole reason why they try to buy something online first is to test it. If they realize that they can't test stolen cards anymore I doubt they will just wing it and hope to god that the card is good in the checkout lane.