Because that has worked wonders for the other industries -- let's have pharma companies, oil, food producers, just self regulate.

Not sure you're helping yourself here. The established movie industry uses its content rating system as a bludgeon against independent filmmakers. The video game industry's content controls are largely a joke, assigned arbitrarily by people who never actually play the game.

which are pretty much a joke. PG is now a worthless rating

http://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2013/11/26/disney...

The difference between PG-13 and R in many cases is completely arbitrary.

The ratings lump many kinds of movies together and says absolutely nothing about their content.

No movie can be NC-17 or unrated because that is a kiss of death. No theaters will play it, no big box stores will sell it. I think what R can get away with has broadened considerably because of that.

For example, here in Indonesia, if I buy eggs at the supermarket I don't really have to worry about them carrying salmonella. Why? Because truth in labelling laws and demand for salmonella-free eggs means that the farms that sell to the big food distributors all get tested so they can label their eggs as salmonella-free.

One really wonders why this hasn't taken off in the US. I can think however of a few reasons (it's not just too much or too little regulation but the wrong regulations).

At some level it comes back to regulation. It is part of why I feel bitcoin is misguided.

As a Distributist, my feeling is that successful regulation supports decentralization. The problem with the regulation vs deregulation dichotomy is that regulation is usually pushed as a centralizing power, while deregulation is usually also pushed as a centralizing power.

Solvency, the ability to pay what you owe people when it falls due, is easy to prove at any point in time. The state of insolvency occurs the first time you have an obligation to pay, which you cannot satisfy.

The thing is, if you're a de facto bank (by virtue of holding customer demand deposits) then your future expectations of solvency could turn out to be wrong because everyone wants their money at the same time (i.e. there's a bank run).

My point about solvency was a general one (applying to all people and companies) but I overlooked an important point: the Bitcoins entrusted by customers to MtGox do not become MtGox assets. The Bitcoins are always owned by the customer (not owed to the customer). They are less like bank deposits than they are the contents of safety deposit boxes at a bank branch.

I don't think it would be a big "feature" for me. As far as confidence in my bank goes the big thing is the FDIC sticker on the door/website.

Bitcoin itself has the potential to replace the need for certain types of regulation entirely, but we're not there yet.

Perhaps I'm wrong though.

Regulation is often associated with political states and are often enforced through brute force. I think if we could, as a community, regulate without any state intervention that would be ideal.

Maybe the exchanges can join together and offer something like FDIC Insurance?

• Receipt of insurance is contingent on meeting requirements for insurance, so it's not blind assistance in the face of incompetence. The 3 years of account thefts reported to have occurred at Mt. Gox would, hopefully, have been detected. Even collaborating on more secure storage and trading systems. There's a precedent for this: it's how the large credit card companies (BankAmericard, I mean, Visa and Interbank/Master Charge, I mean, MasterCard), were formed.

• Rates would correspond to perceived risk, providing a market feedback mechanism.

• Some risks are incidental and random. Weaknesses in protocols, problems in network or technology stacks (independent of individual exchange software).

• The end result is a greater level of trust in the entire marketplace as a whole, so: more transactions, more members, more profits.