Exactly. And as the work of this year's Economics Nobel Elinor Ostrom has highlighted, communities often work out cultural norms that resolve difficult coordination and trust issues.

A regulator trying to preempt unfair dealings with rules may have no chance, no matter how wise and disinterested, but people trying diverse strategies over time eventually settle on something that's good enough. (And some scams and business cycles are an inevitable part of that discovery process.)