Bigred's Video Game Thread

[Jack Sawyer]

One important principle is that you can't keep people from scamming. Create all the rules you want, but someone will always figure out a way to get around them. If the guys in this particular example with the skin gambling site weren't so oblivious and stupid, they would have never gotten caught.

As for how the free market can regulate itself, eCOGRA (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECOGRA) is a good example. They are an independent company that offers certifications to show that online gambling operations are within certain guidelines, and they have a better long-term reputation than any government licensing jurisdiction on the planet. Companies like eCOGRA showed up because there are no international guidelines or regulatory bodies for online gambling, and it's an excellent example of the market providing accountability in an area where government was not.

Another principle is that it's much easier to corrupt government entities than it is to corrupt profit-driven companies due to the incentives and accountability at play, which is driven by the free market. The example of the FTC giving the "slap on the wrist" in the above case is a good example. If the FTC was profit-driven, not adhering to their own rules (which is what happened with the lack of enforcement) hurts their reputation and their bottom line in a major way. If eCOGRA did that once, their entire business model would fall apart.

The ESRB fills that role in the gaming landscape. But, of course, it's filled with industry heads with obvious incentives to look the other way as much as possible

The point isn't to be without whistleblowers, watchdogs and other forms of accountability. Those are 100 percent needed because, as I mentioned in my first paragraph above, there is no way to 100 percent stop scamming of some type in virtually any industry or sector. The point is that there is no consistent level of accountability with the FTC and other government agencies whatsoever, as you can see in the lack of enforcement of the existing FTC rules in the above scenario (and I'm sure you can think of an almost endless list of other examples).

It's also not that the free market can "do no wrong" or that it's perfect. Instead, the argument is that it's much more efficient and effective than government intervention at these types of things (and at a lot of other things) because of the incentive structures in place.

Indeed, nothing is perfect. But this seems to be the no. 1 argument that free market proponents do have, i.e. its perfection