The Balance Between Regulations and Freedom
Philosophical positions on economics can be depicted as occurring on two coordinate axes, indicating the existence of two extremes: the first, on the “left,” is the ideology of absolute statism. According to it, economics must be heavily regulated from the top-down: the state must think over all the small things and its regulators must always watch that the rules are respected, ensuring that those breaking them will be punished. The other extreme, the libertarian side, is characterized by absolute economic freedom in which no regulations are tolerated. For libertarians, the market is the ultimate regulator and government, only it can decide what is good and what is bad — and it also unforgiving with respect to any failure.
We believe that the notion of justice lies at the foundation of both of these approaches. The left seeks justice by preventing an economic agent from acting in a harmful way. The opposite side seeks justice by emphasizing the right of absolute freedom — allowing the possibility that an economic actor will act badly or make mistakes as an essential part of this right.
Both extremes exist only in theory, obviously. In reality, economic life exists somewhere in between them — not just because absolutes are rare in the real world, but also because we all understand that both these absolutes imply certain advantages and disadvantages.
At Cindicator we believe in freedom and value it: freedom of choice and economic freedom. We know that members of our community are clever and reasonable people, able to to make good decisions on their own.
We also know that the crypto-community in its current state is the Wild West; there is great freedom and opportunities for creative action, but there are also plenty of scammers and traps. Temporary absence of regulations and government control (let’s look at the things realistically — it is only temporary) can be appealing, but corresponding dangers can easily erode freedoms.
Examples of these dangers are everywhere. Many projects did not pay enough attention to security and lost significant amounts of money to hackers and scammers. Many projects did not pay enough attention to the regulations (supposedly unnecessary in the cryptosphere), and they were forced to stop their ICOs and refund participants.
This is why we are trying our best to ensure the security of Cindicator and its community. Unfortunately this implies that we are moving a bit to the “left”: to provide this security, we have to limit the freedom of our participants a bit.
This is why we asked participants of Tier-1 and Tier-2 to undergo the KYC procedure; this is why we have not accepted citizens of certain countries as participants in our Token Sale; this is why we have not approved CND trading on the exchanges that listed us without our approval and contrary to our requests.
Our actions have been criticized by outsiders, but the key participants in Cindicator have always understood and supported our decisions. The experience of our Token Sale shows that our policy of maximizing security is working very well.
We believe that Cindicator’s self-regulation will be beneficial not only for our ecosystem, but for the whole crypto-community:
First, because while government regulations are being worked out, successful private methods of regulation are always taken into consideration. We believe that governments will acknowledge our best efforts at self-regulation.
Second, we have created an excellent example of helpful regulations being established at the grassroots level without interference from above. This experience of self-defense and self-purification can be used in the future for the common good.
We hope that Cindicator’s experience of balancing between ensuring community safety and following the values of freedom will be useful in the years ahead!
Yours,
Cindicator Team.
