On Snake Oil Salesmen

There are two reasons snake oil salesmen persist

• A lack of information or education on the buyer's side
• Enough buyers ignoring evidence and opting for hope

As long as enough people fall into either of these categories there will be a place for snake oil salesmen.

Let's take the second category first. In this scenario the buyers are victims. They may well be educated, they may well be informed but they are desperate and are choosing to forego the evidence before their eyes for whatever reason. The victim (wrongly) decides the downside risk merits the upside risk and the salesman duly obliges. This root causes are many and varied and it is not a problem that can be solved by anyone other than the victim themselves so I will not attempt to address this problem.

We do have a couple of systemic options for reducing the number of people who fall into the first category:

1) Educate: For instance, we learned a long time ago that the use of Venetian Ceruse was a bad idea so we stopped using it. This knowledge and understanding seem obvious to us now but that is how we progress as a species, we are capable of systematically incorporating cumulative knowledge. The first step on that journey, though, is educating ourselves and others.

2) Regulate: Just in case people are stupid enough to want to use Venetian Ceruse cosmetically it is also not possible, in countries which regulate cosmetic production, to use lead in cosmetics.

Rather ironically it is possible even today to buy items purporting to be snake oil - so is the scam that they are selling snake oil purporting to have health benefits, that they are selling items purporting to be snake oil or something else? I dunno, but definitely feels scammy.

In its best form regulation is a service where we collectively outsource the need for expertise to avoid having to learn or do certain things ourselves. It should be something that is demanded by and provided for the people, rather than something that is done to the people. Regulation has a cost so as a society we should make judgements as to whether something is worth regulating or not based on the cost/benefit. An example of beneficial regulation is regulation around becoming a medical doctor - most societies believe that it is worth bearing the cost of this regulation for the benefit of having a standardised requirement of expertise. The proxy by which we know someone has submitted themselves to the regulatory process and achieved the required level of expertise is certification.

On the other hand there is plenty of certification that has limited value. Industry certifications that nobody cares about are ever present. Often they become a requirement to operate because we get lazy or simply do not have the cognitive space to expend energy learning enough to make our own judgements. The software industry is ripe with them because

• The pace of change is such that those making judgements cannot keep up with the knowledge base and do their daily work
• Demand outstrips supply and nobody likes the answer "It takes time to learn something" or "There are simply not enough people who actually know about this technology to fulfil the commercial need"

The first is a problem that afflicts the Web3 space now but both are going to be a huge problem once we have mainstream adoption and companies are all trying to build stuff on <pick your blockchain>.

Education is the way but...it takes time to learn stuff. The cynical way, the Web 2 way, the big consultancy way, the quick fix way is to certify without proper education. Two day course, mickey mouse exam, just turn up and pay, we'll make sure you pass and get the badge.

In its best form certification is a side effect of education - proof that you have learned something. Unfortunately it has come to be used as a way of creating something out of nothing, so that supply can match demand, clients can be charged, money can be made. Once critical mass is achieved it is hard to stop the juggernaut. This is a pattern anyone in crypto is familiar with.

So if you want to make a difference for when the next bull run arrives let's talk about how to create a system that educates both consumers and developers - a School of Tez. I'm here to help. I can envisage a virtuous circle of learning and creating where people gain awareness, proficiency and mastery and deploy it in a positive manner, all enabled by the crucially different paradigms of Web3.

If, however, you want to make money at the cost of education, rip off future clients, sell learners short, create waste in the system and in general introduce the same problems as we have in Web 2 then just build a certification factory. Just know this...I'll make it my mission to hunt you down and show you the error of your ways.