> credit card chargebacks, escrow, and fraud departments exist and work every day without requiring a perfect government. It doesn’t matter at all that there exists cases of government abuse.

What about cases of private abuse? Suppose you're using Paypal or Stripe and they lock your account for no apparent reason. Money you were paid for goods you've already shipped is now locked up, stolen from you, with no explanation or recourse.

> Imagine if the same house buyer bought the house from the scammer using crypto: There would be zero ability, even in principle, to get anything back. Those coins are gone. Even a perfect government with unlimited power could not recover them.

Suppose someone commits fraud by having you send them $50,000 in computer hardware or precious metals or bearer bonds. What happens? The government arrests them, seizes the goods and ultimately returns them to the owner. It's not any different when it's a hard drive with a private key on it instead of a bag of expensive rocks. But then they can't just take your stuff, i.e. reverse a transaction, without due process -- which is good.

Meanwhile the scammer in that case is the property owner in cahoots with the government. If the government isn't corrupt then there is no scam, because then either the person you're paying actually owns the property and having paid them the agreed upon price that is now your real estate, or they don't own it and then when you go to confirm that they actually own the property the non-corrupt government says that they don't and then you don't pay them.

> I’m sorry your country has shit courts and never helps you. Mine does. My credit card company’s fraud department does.

Except when they don't. US banks are not exactly known for their customer support, and their fraud departments don't have the investigative resources of a government. If Alice says she sent the goods and Bob says he didn't receive them, how's the bank supposed to know who's lying without sending them both to court? But every time they get it wrong they're a party to a theft.

>credit card chargebacks, escrow, and fraud departments exist and work every day without requiring a perfect government

Nope, chargebacks in Russia do not work the way they do in US, not even close. The reason - government does not represent consumers, it represent bank owners. Also primary reason why scams in Russia are so widespread (and why internet is so cheap) is telecoms freely selling personal data (again, government representing telecoms).

Majority of world population live under a shitty government. Primary method a government uses to control population is monetary. First thing happening to a blogger opposing war in Russia is foreign agent status primarily limiting their ability to make money advertising. Government prints money to fund stupid war slowly extracting from population via inflation. Think of China or Iran where the only asset one can invest is real estate. In Iran leaders seriously discussing moving capital to a new city because they ruined local ecology. In China property prices aren’t doing well primary because of government mismanagement. This puts life savings of millions at risk without reasonable hedge. Coming back to Russia - devaluation in 1991, then again in 1998, then again in 2008, then in 2014, then expropriating private pension funds, then the war with western countries making it very hard to move assets out of the country while also freezing assets of tens of thousands Russians in EuroClear. How am I supposed to save for retirement?

Having alternative monetary system is the hedge from a shitty government. If stock market tokenization ever happens I expect a huge influx of funds into US/EU markets from people of China, India and Russia in an attempt to save their life savings from government greed and stupidity.

In this context your point about irreversibility is a desirable property making system independent from a shitty government. Don’t get me wrong, I’m well aware of all crypto shortcomings and would love to have something in between current chaos and more orderly system.

A smart contract is a shitty alternative to a good government but a decent alternative to a shitty government. At the end of the day I don’t need sorry, I need a solution.

> You can wrench attack them, but that’s the only option.

That's not the only option for a government. You don't need those specific coins, you only need anything of value. Their car, their house, the wages their employer would have paid them, anything else they'd already bought with the money, etc. And they're criminals, they're going to jail, and they're staying there a lot longer if they don't give back the money, which has a way of making non-compliant people more compliant without hitting them with a wrench.

> The only way it’s possible for there to be recourse even if the scammer is noncompliant, is for there to be a fiat money system.

That doesn't give you recourse either because they can spend the money right away. Which transaction are you going to reverse if they use it to buy a physical commodity or foreign asset? Then the scammer has the asset, not the money, so the only thing a fiat money system can do is cause the victim to be the innocent asset seller instead of the potentially negligent or actually in on it person claiming to be the original victim.