"The kid paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a college education has certainly been told they will be able to at least double their ROI."
Perhaps, but at least the kid got the education for his money. That has to be worth at least something, if not doubling their ROI.
"WTF is the FTC doing about that?!"
The main difference is that Steemit "is designed" to scam the vast majority of members by offering them something that Steemit does not or can not deliver on. That is different that a bank failing. The bank was not setup or designed to specifically scam its customers. Also, most banks have (or should have) deposit insurance which will compensate customers to certain limits, in the event of a bank failure. No one should ever put their money in any bank that does not have such insurance.
You don't seem to understand how fractional-reserve-banking works.
It's the mother of all ponzi-schemes.
Click to watch 28 minutes (or just the first 5 minutes),
None of the customers of Washington Mutual Bank "lost their deposits", those were all transferred to the behemoth Chase Manhattan Bank.
It's the people who had their retirement funds and 401k heavily invested in WAMU STOCK who lost their shirts when it went to ZERO with basically no warning.
This is exactly the type of "investor protection" scenario the FTC uses to justify their existence (oh, we must have someone looking out for investors). AND they just stood by and did NOTHING.
Hoo-boy, I almost forgot about the INSURANCE SCAM.
Do you realize that the FDIC has nowhere near the cash-money-dollars it would take to payout $10,000.00 per depositor? If even a single big bank truly went belly-up, the FDIC would be instantaneously flat-broke.
Have you ever heard of AIG?
Do you know who they sold insurance to?
Spoiler alert, they sold insurance to the worlds largest insurance companies (and AIG went broke).
That's a ponzi-scheme. If you promise people their money, but don't actually have enough money to pay them (if only 10% of customers close their accounts and cash-out, the bank is done-for) then you're running a ponzi-scheme.
It can however, run out of "cash-on-hand".
Why do you think they went insane printing money in QE1, QE2, QE3, QE4?
Did you know we're currently in an "unofficial" QE5?
I've been lucky enough to find at least a handful of people who seem reasonable and willing to engage in civil conversation.
If I undelegate at some point, don't take it personally, I probably just have other priorities demanding my attention.
I believe delegating is vastly superior to casting my below-minimum-payout vote around.
But that's exactly what a BANK does.
You accrue interest on paper, but the bank never has enough capital to cover that paper.
A few people can get out ahead (just like a casino, even Bernie Madoff had a few customers that withdrew huge profits), and by doing so "prove" that "the system works", but just like a casino, they eat you up with fees, and they'll even hold your funds if you try to withdraw any amount greater than a couple thousand bucks (the "Bank Secrecy Act" makes this even worse).
That's actually one of the most attractive aspects of steem (and crypto generally), namely that I can send tokens of value to whomever I wish, whenever I wish.
Notes on the Bank Secrecy Act,
It has been amended several times, including provisions in Title III of the USA PATRIOT Act, which amended the BSA to require financial institutions to establish anti-money-laundering programs by establishing internal policies, procedures, and controls, designating compliance officers, providing ongoing employee training, and testing their programs through independent audits.[4] WIKI
Good example.
I believe there have been some proposals to keep clubs from charging a customer if they don't show up for 31 days.
If your business model relies on charging people for ZERO services, you are running a scam.
This is only "true" technically. If they actually handed out that much cash, inflation (liquidity) would be through the roof and your cash-money-dollars would be next-to-worthless.