It's not themselves they should be protected from, but the people who are going to try to sucker them.
Now if you lay out all of the facts in front of the mark, and he/she dismisses them as pessimism or a conspiracy - I'd say society's responsibility should end there. But I think that the less credulous people in a society should institute enough oversight over situations that could be potential scams so that the more credulous can have the best picture of the situation that a neutral party could provide.
Statistically, a large amount of people will always be too dumb to make that decision for themselves, so we should try to ply them with all of the supplementary smarts that it's pragmatically possible to muster:)
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It's not themselves they should be protected from, but the people who are going to try to sucker them.
Now if you lay out all of the facts in front of the mark, and he/she dismisses them as pessimism or a conspiracy - I'd say society's responsibility should end there. But I think that the less credulous people in a society should institute enough oversight over situations that could be potential scams so that the more credulous can have the best picture of the situation that a neutral party could provide.
Statistically, a large amount of people will always be too dumb to make that decision for themselves, so we should try to ply them with all of the supplementary smarts that it's pragmatically possible to muster:)