It's also ridiculously poor value-generated-per-Watt-used.

It's in the same conceptual class as "gun culture makes everyone safer" and "lowering taxes on rich people makes everyone richer" - both of which are trivially falsifiable, but repeated fervently by promoters and adherents, some of whom are acting in bad faith.

The root comment is correct - you can't enforce trust in a low-trust culture.

The real problem is the culture. And especially the fact that in a low-trust culture, successful scamming is considered a major status marker.