The "self-organizing" aspect is one of the things I really appreciate about this platform. If spammers and scammers come in, groups of users here recognize how that's potentially destructive to the entire platform and they take steps-- through some form of consensus-- to change things. We don't have to wait for "some moderator" to take action.
You're right, of course, this is really a giant social experiment.
Yep, it will be interesting to see what it all looks like five years from now.