This argument is essentially 'breakers versus builders'. Breakers have the upper hand here, breaking is a lot easier than building and criticizing is easier than creating. So people who don't create and in general fulfil a role which consists of merely trying to destroy that which others created have an inherent advantage: they need to succeed only once in order to prove their perceived superiority over the creators.

Crypto is complex enough that more people will land in the destructive camp, it is by far the simpler approach to fame and riches.

But that does not mean that a 'breaker' can automatically move to 'builder' status, testimony to that is the number of people that we think are capable of constructing solid cryptographic systems. Colin is one of the people that has definitely achieved 'builder' status, he's not scared to publish his work and has made meaningful advances in the field.

If you feel like, you too can be famous, analyse tarsnap and see if you can find a bug, Colin will be happy to advance your stature, see:

http://www.tarsnap.com/bounty-winners.html

Meanwhile, take Colins advice if you ever want to advance from 'breaker' to 'builder', any idiot can break a window, it takes a lot of expertise to make a flat piece of glass and to set it properly, far more than breaking a window does.