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This is the same issue all decentralized systems of ownership/value have, including all cryptocurrencies. Technology itself can't be a trust anchor without enfo

This is the same issue all decentralized systems of ownership/value have, including all cryptocurrencies. Technology itself can't be a trust anchor without enforcement. The dollar has value due to a mixture of trust in its continued value and in the entity enforcing it. Bitcoin has value mostly because people speculate it has value. The extra decentralization loses its value as soon as you add enforcement, because now it is just a really complicated dollar. Similarly, smart contracts do not solve an actual problem we can't solve with real contracts much cheaper, and the contract itself is unenforceable if any participant stops cooperating. If you have to rely on police and courts to enforce your smart contract, why do you need the decentralized smart contract to begin with? Can you even model a smart contract that satisfies the legal constraints of all countries where participating in it is possible? Why aren't you just leaving this to lawyers and signatures on paper?

Dracophoenix 6y ago
I would say this is more a fundamental problem/feature of human relations than technology. Every transaction, every contract, every treaty and every law has, on its own, little more value than a receipt. Centralization doesn't really solve that issue so much as it pretends to add the weight of government/society/God/{abstract entity of choice} where there is none. What's remained the same since time immemorial is that every act of trade is done voluntarily or under force. What blockchains and bitcoin change is by making the receipts self-provable and consistent without needing more information than a public key and a time of transaction. It doesn't change the need to assert one's property rights. That is still the purview of law and law enforcement short of a breakthrough in jurisprudence. Your point about the dollar is flawed. The value of the dollar may be a floating currency at its most ideal but its "true" value, outside of forex, is determined by fiat. The Fed just financially engineers it in a very complicated manner with veritable pulleys and levers and, somewhere along the way, a gun to everyone's private bank account in the form of artificial inflation/negative interest rates, punitive taxes, and from time to time, suing institutions that make US financial theater look bad by threat of dubious litigation. >>If you have to rely on police and courts to enforce your smart contract, why do you need the decentralized smart contract to begin with? If police departments have to rely on private citizens to be bounty hunters or informants, is there a point to having a police force at all? What's the point of a legal system that depends on executive enforcement when the citizenry is capable of doing so on its own? Why do we have to have a mayor/governor/president? Why not a government of individual people addressing their own affairs as need be and judges/arbitrators as referees? The answer to both sets of questions is that they are both options to a larger question: "How should one handle interpersonal expectations and violations thereof?"
- sascha_sl 6y ago
  I'm not sure if you went anywhere with the question of "what use does a smart contract actually have" beyond "justifying vigilante justice" or "anarcho-capitalism" (which, let's be clear, boils down to feudalism in which they'd be little less than a formality).
  - Dracophoenix 6y ago
    I addressed it in my first paragraph but, to repeat, a smart contract is a self-provable receipt. In addition, I don't see how you read my statement and came away with the idea that I support vigilante justice or anarcho-capitalism. My questions were pointed towards addressing the unstated assumptions inherent to your question and the other questions in your post that I didn't quote. Namely, that a centralized authority or agreement of centralized authorities is a requirement to render any transaction/contract/agreement valid. That's an assumption I find to be unproven and easily contested.

Dracophoenix 6y ago

I would say this is more a fundamental problem/feature of human relations than technology. Every transaction, every contract, every treaty and every law has, on its own, little more value than a receipt. Centralization doesn't really solve that issue so much as it pretends to add the weight of government/society/God/{abstract entity of choice} where there is none. What's remained the same since time immemorial is that every act of trade is done voluntarily or under force. What blockchains and bitcoin change is by making the receipts self-provable and consistent without needing more information than a public key and a time of transaction. It doesn't change the need to assert one's property rights. That is still the purview of law and law enforcement short of a breakthrough in jurisprudence. Your point about the dollar is flawed. The value of the dollar may be a floating currency at its most ideal but its "true" value, outside of forex, is determined by fiat. The Fed just financially engineers it in a very complicated manner with veritable pulleys and levers and, somewhere along the way, a gun to everyone's private bank account in the form of artificial inflation/negative interest rates, punitive taxes, and from time to time, suing institutions that make US financial theater look bad by threat of dubious litigation. >>If you have to rely on police and courts to enforce your smart contract, why do you need the decentralized smart contract to begin with? If police departments have to rely on private citizens to be bounty hunters or informants, is there a point to having a police force at all? What's the point of a legal system that depends on executive enforcement when the citizenry is capable of doing so on its own? Why do we have to have a mayor/governor/president? Why not a government of individual people addressing their own affairs as need be and judges/arbitrators as referees? The answer to both sets of questions is that they are both options to a larger question: "How should one handle interpersonal expectations and violations thereof?"

sascha_sl 6y ago
I'm not sure if you went anywhere with the question of "what use does a smart contract actually have" beyond "justifying vigilante justice" or "anarcho-capitalism" (which, let's be clear, boils down to feudalism in which they'd be little less than a formality).
- Dracophoenix 6y ago
  I addressed it in my first paragraph but, to repeat, a smart contract is a self-provable receipt. In addition, I don't see how you read my statement and came away with the idea that I support vigilante justice or anarcho-capitalism. My questions were pointed towards addressing the unstated assumptions inherent to your question and the other questions in your post that I didn't quote. Namely, that a centralized authority or agreement of centralized authorities is a requirement to render any transaction/contract/agreement valid. That's an assumption I find to be unproven and easily contested.