The authority of the state ultimately rests on its ability to resort to violence to enforce its will. No smart contract can change that.
If everyone agrees that smart contracts will pay out when they are fufilled. But only if they are fufilled in the specific way each party believes they should be (as opposed to what the code actually says)--then there is no point in smart contracts.
A potential solution is some form of very explicit disclaimer that states you are agreeing X should be paid when the code in contract Y executes, not when the condition you believe the code in contract Y tests for is met.
Of course a court could still ignore the disclaimer.
You can't just ignore these rules by making a system that executes contracts automatically. The judge will simply order you to make the other party whole. Then, if the law allows it, he might hit you with a massive fine for breaking the rules.
It is possible you could eventually be able to sign something making the smart contract a form of binding arbitration.
But you're correct, courts law enforcement isn't going to let you enter into illegal contracts just because it's a smart contract.
Just like that judge that ordered the DAO hack to be reversed?
> or order me to enter into a different smart contract.
No, a judge will never order anybody to enter into a different smart contract just like they don't order people into regular contracts today.
> And if I don't comply, they will eventually hold me in contempt and at some point seize my property by force and throw me in jail if I resist.
Judges have a lot of power, but they can't enforce their views on people not in their jurisdiction without the cooperation of judges and governments in other countries. This is one of the major drivers behind the development of smart contracts. I think that for those situations where 'dumb' contracts suffice they will continue to be used and the courts will continue to have their power. But precisely for those situations where the courts do not have such power smart contracts are a potential solution.
> The authority of the state ultimately rests on its exclusive right to resort to violence to enforce its will. No smart contract can change that.
The world is larger than just your own country.
Not too much larger, considering that every major company and country has large amounts of assets and other financial interests that are subject to US jurisdiction. The government of Argentina recently learned that the hard way when American courts forced them to honor their sovereign debt, or have their US-based assets seized to pay them. The same applies if you want to do business in India, China, or Europe. Submit to their judgments or see your assets and interests in their jurisdiction confiscated or destroyed. Another recent example of this is French courts applying the "right to be forgotten" extraterritorially.
>No, a judge will never order anybody to enter into a different smart contract just like they don't order people into regular contracts today.
They certainly do, in effect. A court judgment very often creates new obligations between the parties. And if entering a new smart contract is the only way to right some legal wrong, then they can order that too. An American court, at least, can order just about anything it needs to in order to enforce its judgments.
or laws will have to be adapted to grant values to them. But then it isn't much different from today's contracts.
Correct, if you don't need a smart contract using one won't give you any advantages.
> Imho that doesn't cover a lot.
We're going to have to disagree on that.
> or laws will have to be adapted to grant values to them.
Absent a global government I don't see how that could be done.
> But then it isn't much different from today's contracts.
Well, it is, but not for most normal transactions.
if smart contracts can really be made to work they will be an enabler much like the laser, we didn't really have an application for those either when they were first invented.
But people are already getting creative with them and the DAO is a nice example of what could be done if smart contracts can be reliably built and executed.
I don't think this will happen in the near future because writing a regular contract is hard enough, a smart contract has to be perfect for it to be of value because any bugs will be beyond the regular safe-guards ability to be fixed, you will most likely simply lose your money or your goods without recourse.
> Absent a global government I don't see how that could be done.
What's so hard about the judge forcing you to form a new smart contract?
I have zero difficulty imagining a situation where a judge brings me in and says "Now unlock your laptop and sign this Ethereum contract that undoes the previous one".
But if i understand your point, you see smart contracts just as some kind of tool that could be used in place of regular ones, whenever all the corner cases can be determined in advance and coded against, right ?
In which case we could have state decide which type of smart contract are legal under their juridiction and which aren't. If that's what you mean, that could be interesting indeed. I don't see how that would be applicable in practice : everything can be hacked or tricked, or fall apart, and human always are needed at some point in any autonomous system i know of.
I think the crux of your argument with Marco is that he is viewing the "outcome" in a larger scope than you are. You seem to be focusing on the "outcome" as only the output of the smart contract, while the is viewing the "outcome" as the real-world consequences of the entire situation, as embedded in our political and legal systems.
>there is no way around a smart contract environment that actually works.
What about the present system where people develop trusting relationships in business and elsewhere and deal with the occasional anomalies and breaches of trust as they arise, but in the big picture they're not really a deal breaker because they are relatively rare and we humans are wired for socially harmonious behaviour and mutually beneficial actions. Is that a way around it? It seems to have been working decently well thus far in terms of facilitating extensive commercial networks around the world.
No, that's an alternative, and smart contracts are attempting to become a way around that.
What if trust is a feature not a bug? Why is it something we need to engineer around?
But not everybody can be trusted.
> Why is it something we need to engineer around?
We don't, but that won't stop it from happening and it is usually better to enter those situations informed rather than arguing from what world it would be nicer to live in.
When the automobile entered mass production the world changed. You could have of course argued that this made the world a worse place to live in (which it did in many respects) but the reality was that once invented people apparently wanted automobiles and that demand ended up being satisfied. If enough people want smart contracts they will be a fact of life, knowing their limitations, how to deal with them and whether or not you should enter into one is important knowledge. No amount of sticking your head in the sand will reverse the course of history, smart contracts will happen, or they won't and if they do it will pay off to know about them. Right now they're on the edge of being useful, in a few more years we will know for sure whether or not they were a fad or a harbinger of a novelty whose impact will be hard to predict.
I don't like them but I do believe they will happen and I also believe that they will alter our societies in material ways.
For instance, if two people who have no business to reside in 168 Park Avenue make up a contract in 'the real world' that the other can go and occupy 168 Park Avenue then they will find - probably not to their surprise - that their agreement will not work, regardless of which medium it is conveyed on.
Smart contracts are a tool for those situations where you believe present day law is going to leave you stranded or in a situation that is legally ambiguous. I do not believe their strength lies in areas that are already properly governed by existing law.
Now you could argue that that is all of society as we know it right now, but in international commerce there are quite a few legally gray areas that are now patched over with mechanisms such as escrow and various other instruments. But those are only 'worth it' when the transaction amounts are larger than a certain minimum.
So, in short, you are absolutely right, if you use a smart contract in a situation where a regular contract would suffice it will not change anything. All the parties to the contract are known, the whole thing has immediately verifiable effects in the real world and 'might makes right'.
But in situations where the participants would like to remain anonymous, in situations where both parties would for reasons known to them rather avoid dealing with lawyers, the law and associated mechanisms smart contracts could become an enabling device.
I am not a lawyer and not your lawyer.
This so that some guy in China or India and some guy in the United States can agree on terms without having to haggle over whose legal jurisdiction will kick in if and when there is a dispute about the contract.
Until we get a world government and until judges are able to order millions of nodes all over the world to do a hard fork there is no way around a smart contract environment that actually works. But we don't have that at the present, Ethereum as far as I'm concerned was DOA because of DAO.