So like, if you don't deliver those shipping containers of hot sauce, I just click the "I was scammed" checkbox on my smart contract dashboard?

Where exactly does the leverage of smart contracts come into play?

The biggest reason libertarianism is a nonstarter is that it outright rejects the state monopoly on violence. Without a lone arbiter, societies fragment due to intragroup competition and violence. As a society fragments, the size of the monolithic projects it can engage in become smaller and smaller.

International trade is already so fragile that a stuck tanker threatens swaths of the entire thing. Now picture how infinitely improbable a system like that is if there's no physical enforcement mechanisms backing contracts up.

Your comment gave me a neat idea that maybe smart contracts could be used for calculating blame and penalties in long supply chains. Vendor A promises to deliver the widget to Shipping Company B on a certain date who promises to deliver it on another date - but only if Vendor A receives the parts from Vendor X - but only if Vendor X receives the raw materials from Vendor Y - etc. That kind of transparency could be really interesting

I think you hit the nail on the head. In my experience, if both parties are happy payment isn't really a problem anyway. Trouble always comes up when there is disagreement e.g. buyer claims that the hot sauce is not spicy enough and the seller says it's exactly as spicy as ordered. Now what?

You take the issue to a crypto court which controls the escrowed funds.

If the crypto court makes an unfair ruling, you tell everyone to never trust their judgement. Now they’ve lost credibility and nobody will want to escrow funds with them in the future.

Whichever court provides the most consistent fair rulings attains the best reputation and becomes the most utilized.

By contrast, if government courts make an unfair ruling, they’re still going to be in business tomorrow and there’s nobody that can stop their monopoly on broken justice.

Some people might argue that their western country has a fair justice system and that everyone should be glad to be subject to that system.

That argument would be overly generous to even the most fair countries, and completely falls flat in the many countries where corruption is rampant.

This sounds awfully naive. I have a very small company that sometimes deals with large corporations. Large corporations already want to push a jurisdiction onto you in their contracts. Usually the jurisdiction of where they are headquartered, which makes sense because they have lawyers that are allowed to work at those courts and know how to deal with that specific jurisdiction. So now you want them to be able to choose some big-corp-friendly-private-crypto-court? Sorry, no thank you. In a world where everyone has exactly the same power this scheme might work, but I would hate to have to negotiate with big clients which crypto court to choose.

When looking at the whole binding arbitration fiasco, it doesn't seem like this system would work out too well for the average person.

It's hard to imagine any system that would solve 100% of disputes accurately, but at least having a free market of reputation-based dispute resolution providers gives you more options and attempts to weed out corrupt justice.

The thing I don't understand about all of the cryptocurrency negativity on HN is nobody's forcing anyone to use decentralized products, but the naysayers seem to insist that everyone needs to continue use existing centralized solutions even if they're not happy with them. What's so bad about letting the nerds LARP amongst themselves even if you don't want to participate?

Binding arbitration is not perfect, but to deem it a failure based on a few melodramatic accounts of it producing unfair outcomes is premature.

It's entirely possible it's the only thing that has prevented anti-discrimination lawyers from hollowing out corporate America with lawsuits

https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/wokeness-as-saddam-sta...

Imagine a court that consistently rules in favour of a richer party. Imagine that the richer party is not THAT interested in doing business with you, so they can tell you to take it or leave it. How do you think it will work?

Next steps would be that they create another decentralized smart legal judiciary system to enforce and handle breach of smart contracts. And a supreme chain with Elon & Chamath on the bench.

Libertarianism != anarchism. It does NOT reject the state's monopoly on violence. It argues it should be used sparingly

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/06/enforci...

To clarify, from my understanding, in a libertarian society, individuals and groups would be able to hire armed mercenary groups a la private security forces, but with presumably less regulation. That's what I mean by "monopoly on violence", eg only the ruling government has the right to use violence to enforce contracts.

That sounds like anarchism.

Most libertarians want the government to retain a monopoly on violence so that the institution that uses violence is accountable to the public.