Contracts aren't for when things go right, they're for when things go wrong.
It's just as true to say contacts aren't "necessary" 99% of the time, because people follow through on the agreement.
I think you’re conflating legal contracts and smart contracts. Legal contracts are instruments used by two or more parties that outlines their responsibilities to one another in a way that is protected by civil law. A smart contract is just a program that runs on the blockchain.
Do you see how the name "smart contract" makes no sense? They aren't smart. In fact, they are obviously dumb. They do what the code says. They aren't a contract in the legal sense. Smart contracts are neither smart, nor contracts.
So we’ve gone from debating the technical merits to debating the name?
The name likely comes from options contracts, which are technically contracts but traded like equities. Most options are very simple tuple: (equity, strike price, call / put). The smart in smart contract can mean writing a smarter option contract.
> They aren't a contract in the legal sense.
I think they can be, I am not a lawyer.
But if our "legal contract" is "do what the code says" then the smart contract is a legal contract. Is it not?
Sure, but they're called smart contracts because they're meant to literally codify an agreement.
If you just want to trigger actions based on something and then store it, you don't need the machinery of the blockchain.
Most contracts end in the happy case 99% of the time, it seems very worthwhile to automate that happy case and fall back to the traditional legal system in the failure case where either party isn't happy with the outcome.