When I get my car fixed at the mechanic, I am paying for the service but at no time do I transfer ownership to him. One procure we could follow is for him to do the repair, give me my car back, ask for payment, and then pursue me in court if I refuse to pay. But instead, the procedure is that he just keeps the car in his garage until I pay. (If I want to call the police to get my car back, I can, but now I have to explain to them why I'm not paying, and enforcement is much easier.) This forces me to respect the agreement we made - repairs in exchange for money - in a more robust way than any contract ever could.

Except when they don't, which is... most of the time?

It's true (and I would hope obvious) that a smart contract doesn't play like a legal contract, but aren't the vast majority of them intentionally doing things that are orthogonal to contract law?

Or irrelevant to it? You can buy Beeples all day but you still don't own a copyright, and this doesn't seem to be a problem for anyone.

On a blockchain, this is absolutely false. The nodes interpret smart contracts. The "legal system" needs to be applied by some kind of oracle or by force to a node operator.

Smart contracts are authoritative in their native environment.

> but generally when a person is trying to evade some legal authority, it's probably not for reasons good for society

Reminds me of the "nothing to hide" argument, that only someone trying to commit a crime would need or want protection from the legal system. History paints a different picture.

There's severe punishment for crimes committed by regular people, and no punishment for crimes committed by wealthy people, even if all things considered the latter manage to harm millions of people with their actions.