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0 pointsjessriedel4y ago0 comments

It's common for people to take mechanical/technological steps to make sure agreements will be respected when they know that if they just wrote a contract they could not rely on the legal system to enforce it in a reliable or economical manner. This is not necessarily bad.

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.

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jcrawfordor4y ago

Most places recognize something called a "mechanics lien" that means the police won't get your car back either. Workmen usually have a legal claim to property that they worked on and have not been paid for. Sometimes it requires specific paperwork (more often with real property, e.g. a contractor can place a lien on your house but usually needs you to agree to it before they start work) but often it's implicit. I guess my point here is that this is a scenario with specific legal backing that goes way back into history, which smart contracts don't really have.

jessriedelOP4y ago

Yes, of course the reality and usefulness of this particular mechanism has now been legally acknowledged and incorporated into the law in some (but not all) places. But mechanisms like this arise organically and are put to use long before they are officially recognized. I expect similar things to happen with smart contracts.

In other words: things you might call "evading the law" in fact can be useful and then shape the law. If we were to adopt a principle like "anything that looks like it's trying to evade the law must be dismantled", we'd be worse off.

jboy554y ago

Strange emphasis on 'now'. From wiki, "Mechanic's liens in their modern form were first conceived by Thomas Jefferson, to encourage construction in the new capital city of Washington. They were established by the Maryland General Assembly, of which the city of Washington was then a part.[1] However, it is not likely that Jefferson single-handedly dreamed up the idea.

At the time Jefferson promoted the law, a lien-like privilege already existed in civil law countries like France, the Dutch Republic and Spain, with some laws even tracing their roots to the Roman Empire. And since control of Louisiana had passed between the French and Spaniards, and had largely adopted the French Napoleonic Code, there was a similar privilege concept in that territory."

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