> from either UID matching exactly X, or where inheritsFrom/inheritsTo is set to UID Y.
I already gave the example where the US government has fallen, and "New United States" does not inherit from US government.
> Just has the court would have to think about the right interpretation, a contract would have to think about the right implementation
My point here is that not everything can be foreseen. Not even every mistake in the contract can be foreseen. And that is why it's more important to be able to make these interpretive decisions after the new information comes in, and not be tied to a codification made on bad or incomplete data cementing an interpretation no party wanted, and no person would ever think was the intention or even common-sense interpretation.
In any case all smart contracts contradicting actual contracts or laws are moot. Say a smart contract says that Amazon can't sell to nuclear plants. There's absolutely no way for a smart contract to prevent this.
Even if 100% of the economy was transacted on the same blockchain there would be nothing stopping Amazon giving software to a nuclear powerplant and that nuclear powerplant sending them money. At most they'd have to create a subentity, like an ice cream truck, that they buy one ice cream from, for $10M.
Hell, the nuclear plant could reclassify itself as an ice cream truck.
It's not the ink in the contract, nor the code in the smart contract, that prevents breach. It's the law and legal system. Because ink and code can't.
> Sure, both of tradeoffs, but such is the world.
I don't think there is a tradeoff. At best a smart contract is more efficient. But in order to actually be useful it needs to be overridable.
Just like how a handshake deal or verbal contract is more efficient. But we all agree that courts decide. You can't make a handshake deal and expect courts to say "well, slavery is illegal, but their palms touched so there's nothing I can do".
Handshake is more efficient than smart contract, and as long as everything goes 100% according to plan a smart contract is more effective at execution/enforcement. But when it inevitably goes wrong it's many orders of magnitude harder to fix.
Children and some mentally disabled people cannot legally enter contracts. Smart contracts will never be able to codify these things either. Smart contracts are completely missing the point about what's hard about contracts, and instead make things worse.
> Slavery is something physical, smart contracts only deal with concepts in the digital realm.
A person's ownership over another can be on the blockchain. In this scenario Amazon's ability to sell software or service to certain customers is on the blockchain.
Why is one more real than the other?
