This is a wonderfully thought provoking blog so bravo. But two comments from me Vlad Zamfir for what it is worth: I think the latter third of this piece could have been edited down considerably. You made your point. Then the repetition made it a little nasty. Elegant trolling means playing the ball not the man.
Second point: What is being missed here is perhaps this: State enforced legal systems always have one thing on their side, the monopoly of violence. If you don’t abide by a court’s decision (and few countries in the world actually have genuinely fair and decent legal systems) then the State uses its monopoly of violence to fine or imprison you. Or kill you. How we as human societies, manage that monopoly of violence is what democratic systems are meant to resolve. But they often don’t e.g. the US justice system (both criminal and civil). So how do you make the monopoly of violence redundant? Because with it, State power will always win. (At this point you might go, ‘nah, I quite like States having the monopoly of violence’ and there we probably part).
The response, “Sorry, there’s nothing we can do for you … (because the code runs autonomously)” is actually a profoundly powerful response. For sure, it’s far from optimal. I’d like, for example, to see Parity get its Ether back. It’s stupid it remains frozen. But once you demonstrate that you are operating a quasi-judicial system then you make yourself utterly susceptible to having that quais-judicial system coming under the larger jurisdiction of a State that views itself as sovereign. You will have identified a locus of power for them and will subsequently be made to stand under them.
On the other hand if your blockchain operates like nature — outside of human control — then hey, what are the courts going to do about it? Cnut demonstrated such folly a millenia ago.
So is it possible to create Crypto law/ genuinely interactive governance that is itself sovereign i.e. beholden to no one? Digital co-operatives may achieve this as economic and social power simply sidesteps States as institutions. The police for example might themselves be managed as digital cooperatives through Aragon / Colony etc. Why not? And although I’m not a capture fatalist, (h/t Vlad!) I do believe there are still lessons in power which we will all be schooled in if we don’t pick the right path. When that truncheon hits your head, or someone is pointing a gun at you, or the state threatens you with prison if you don’t hand over your source material (those have all happened to me) most everyone tends to submit in the end.
