I gave some examples (that you quickly dismissed). Having a recourse through an other, hopefully compassionate and empathetic human being is not something I'm willing to give up on. If things go awry to the point where I could go bankrupt because of a small lapse in judgment I want to have recourses. That's why we have we have consumer laws. That's why we have the notion of abusive contracts.
SSL is hardly related. It's just a mean to secure a transaction and that's it. There's no contract involved. It's a tunnel for some data. A more apt comparison would be to say that I trust, say, Amazon's website to do the right thing when I give them my credit card infos. But the truth is that I don't even trust them that much, if they abuse it or get compromised I'll just notify my bank (if they don't notice it before I do) and I'm good to go.
If I buy a laptop on amazon and they sneakily bill me for two tons of whole grain rice flour and when I complain they said "but it was in the terms and conditions", do you think it would hold up in court?
>I hope you're aware that the exact same thing happened with these indexed loans where people weren't aware that interests could fluctuate with time, right?
Ah, and it's clearly something we aim to emulate, right?
If anything that's a very good example about how the average person can be tricked into accepting a terrible contract if they don't know any better. Do you think it would've worked better if the loan was expressed in Solidity code?
> That's why we have we have consumer laws. That's why we have the notion of abusive contracts.
That could still exist with Ethereum.
> SSL is hardly related. It's just a mean to secure a transaction and that's it.
Your browser's code trust the code on the server hosting the SSL cert and authority server. So, it's just code involved here.
> If I buy a laptop on amazon and they sneakily bill me for two tons of whole grain rice flour and when I complain they said "but it was in the terms and conditions", do you think it would hold up in court
Again, you could also sue someone for tricking you into a bad ethereum contract and it would not hold in court either. Not sure what your point is here.
> Ah, and it's clearly something we aim to emulate, right?
No it is not, my point is that bad things happen no matter who's involved (humans or code) and just because some bad things may happen doesn't mean we should stop using it, but we should go with the most efficient and secure one, which for now is probably humans of course. See also plane crashes.
>Your browser's code trust the code on the server hosting the SSL cert and authority server. So, it's just code involved here.
Yes, but "there" is only a small part of the full story. When I make a payment over SSL I don't make an immutable, untraceable and irreversible transaction. In order to be able to receive the payment the other party has to register with a bank and other legal entities etc... Putting money to an ethereum contract is closer to sending cash in an envelope to some PO box in a foreign country. Good luck getting it back if something goes wrong.
>Hopefully after said compassionate human had their lunch break.
Humans make mistakes, humans are unreliable. That's why we have a bunch of checks and balances in any decent justice systems to avoid miscarriages of justice. They're still possible, doesn't mean that the right solution is to get rid of it altogether.
>Again, you could also sue someone for tricking you into a bad ethereum contract and it would not hold in court either. Not sure what your point is here.
So code isn't law, law is law? I think my point is perfectly clear, you just keep moving the goalpost. My point is that those "smart" contracts are great for thieves but of dubious values
Regardless, do you think those people whose wallet was compromised because of the faulty contract will manage to get their money back? Who are they suing, the thieves? The wallet company who wrote the faulty contract? How you do get the money back? Can you freeze the account? Reverse the transactions? Blacklist the coins? The whole cryptocurrency system is designed to make those things impractical, if not downright impossible.
Again, great for thieves and black market sellers but if I just want to buy a laptop on amazon why would I ever bother with this? What's the use case?
> In order to be able to receive the payment the other party has to register with a bank and other legal entities etc... Putting money to an ethereum contract is closer to sending cash in an envelope to some PO box in a foreign country
This shows either little understanding of smart contracts or little imagination. Retailers could make each of their sells contract a 3 party multi-sig contract where the three parties would be you, the retailer and your bank and if you complain to your bank and your bank accepts your request after reviewing the retailer's claim then the money would go back to your account. There could also be other legal entities in the multi-sig contracts such as insurances or others.
> My point is that those "smart" contracts are great for thieves but of dubious values
See my previous point and why this is not correct.
> Regardless, do you think those people whose wallet was compromised because of the faulty contract will manage to get their money back? Who are they suing, the thieves? The wallet company who wrote the faulty contract? How you do get the money back? Can you freeze the account? Reverse the transactions? Blacklist the coins? The whole cryptocurrency system is designed to make those things impractical, if not downright impossible.
They won't get their money back because they didn't pay for an insurance. Coinbase for example guaranties US$ 100k in case of theft. If Ethereum becomes a thing, there would be a whole market of insurances offering what Visa or Coinbase or your local bank offers today.
Last but not least, you're getting robbed every day with fiat money with inflation policies, only you don't see it but it is happening. Inflation lowers the value of your fiat money and that's like robbing you a part of your money without your consent. And you pay a fee for that insurance you mention every time you use your credit card, so not free either and again, any ethereum or bitcoin provider could offer the same insurance for a fee (and coinbase already does to some extend).
SSL is hardly related. It's just a mean to secure a transaction and that's it. There's no contract involved. It's a tunnel for some data. A more apt comparison would be to say that I trust, say, Amazon's website to do the right thing when I give them my credit card infos. But the truth is that I don't even trust them that much, if they abuse it or get compromised I'll just notify my bank (if they don't notice it before I do) and I'm good to go.
If I buy a laptop on amazon and they sneakily bill me for two tons of whole grain rice flour and when I complain they said "but it was in the terms and conditions", do you think it would hold up in court?
>I hope you're aware that the exact same thing happened with these indexed loans where people weren't aware that interests could fluctuate with time, right?
Ah, and it's clearly something we aim to emulate, right?
If anything that's a very good example about how the average person can be tricked into accepting a terrible contract if they don't know any better. Do you think it would've worked better if the loan was expressed in Solidity code?