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The possibility of remaking the financial system with the blockchain

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Re: The possibility of remaking the financial system with the blockchain

#41

Post by vqc »

libertymcateer wrote: post #12

I do not buy this for a minute and to be fair the headline misrepresents the much more sober tone of the actual article, to the authors' credit. I am not a fan of cryptocurrency in general (that is another argument for another day) so I am just going to focus on one claim regarding law firms: the rise of the smart contract. I do not believe it is a realistic expectation, and here is why: The vast majority of contract…

Some well drafted agreements will purposefully not discuss certain conditions the parties are aware may occur. Sometimes that's the only way a deal gets done. Resolving the relationship between the parties when that condition does occur is a complex dance of fitting square situations into round contract provisions and lots of phone calls.

It seems impossibly complex to predetermine the resolution of all possible human outcomes and encode it into a smart contract within a reasonable amount of time and effort.

Re: The possibility of remaking the financial system with the blockchain

#43

Post by Naed_force »

brilliantcode wrote: post #11
tylershuster wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like Uber, AirBnB &c? Give it a couple years. The internet is ~30 y/o. "The Sharing Economy" isn't even a decade old.

Uber is fucked and AirBNB is facing lot of resistance for making cities unaffordable by incentivizing landlords to rent to short term travellers vs people who are contributing to the local economy who aren't able to move closer to work due to lack of supply. Not exactly what the internet ordered.

Uber is most certainly not fucked, and if it isn't Uber, it'll be another ride sharing company. Airbnb is growing rapidly and helping to create a more mobile world, where you can affordably travel, or live in different places a few months at a time.

And tourists on a per capita basis contribute far more per day than long-term residents, since they're in high spending mode. They also consume fewer government services like welfare and medical care, so they don't cost the taxpayer as much.

Airbnb also makes it much easier to rent out spare units that would otherwise sit empty. It makes it easier to rent out that extra bedroom, or your unit while you go on vacation for two weeks. That increases total housing supply. Short term housing is still part of housing supply. People need affordable options when they're transitioning from one long term unit to another. It's not always a same day transition.

Markets in general benefit mankind, by allowing more efficient exchange. This is Econ 101 stuff, for which there is mountain of real world evidence.

Re: The possibility of remaking the financial system with the blockchain

#44

Post by amsilprotag »

libertymcateer wrote: post #12

I do not buy this for a minute and to be fair the headline misrepresents the much more sober tone of the actual article, to the authors' credit. I am not a fan of cryptocurrency in general (that is another argument for another day) so I am just going to focus on one claim regarding law firms: the rise of the smart contract. I do not believe it is a realistic expectation, and here is why: The vast majority of contract…

Block chain, smart contracts, what about the very basics? What about VCS, DRY documents, standard libraries, pop-up annotations and definitions? It seems like law has no interest in introducing standards to improve productivity and usability.

Look halfway down this article on the proposed health care replacement bill for an example of current legislative version control.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-07/the-repub...

Re: The possibility of remaking the financial system with the blockchain

#45

Post by splintercell »

brilliantcode wrote: post #11
tylershuster wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like Uber, AirBnB &c? Give it a couple years. The internet is ~30 y/o. "The Sharing Economy" isn't even a decade old.

Uber is fucked and AirBNB is facing lot of resistance for making cities unaffordable by incentivizing landlords to rent to short term travellers vs people who are contributing to the local economy who aren't able to move closer to work due to lack of supply. Not exactly what the internet ordered.

> Uber is fucked

Uber is definitely not fucked because customers don't wanna use Uber.

Re: The possibility of remaking the financial system with the blockchain

#46

Post by sanswork »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #35
elastic_church wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is this happening As an individual if I want a lawyer for anything right now, I am most likely going to wind up with a complete technophobe who is barely computer literate enough to copy and paste the boilerplate legal document they make for me.

For 99% of the things I want a lawyer to do right now I'll fill out a form on LegalZoom and never see a human. Someone wrote a chatbot that helps people in NYC walk through the process of fighting their traffic citations. Automation is coming for sure.

Unless something goes wrong then you'll probably regret your canned contract for not dealing with the specifics of your needs.

Canned contracts are great and a wonderful money saver until they are needed. It's just lucky that most contracts individuals are involved in are never needed.

Re: The possibility of remaking the financial system with the blockchain

#47

Post by taejo »

_rpd wrote: post #24
libertymcateer wrote: post #12

I do not buy this for a minute and to be fair the headline misrepresents the much more sober tone of the actual article, to the authors' credit. I am not a fan of cryptocurrency in general (that is another argument for another day) so I am just going to focus on one claim regarding law firms: the rise of the smart contract. I do not believe it is a realistic expectation, and here is why: The vast majority of contract…

> Whether the conditions in a contract have been met is very often a matter of huge debate - this is what "law suits" are about. Exactly. While laws and contract terms are written in natural language, this is an AI-complete problem. Not to say we won't solve AGI or important parts of automated legal dispute resolution, but the blockchain and even blockchain-based distributed computing is incidental.

Not only are contracts written in natural language, they are about events in the natural world. The blockchain cannot know whether you delivered 100 bushels of corn to the counterparty, what the quality of the corn was, whether you were responsible for the damage to your car or somebody else, whether the house you built is up to code, or any of the thousands of other conditions that are the subjects of everyday contracts.

Re: The possibility of remaking the financial system with the blockchain

#48

Post by jabgrabdthrow »

libertymcateer wrote: post #12

I do not buy this for a minute and to be fair the headline misrepresents the much more sober tone of the actual article, to the authors' credit. I am not a fan of cryptocurrency in general (that is another argument for another day) so I am just going to focus on one claim regarding law firms: the rise of the smart contract. I do not believe it is a realistic expectation, and here is why: The vast majority of contract…

(disclaimer I have vested interests etc)

I like to present it from the "business process" angle but after you get through the side effects of "protocolizing" things like cash and composable financial instruments, the new things we can do are currently under the umbrella of contract law. One simple example is 2-of-3 multisig for escrows.

Re: The possibility of remaking the financial system with the blockchain

#49

Post by vqc »

amsilprotag wrote: post #44
libertymcateer wrote: post #12

I do not buy this for a minute and to be fair the headline misrepresents the much more sober tone of the actual article, to the authors' credit. I am not a fan of cryptocurrency in general (that is another argument for another day) so I am just going to focus on one claim regarding law firms: the rise of the smart contract. I do not believe it is a realistic expectation, and here is why: The vast majority of contract…

Block chain, smart contracts, what about the very basics? What about VCS, DRY documents, standard libraries, pop-up annotations and definitions? It seems like law has no interest in introducing standards to improve productivity and usability. Look halfway down this article on the proposed health care replacement bill for an example of current legislative version control. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-0…

Version control for law drafting and other dev-like tools is something that http://www.openlawlib.org is working on.

I think there is a strong push for standard provisions, definitions, etc. The problem is that while every relationship is similar, there are always enough edge cases that forms are often only good as starting points. W/r/t to building knowledge bases for law firms, parsing existing contracts so that they are searchable and usable as sources of knowledge is a hard problem.

Re: The possibility of remaking the financial system with the blockchain

#50

Post by elastic_church »

brilliantcode wrote: post #11
tylershuster wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean like Uber, AirBnB &c? Give it a couple years. The internet is ~30 y/o. "The Sharing Economy" isn't even a decade old.

Uber is fucked and AirBNB is facing lot of resistance for making cities unaffordable by incentivizing landlords to rent to short term travellers vs people who are contributing to the local economy who aren't able to move closer to work due to lack of supply. Not exactly what the internet ordered.

and it is going to take a long time for the legislative bodies to catch up to modern realities.

thank the internet.

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