The vast majority of contracts in (1) does not need enforcing, because it is in both parties interest (at least long-term) to perform. Yes, there is implicit enforcement to some extent, but then "non-society" which don't even have that are not pretty places to be.
On (2), sure we can find ways to have the execution fail. In fact, anything where there is not fully escrowed payment/collateral/etc. can fail to execute properly if the other side does have not what it needs to deliver/or does not make it available on chain.
> The vast majority of contracts in (1) does not need enforcing
Of course, people are very careful prior to entering those contracts, because they know how big of a headache it will be if enforcement is needed!
> In fact, anything where there is not fully escrowed payment/collateral/etc. can fail to execute properly if the other side does have not what it needs to deliver/or does not make it available on chain.
Well, sure, if you write a contract that makes it possible for one side not to pay up, then that might happen. Having software run escrow is basically the whole point..
Most contracts are so basic as to be invisible, so no, people are not very careful when they buy a chocolate bar, for example
If you want smart contracts to be only applicable to very narrow sets of problems so be it, but otherwise you need to be able to allow, for example, unsecured lending and highly uncertain payoffs at T0 (staying in the finance domain)
> people are not very careful when they buy a chocolate bar
Ok..sure, but I think it's sort of pedantic to bring up a class of contract that, obviously, nobody in this thread is talking about. It's a bad example anyway; even if you are being pretty careful it's simply not a risky transaction and therefor out of scope for complicated enforcement mechanisms like smart contracts.
I don't think smart contracts are very well suited to unsecured lending, at least not with available software. There would be no incentive to pay it back without some mechanism to force collections. Collateralized loans, however, is a great use case that exists already.
This is early stage tech, the scope is pretty small. I don't think anybody is arguing the contrary.
On (2), sure we can find ways to have the execution fail. In fact, anything where there is not fully escrowed payment/collateral/etc. can fail to execute properly if the other side does have not what it needs to deliver/or does not make it available on chain.