Quote from: FredericBastiat on October 08, 2012, 10:55:49 PM

I'm sure it's been mentioned several times now, but a solution such as Open Transactions could work well to maintain asset tracking, whilst simultaneously avoiding the "long arm of the law" problems. However, even that I don't think is sufficient.

There needs to be a market forming around an agreeable mediation procedure/technique/ruleset wherein we can arbitrate our disputes in an acceptable manner to the parties involved (it must be considered in the beginning of any engagement and it must be binding, IMO). However even then, I don't believe it will ever be completely solved using crypto-like transactions. Contracts always have a way to be misinterpreted, and participants in markets such as ours will almost invariable have a few bad apples.

FYI, you can use OT to create and sign contracts, issue currencies, open accounts, write cheques, trade on markets, withdraw and deposit cash, etc.

It's not going to do everything -- you still have to decide your own governance procedures, and OT is only an API so you still have to build your client app or website. But OT will save you a lot of time re-inventing the wheel, for the pieces that it already does. The API is extremely easy and you get lots of functionality.

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There needs to be a market forming around an agreeable mediation procedure/technique/ruleset wherein we can arbitrate our disputes in an acceptable manner to the parties involved...

FYI, in OT you can make a smart contract between 2 or more parties, which executes according to the terms in the script. (The smart contract has scripted clauses.)

If a dispute arises, you can design your smart contract so that an arbiter is listed in advance, who can be activated by the dispute and have powers over all the funds inside the smart contract. This way arbitration firms can operate and provide dispute resolution, who are selected and agreed in advance by all parties to an agreement.

Search google for "open transactions tv" if you want to see videos where I walk you through the "behind the scenes" technical aspects of these sorts of contracts. For example, the "escrow" sample contract involves the use of an arbiter.