I believe the problem is that most concepts of traditional cryptography and computer security don't really apply. This is as much as about economics as anything else. Some of the real issues are just always out of scope in these discussions. One can't begin talking about them without having a different framework. One dimension from many of the current discussions missing is the political dimension, i.e. the effects on organization. This is not just about contracts, as contracts are rooted in legal system and government. Anyway, I don't think a purely technical view is really going to help very much to understand this. One can see this with the current designs of the payment protocols.

OP raises some very interesting points about the concept of geographic location. In a local context many of the concepts changes. As an example: in the context of traffic I trust that other actors will act a certain way. But I don't need to trust all actors, just actors around me at a specific moment in time. Most transactions take place in a geographic context.

If one thinks about these things in conjunction with meshnets I think one can come up with some very interesting thought experiments and future directions. I doubt that the next paradigm shift will be like the last, and at some point it might turn out that extending bitcoin might not be possible in the way it was thought. At least that's my conclusion from investigating all the "advanced" applications. There is the meme the bitcoin is like TCP/IP. I believe the relation of cryptocurrencies to protocols is quite complex and very different.