The basic outline of a contract except its conditions are rooted in computer code.

Say that you bought a flight back to your hometown with insurance and a week before your flight it’s cancelled. In the world that we live in today, as part of the airline’s policy you may have to call their customer service and request a refund even though it isn’t your fault the flight was cancelled. In Blockchain World™ you could enter an in insurance agreement in the form of a smart contract with the purchase of your flight which would be programmed so that IF your flight is cancelled THEN you would automatically receive a refund without lifting a finger, because that’s how it should be.

Now, it could be argued that an airlines can still automate this process within their own centralized systems. However, the point is here is not the automation itself but the immutability of the contract that has been agreed upon by the purchaser and the airlines. In the Blockchain World™ example, the purchaser does not need to trust United Airlines that they are going to pay them back. In the Code of the Contract, the purchaser can see very clearly the inputs needed for the contract to send money. The contract can’t be interpreted by a paid off judicial system because the smart contract isn’t owned by any single person, it’s owned by the network. The smart contract is essentially a trustless interaction between parties that can give certain protections to its participants. This has the potential to greatly limit the exploitative power that the bourgeoisie has over the working class.

In this situation and many like it, blockchain is able to make a more transparent interaction between parties, especially if there is a large power gap. This is of course a very simple example to make it easier to understand but with this fundamental feature, we can then create more complex Smart Contracts that apply to more meaningful situations. At first glance this may not seem especially useful but in the next section I’ll go into more detail that shows how exactly Smart Contracts and blockchain in general could be co-opted for Leftist™ causes. Click here to go to Part 3.

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