I could have called this law and order :).   This is a political issue – how do we enforce the law! This is not the philosophical/ethical issue – is versus ought – that is deriving normative statements from descriptive statements or vice versa.

Really this is about the distinction between  decision and action. With code, and particularly with smart contracts – this distinction no longer exists.

What does it mean when the law is automatically executed?  There is a lot of discussion about programmable money and what happens when money has state or action.  Likewise there is a renewed investigation into the origin of money. How did it begin, was it from barter, from a gift economy?  What is the role of debt? Etc

There should be a similar investigation into the nation of law. Where did law originate? We have laws prohibiting things  – in the ten commandments for example. We have also have laws requiring things – such as honoring one’s mother and father.  What did people do before a laws? How did people know how to act?

My view is that law and money are two results of the movement to written cultures, or even linguistic thinking. I cannot help but think about Lacan, and the role of living in the symbolic order and psychoanlysis. What is the symbolic order but living with a clear legal system. Is this really the only way to live?

I have an intuition that the sort of imaginal realm, that Jung investigates, is the pictoral representation of ancient humans that we see on cave walls.  The symbolic order or Lacan then arises with written language and perhaps the creation of the legal codex. Different forms of consciousness are created or perhaps different unconscious mental processes are made conscious via particular communication technology.

Now I am thinking about computational communication.  The ability to create worlds – and what sorts of unconscious mental process this makes conscious.