> It just depends if you need a higher level of trust or not.
I need trust. And blockchain doesn't provide it.
> It just depends if you need a higher level of trust or not.
And yet, all you can come up with is "a bit of a stupid example obviously". The moment I propose to you actual real-world problems, your entire argument breaks down into piles of "could be"s and lots and lots of words how blockchain magically solves everything.
> you've got some global blockchain network that can record arbitrary data and run contracts attached to the data
Why?
> then you could start to record things like land ownership
- Ahmed pays local authority to record him as an owner. Where's your solution for that?
- Ahmed is an atual rightful owner, but then Mohammed pays local authority to register him as the rightful owner instead. Where's your solution for that?
> this contract is signed with people's private keys
- Mohammad is now registered as the owner. 5 years later, after a prolonged court battle, Zahra proves that the original record is incorrect, and the court rules that the property is now Zahra's. Mohammad doesn't give up his private keys. Where's your solution for that?
> dictates the rules for transfer of ownership, time-limited ownership, death, loss of key, etc.
Ah, yes. Instead of contracts written in plain language, we now have a complex programmable system written in an esotheric language that requires programmatic access and integration to dozens, if not hundreds of other such systems. And all these contracts are guaranteed to be correct, foolproof, without omissions, and to 100% correctly represent the interests of the parties that sign the contract. Because blockchain.
Well, except the time when they are hacked, and require a hard fork and re-writing of history. So much for "non-tempering": https://www.coindesk.com/understanding-dao-hack-journalists
> Unlike a paper contract signed in handwriting, this contract is signed with people's private keys and the rules aren't enforced manually but automatically.
Ah, yes. When a person dies, they automatically register their death from beyond the grave. Or when a person sells property, this is automatically entered into the system through the celestial sphere. Court orders are automatically applied to ownership simply because blockchain.
> And you can trust in the data and the enforcement of the rules because you can have trust in the network to do so.
Ah yes. The rules are enforced because some numbers in a highy ineffecient, slow distributed append-only log say something.