Contracts in Cyberspace

phutureboy writes "In his online Journal of Interesting Economics, economist David D. Friedman (son of Nobel laureate Milton Friedman) presents some interesting ideas about the enforcement of contracts in cyberspace. The gist is that he sees a gradual shift away from public enforcement of contracts (i.e. government courts) to private enforcement (e.g. third party arbitration, reputationial enforcement). The rest of his site is interesting as well - he even has an archive of his open-source economics software, which includes a neat trading simulation game called Hansa."

Comments

I have to agree

[EnsGDT]

It seems to me that third party contract enforcement is the only way to go. With the internationality of the internet, one single governmental entity isnt going to be able to take care of matters that may arise. Besides the fact that they have more important things to concern themselves with, they would most likely be out of their jurisdiction.
On a seperate note, if this whole third party thing does progress, it may be an interesting buisness in get involved in. Either as an investor, or as a "contract enforcer" if you will. heh