[EGreg]

A lot of the software we need to transact, to self-organize as a community etc. can have its business logic on a smart contract. Voting. Governance. Contests. Investments. Enforce the decision making with rules that no one can violate.

https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2020/03/12/in-defense-of-block...

You can run an election like stackexchange sites - trusting that the admins don't mess with the votes - or you can do it with a blockchain. (You don't need blockchains, you can use Merkle trees etc. but the point is, people should be able to check the Merkle branch and know their vote is counted properly)

And that's just one example of many. Just like HTTP, the network is global. You could say in the real world you need magazines, newspapers, radio to get the word out -- or a closed network like AOL or MSN, but then the open, permissionless Web put the lie to all that. It was an open protocol, whether it's Web with HTTP and Email with SMTP etc. Open beats closed. People just need the software and the protocols.