Freedom is a tool, not a goal. There is plenty of evidence that in the past human settlements have structured themselves by rule of law (the ancient jews are an example) instead of through violence and authority. A polycentric system of law - yes, these smart contract systems aim towards implementing part of the infrastructure, but the governance has to be by people, not code, like Steem's . That is to say, the people follow the code. No matter how fancy computers get, there will always be some things that only we can judge.

Smart contracts are just things like the Steem Power, and its power down function. Steem power is a smart contract, and it's 1000x more useful than anything they've built so far on Ethereum.