At some point you have to trust somebody. Who is more trustworthy for your situation: a government agent, a financial officer or some reputation service? Think about that as someone in a third world country...
It's not that simple. Have you ever had to do anything with real legal complex matters? For example for patent suits, I am not sure if I didn't prefer a qualified and experienced set of judges over an anonymous hobby crypto arbitration court..
Don't kid yourself, you can get (and will) screwed in every which way.
I also don't know much, but I think there is a lot a lot of illusion going on about "smart contracts"