A contract that is solely on based "trust" is worthless. People are unpredictable and can change without giving an indicator.
I think the notion of machines doesn't play a role here because the code executes a set of rules written by a human after reaching a certain level of consensus.
Ned did many things wrong and witnesses too. But I can't understand the difference between:
Ned selling steem to one person.
Or that one person buying the same amount of steem from the market.
Or Ned selling Steem on the market then that person buys that steem from the market.
Or Ned selling that same amount to different people in the market.
(Witnesse did nothing when STINC was actually heavily selling STEEM)
Freezing those accounts is a political decision that hides a much worse and deeper history of incompetence, greed, lack of professionalism and accountability. Everyone is to blame here.
I do agree that the witnesses didn't do enough.
And you may be right about that aspect entirely, including the voting mechanism itself.
However, I think you need to see the differences in the different things you listed, considering that the differences do exist, and you took note of them just now.
It cannot be denied that the decisions, and the order of decisions, a human makes are different.
If a human wishes to have dinner, it does make a difference whether or not the animal is cooked first, or still living, when the dining begins, even if the end result is the same.
What I mean is that there are ethical ways to do things. There are ethical ways to sort different types of censorship. There are ethical order of operations that make sense on the context.
Machines in their current form do not see context, and you are ignoring context too when you see no difference between different things.
The numbers all add up to the same: Ned will sell all of his Steem.
But what matters is to whom, and why, and what happens next.