You always need governing authority to enforce the rules, just because the cryptography protocol can not handle all the possible situations of human interactions and because money have no intrinsic value. Value is determined by the level of trust to Authority transferred by different communication channels and protocols (encrypted messages, paper with special printings etc.) In the case of Bitcoin it is not necessary to be Government Authority.
This is precisely what I mean by people do not grasp the entire concept of a mathematical law and how it relates to public key cryptography. There are man made laws which are invariably prescriptive, and natural laws (not in the legal sense) which are invariably descriptive, and fallible only to the extent that this is not the case.
There is no authority needed to enforce these natural laws just as there is no authority needed to enforce gravity, it is a force of nature, public key cryptography relies upon mathematics which is also a force of nature. If the math is incorrect the system is insecure, failing that no authority is required to uphold the mathematical dogma of public key cryptography lest faith in the system be compromised. You're working from a set of premises and assumptions that simply do not apply here.
These laws do not require enforcement by an authority;
I pretty well understand both laws of science (PhD in physics) and what PK cryptography is, but you still don't get my point. There is something outside the protocols implementation, that are secure and do the job they are are developed for.
