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Psychohistorian comments on Mandating Information Disclosure vs. Banning Deceptive Contract Terms - Less Wrong
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A person who was aware that they might succumb to being tricked, might voluntarily agree to a legal regime which authorized judges to void contracts that seemed to be attempts to trick them. On the other hand, if they were not aware of this vulnerability, one might benefit them by forcibly preventing them from being tricked. But it is hard to see how a political regime which does this to them is accountable to such folks. If they had influence over the political system, they would want it to stop this sort of thing. It would have be that other people who had power over politics wanted for force this protection onto them. This brings us to an image of a powerful political elite forcing their protections on unwilling others, for the good of those others. Is this how you see politics?
This is an absolutely enormous leap. There are very, very few people who do not admit to the possibility of being tricked. Just think of the broad cultural meaning of the phrase "didn't read the fine print." You take some hypothetical about humans that is so completely divorced from reality as to render us into fully alien beings, then you develop a model of politics based on this absurd assumption, then ask someone if that's the model he's using.
The hypothetical may be interesting, but I don't anyone, anywhere would argue that there exists a large voting block that believes it cannot be deceived and actively opposes government intervention to prevent deception.
David is saying standard ignorance models are flawed because they do not consider the possibility of people who do not realize they might be tricked. I am responding to David's assumption.
That isn't his claim.
His claim is that people enter into contracts without contemplating that they might get tricked. They may be aware of the fact that people like them get tricked in contracts like the ones they are signing, but they simply trust the salesmen, or they just decide they need a credit card, sign next to the X, and don't think about it much further. They sign in near-mode, and analyze policy in far-mode. Your position requires that they are completely unaware of the possibility that they might be tricked in all contracts, not just specific ones they enter into; I think this would require both contracts and policy analysis to occur in near-mode. Your position would also require that they like the options that the law removes, and/or that they are aware of the costs imposed by such laws. In other words, they don't understand that a credit card contract could contain hidden fees, but they do understand that by blocking hidden fees in credit card transactions, the profitability of such transactions will fall and credit will contract as businesses can no longer exploit consumers. Such a combination of ignorance and sophistication seems rather unlikely.
Moreover, your inference that people who are unaware of being swindled should object to anti-swindling laws makes no sense. People may be unaware that there are rat guts in their sausage; this does not mean they would object to a law that bans putting rat guts in sausage.