jimrandomh comments on Mandating Information Disclosure vs. Banning Deceptive Contract Terms - Less Wrong

21 Post author: David_J_Balan 20 December 2009 08:55PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Comments (74)

You are viewing a single comment's thread. Show more comments above.

Comment author: jimrandomh 22 December 2009 01:08:13PM *  5 points [-]

Offering someone a bad contract harms them. (By 'bad contract' I mean one that gives negative utility to the party that didn't draft it.) Either they accept it without knowing it's bad, in which case the bad terms harm them, or else they find out and reject it, in which case they've spent resources analyzing it for which they get nothing in return. And checking a contract for bad terms isn't cheap; lawyers charge thousands of dollars for that service. Someone who goes around offering bad deals can still inflict massive damage even if none of his offers is accepted. No one has managed to come up with a "private means of protection" which is cheaper than a lawyer on retainer. I don't think the problem is that people don't want to be protected; rather, the problem is that most people can't possibly afford any private protection.