8 ms·

So clearly you don't have a problem with a company intentionally breaking rules because they stand to profit, regardless of any fine they may have to pay?

imgabe 11y ago
A contract is not a rule, it is an agreement between two parties. A good contract spells out the penalties for what happens when one party doesn't adhere to the terms. It's up to both parties to make sure those penalties are sufficient to make themselves whole in the case that happens. If at any time the penalties are less than the cost of adhering to the terms of the contract, it's only rational to break the contract and pay the penalty. Let's say you had an employment contract where you get paid $100k/year, but if you leave before 5 years, you have to pay a $50k penalty. 3 years in, you get a job offer for $500k/year. Are you going to stick to the contract because you need to obey "the rules", or are you going to pay $50k and take the much higher paying job?
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > If at any time the penalties are less than the cost of adhering to the terms of the contract, it's only rational to break the contract and pay the penalty. The rules that are broken here aren't in the contract, they're about the contract. So if it's rational (in economical sense) for me to break a contract, then I should break it[0] and then pay the penalty. The problem with people subletting on AirBnB is that they don't show up at their landlord's doors immediately after the guest leaves, ready to pay the price. They just keep cheating the other side until they get caught. In your employment example, it would be as if I worked remotely at the first job, then joined the second company and didn't tell my former employer - just logged hours for doing nothing, hoping he doesn't notice (maybe it's a big company). [0] - that how it may work in Serious Business, but contracts between regular people are usually entered with an assumption that both sides want to follow them through; to break them on purpose based on cost-benefit calculation means one is an asshole.
- alsetmusic 11y ago
  > Let's say you had an employment contract where you get paid $100k/year, but if you leave before 5 years, you have to pay a $50k penalty. 3 years in, you get a job offer for $500k/year. Are you going to stick to the contract because you need to obey "the rules", or are you going to pay $50k and take the much higher paying job? What does that have to do with this? Someone who rents a property with the intent of subletting through Airbnb is not paying a penalty to break the contract so that they can enter a new one with different terms. They are still bound by the original contract. I'm not talking about the details of the terms, simply pointing out that your analogy of leaving one job for another does not apply.
  - imgabe 11y ago
    My point is it's not a moral issue, it's an economic transaction. Both parties are free to negotiate the terms. The landlord often has significantly more leverage to do so.
    - TeMPOraL 11y ago
      But herein lies the problem. By treating a civil contract as a purely economical transaction you just robbed us of the best advantages of being humans rather than mindless systems. Or look at it this way: everyone on this site knows that the basic problem with programming is that machines execute what you wrote to the letter, and do not know about what you meant. That leads to bugs, because our descriptions rarely capture our intentions precisely enough. But we, as humans, most of the time know the intention of the instructions we're receiving. Every time we force something to be evaluated formally instead of socially, we're robbing ourselves of the increased efficiency our minds give us. It's a trade-off, and it's often worth it - but it should be done only when we gain something from it. In the AirBnB subletting situation we gain nothing - contracts gets more complicated to cover new abuse vector, and end result is the same except we've just lost flexibility and efficiency by codifying another part of our interactions.
      - imgabe 11y ago
        We obviously gain something. We gain an increased supply of rooms available for short-term use on AirBnB (and corresponding lower prices). The landlord gains a tenant. The tenant gains the margin between the rent and the AirBnB fees, in exchange for the risk of vacancy, the work of listing the property and managing the guests, and the additional risk of being discovered and having the lease terminated. The tenant has a stronger incentive than usual to maintain the apartment as impeccably as possible, pay rent promptly in full, and screen AirBnB guests to minimize risks, since the lease can be cancelled with little warning if they're discovered. There's clearly a demand in the market for AirBnB. The landlord could easily cut out the middleman and list the property there themselves if they wanted to. If they want to write lease to cut themselves a portion of the profits while letting the tenant do all the work of managing the AirBnB guests, there are probably people who would take them up on that offer as well. Yes, contracts might get some extra words, but they're not written in stone. We can read the words and negotiate to change them to our liking for the mutual benefit of both parties.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > A contract is not a rule, it is an agreement between two parties. A good contract spells out the penalties for what happens when one party doesn't adhere to the terms. Actually, contract law spells out the penalties for what happens when one party doesn't adhere to the terms; a contract may opt to do so for certain cases, but doing so doesn't make it a "good contract", there are costs and benefits to doing so, and whether it makes sense to do so depends on the context of the contract, the types of violations being addressed, whether the parties envision continuing the relationship after the violations addressed, and other factors.

imgabe 11y ago

A contract is not a rule, it is an agreement between two parties. A good contract spells out the penalties for what happens when one party doesn't adhere to the terms. It's up to both parties to make sure those penalties are sufficient to make themselves whole in the case that happens. If at any time the penalties are less than the cost of adhering to the terms of the contract, it's only rational to break the contract and pay the penalty. Let's say you had an employment contract where you get paid $100k/year, but if you leave before 5 years, you have to pay a $50k penalty. 3 years in, you get a job offer for $500k/year. Are you going to stick to the contract because you need to obey "the rules", or are you going to pay $50k and take the much higher paying job?

TeMPOraL 11y ago
> If at any time the penalties are less than the cost of adhering to the terms of the contract, it's only rational to break the contract and pay the penalty. The rules that are broken here aren't in the contract, they're about the contract. So if it's rational (in economical sense) for me to break a contract, then I should break it[0] and then pay the penalty. The problem with people subletting on AirBnB is that they don't show up at their landlord's doors immediately after the guest leaves, ready to pay the price. They just keep cheating the other side until they get caught. In your employment example, it would be as if I worked remotely at the first job, then joined the second company and didn't tell my former employer - just logged hours for doing nothing, hoping he doesn't notice (maybe it's a big company). [0] - that how it may work in Serious Business, but contracts between regular people are usually entered with an assumption that both sides want to follow them through; to break them on purpose based on cost-benefit calculation means one is an asshole.
alsetmusic 11y ago
> Let's say you had an employment contract where you get paid $100k/year, but if you leave before 5 years, you have to pay a $50k penalty. 3 years in, you get a job offer for $500k/year. Are you going to stick to the contract because you need to obey "the rules", or are you going to pay $50k and take the much higher paying job? What does that have to do with this? Someone who rents a property with the intent of subletting through Airbnb is not paying a penalty to break the contract so that they can enter a new one with different terms. They are still bound by the original contract. I'm not talking about the details of the terms, simply pointing out that your analogy of leaving one job for another does not apply.
- imgabe 11y ago
  My point is it's not a moral issue, it's an economic transaction. Both parties are free to negotiate the terms. The landlord often has significantly more leverage to do so.
  - TeMPOraL 11y ago
    But herein lies the problem. By treating a civil contract as a purely economical transaction you just robbed us of the best advantages of being humans rather than mindless systems. Or look at it this way: everyone on this site knows that the basic problem with programming is that machines execute what you wrote to the letter, and do not know about what you meant. That leads to bugs, because our descriptions rarely capture our intentions precisely enough. But we, as humans, most of the time know the intention of the instructions we're receiving. Every time we force something to be evaluated formally instead of socially, we're robbing ourselves of the increased efficiency our minds give us. It's a trade-off, and it's often worth it - but it should be done only when we gain something from it. In the AirBnB subletting situation we gain nothing - contracts gets more complicated to cover new abuse vector, and end result is the same except we've just lost flexibility and efficiency by codifying another part of our interactions.
    - imgabe 11y ago
      We obviously gain something. We gain an increased supply of rooms available for short-term use on AirBnB (and corresponding lower prices). The landlord gains a tenant. The tenant gains the margin between the rent and the AirBnB fees, in exchange for the risk of vacancy, the work of listing the property and managing the guests, and the additional risk of being discovered and having the lease terminated. The tenant has a stronger incentive than usual to maintain the apartment as impeccably as possible, pay rent promptly in full, and screen AirBnB guests to minimize risks, since the lease can be cancelled with little warning if they're discovered. There's clearly a demand in the market for AirBnB. The landlord could easily cut out the middleman and list the property there themselves if they wanted to. If they want to write lease to cut themselves a portion of the profits while letting the tenant do all the work of managing the AirBnB guests, there are probably people who would take them up on that offer as well. Yes, contracts might get some extra words, but they're not written in stone. We can read the words and negotiate to change them to our liking for the mutual benefit of both parties.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> A contract is not a rule, it is an agreement between two parties. A good contract spells out the penalties for what happens when one party doesn't adhere to the terms. Actually, contract law spells out the penalties for what happens when one party doesn't adhere to the terms; a contract may opt to do so for certain cases, but doing so doesn't make it a "good contract", there are costs and benefits to doing so, and whether it makes sense to do so depends on the context of the contract, the types of violations being addressed, whether the parties envision continuing the relationship after the violations addressed, and other factors.