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> "Legalizing forced arbitration is a right-wing conspiracy to reduce the scale of government". I figured that's what you'd say. I think you misunderstand the

> "Legalizing forced arbitration is a right-wing conspiracy to reduce the scale of government". I figured that's what you'd say. I think you misunderstand the meaning and connotations of the term "conspiracy theory." It doesn't mean, literally, "a theory that a group is conspiring." A true conspiracy theory, at its core, is an outrageous and unbelievable idea that gets elaborated on to an unreasonable degree. Think UFO coverups and black helicopters of the New World Order. It's not outragious and unreasonable to think "the right wing" is acting together to "reduce the scale of government" or support "business friendly" polices like binding arbitration at the expense of consumers. They literally campaign, in public, on those and similar ideas.

philwelch 8y ago
There’s a spectrum of conspiracy theories, and not all of them are as absurd as the ones that literally involve UFO’s and the like. Yes, there is an ideological element to this, but there’s also a very pedestrian element of an overworked court and legal system that is more than willing to accept compromises that reduce its already-crushing workload, and dismissing that element because it’s “simpler” to just blame Republicans is the same kind of oversimplification that makes outright conspiracy theories appeal to people. It’s a lot easier to point to a group of people and say “they did this!” than to actually grasp all the complications of how complex real-world systems function and malfunction.
- chc 8y ago
  Are you saying you don't see any connection between decades of leaders who believe the government should have its funding cut and be less involved in business, and the fact that the government is so starved for resources that it can scarcely afford to get involved in businesses' disputes? There appears to be a pretty straightforward cause-and-effect relationship there.
  - philwelch 8y ago
    No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm just saying there are more factors than that and that things like unintended consequences and complicated feedback loops exist and have real consequences even though they're not as "straightforward" or "simple" as just blaming people you disagree with.
    - Lionsion 8y ago
      > even though they're not as "straightforward" or "simple" as just blaming people you disagree with. You're getting way, way off track. This whole subthread started when someone asked why lawmakers would "cede power" to arbitrators, and the response was maybe they don't mind, with examples where they sought reduced power for the government. You're the one who seems intent on making this about blaming them.
      - philwelch 8y ago
        I’m kind of doing a bad job here because the GP of the comment I was replying to bailed out and replaced his whole comment with something dismissive, so we can’t actually see the counterpoint I was trying to defend. Honestly, this thread (and HN in total) is increasingly a lost cause, so let’s just move on with our respective lives.
        Lionsion 8y ago
        > I’m kind of doing a bad job here because the GP of the comment I was replying to bailed out and replaced his whole comment with something dismissive, so we can’t actually see the counterpoint I was trying to defend. That point is preserved as a quotation in one of the other replies, and it seemed kinda facile. > Honestly, this thread (and HN in total) is increasingly a lost cause This subthread certainly wasn't good, but that happens when people double down on bad points, like the "conspiracy theory" one.
        philwelch 8y ago
        It was a badly expressed point, but it's not a bad one. I'm not sure what's facile about supposing that lawmakers are willing to compromise on reducing load on the court system. I don't understand how someone would find that motivation "more weird" than thinking that a controlling share of lawmakers are "ideologically committed" to bringing about the exact status quo we find ourselves in. If anything, I find your explanation to be the facile one. Simple explanations are emotionally appealing; simple explanations that scapegoat some disliked group of people are especially emotionally appealing. Your particular explanation has two flaws, however: (a) If conservatives really had their way, this isn't where we would have ended up. This is a compromise, or at least a counter-response to the state of affairs where there are so many implied obligations, warranties, and disclosures--a state of affairs that conservatives don't seem to support in the first place--that people need to sign or agree to 20-page legal documents as often as they do throughout the course of their lives. A couple concrete examples: * Most commercial software EULAs require you to agree that not to use the software to run nuclear reactors, because if that wasn't in there, and you used it to run a nuclear reactor, and it crashed, you and everyone who got radiation poisoning would take the software company to court and that would be a stupid waste of time, so to countervent that, we have EULAs that specifically call out that use case as not supported. * Every apartment lease I have signed has a clause that forbids me from subletting the apartment, because otherwise, I would have an implied legal right to sublet my apartment. If that implied legal right didn't exist, that would be one fewer clause that I would have to read and initial when I rented an apartment. Conservatives aren't and weren't the ones imposing those obligations in the first place. But, now that they exist, there are very long legal documents that people have to agree to. And, as it happens, when there's a dispute over whether either side has held up their end of a long legal document, it ends up in court and everything is expensive. Arbitration is a reaction to that, and since US law tends to operate in a "permitted unless explicitly prohibited" way, there wasn't necessarily any particular ideological or political action required to make mandatory arbitration possible in the first place (although if you know of any, please share). (b) Given that this is a compromise, why is it a relatively stable compromise? Why doesn't it just get overturned or outlawed in every US state where Democrats control the state government? Two of those states are Delaware and California, for example, and since a lot of companies operate in California and incorporate in Delaware, the laws of those two states would have an outsized impact on the rest of the country. I can think of one reasonable explanation: Democratic lawmakers in these states understand that the court system doesn't even have the capacity to handle all the litigation that it would need to handle without mandatory arbitration in place, so they maintain the shitty compromise and try to gradually angle for a more sustainable solution to the problem. (Since we're not discussing conspiracy theories, I'm not going to touch the notion that Delaware and California Democrats are secretly corporatist "starve-the-beast" conservatives and that the two-party system is a sham.)

philwelch 8y ago

There’s a spectrum of conspiracy theories, and not all of them are as absurd as the ones that literally involve UFO’s and the like. Yes, there is an ideological element to this, but there’s also a very pedestrian element of an overworked court and legal system that is more than willing to accept compromises that reduce its already-crushing workload, and dismissing that element because it’s “simpler” to just blame Republicans is the same kind of oversimplification that makes outright conspiracy theories appeal to people. It’s a lot easier to point to a group of people and say “they did this!” than to actually grasp all the complications of how complex real-world systems function and malfunction.

chc 8y ago
Are you saying you don't see any connection between decades of leaders who believe the government should have its funding cut and be less involved in business, and the fact that the government is so starved for resources that it can scarcely afford to get involved in businesses' disputes? There appears to be a pretty straightforward cause-and-effect relationship there.
- philwelch 8y ago
  No, that's not what I'm saying at all. I'm just saying there are more factors than that and that things like unintended consequences and complicated feedback loops exist and have real consequences even though they're not as "straightforward" or "simple" as just blaming people you disagree with.
  - Lionsion 8y ago
    > even though they're not as "straightforward" or "simple" as just blaming people you disagree with. You're getting way, way off track. This whole subthread started when someone asked why lawmakers would "cede power" to arbitrators, and the response was maybe they don't mind, with examples where they sought reduced power for the government. You're the one who seems intent on making this about blaming them.
    - philwelch 8y ago
      I’m kind of doing a bad job here because the GP of the comment I was replying to bailed out and replaced his whole comment with something dismissive, so we can’t actually see the counterpoint I was trying to defend. Honestly, this thread (and HN in total) is increasingly a lost cause, so let’s just move on with our respective lives.
      - Lionsion 8y ago
        > I’m kind of doing a bad job here because the GP of the comment I was replying to bailed out and replaced his whole comment with something dismissive, so we can’t actually see the counterpoint I was trying to defend. That point is preserved as a quotation in one of the other replies, and it seemed kinda facile. > Honestly, this thread (and HN in total) is increasingly a lost cause This subthread certainly wasn't good, but that happens when people double down on bad points, like the "conspiracy theory" one.
        philwelch 8y ago
        It was a badly expressed point, but it's not a bad one. I'm not sure what's facile about supposing that lawmakers are willing to compromise on reducing load on the court system. I don't understand how someone would find that motivation "more weird" than thinking that a controlling share of lawmakers are "ideologically committed" to bringing about the exact status quo we find ourselves in. If anything, I find your explanation to be the facile one. Simple explanations are emotionally appealing; simple explanations that scapegoat some disliked group of people are especially emotionally appealing. Your particular explanation has two flaws, however: (a) If conservatives really had their way, this isn't where we would have ended up. This is a compromise, or at least a counter-response to the state of affairs where there are so many implied obligations, warranties, and disclosures--a state of affairs that conservatives don't seem to support in the first place--that people need to sign or agree to 20-page legal documents as often as they do throughout the course of their lives. A couple concrete examples: * Most commercial software EULAs require you to agree that not to use the software to run nuclear reactors, because if that wasn't in there, and you used it to run a nuclear reactor, and it crashed, you and everyone who got radiation poisoning would take the software company to court and that would be a stupid waste of time, so to countervent that, we have EULAs that specifically call out that use case as not supported. * Every apartment lease I have signed has a clause that forbids me from subletting the apartment, because otherwise, I would have an implied legal right to sublet my apartment. If that implied legal right didn't exist, that would be one fewer clause that I would have to read and initial when I rented an apartment. Conservatives aren't and weren't the ones imposing those obligations in the first place. But, now that they exist, there are very long legal documents that people have to agree to. And, as it happens, when there's a dispute over whether either side has held up their end of a long legal document, it ends up in court and everything is expensive. Arbitration is a reaction to that, and since US law tends to operate in a "permitted unless explicitly prohibited" way, there wasn't necessarily any particular ideological or political action required to make mandatory arbitration possible in the first place (although if you know of any, please share). (b) Given that this is a compromise, why is it a relatively stable compromise? Why doesn't it just get overturned or outlawed in every US state where Democrats control the state government? Two of those states are Delaware and California, for example, and since a lot of companies operate in California and incorporate in Delaware, the laws of those two states would have an outsized impact on the rest of the country. I can think of one reasonable explanation: Democratic lawmakers in these states understand that the court system doesn't even have the capacity to handle all the litigation that it would need to handle without mandatory arbitration in place, so they maintain the shitty compromise and try to gradually angle for a more sustainable solution to the problem. (Since we're not discussing conspiracy theories, I'm not going to touch the notion that Delaware and California Democrats are secretly corporatist "starve-the-beast" conservatives and that the two-party system is a sham.)