All of your examples concern people solving their own problems, not solving other people's problems, or providing infrastructure/tools for solving other people'

All of your examples concern people solving their own problems, not solving other people's problems, or providing infrastructure/tools for solving other people's problems. People who "read their own legal papers" should be commended for their diligence - but unless they've spent hundreds or thousands of hours studying the specific field in which they're signing papers, chances are there's a ton of meaning in those papers they don't understand or even recognize. Sometimes what's not present is as important as what is present - and sometimes the person who drafted the papers has included terms and conditions that sound innocuous but are incredibly important, or are completely unenforceable but sound scary. The example you pose probably isn't "fear", it's economics - e.g., "I don't want to give up having the other things in my life I'd have to sacrifice to have money for an attorney . . . and this dispute isn't really that important to me, so I'll just let the other guy win." I think it's a good thing that lots of minor disputes aren't litigated fully.