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If nobody ever negotiates the terms of a pre-fabricated contract, then there is no freedom of contract going on, as a matter of common sense. Have you ever bee

by vba616 3y ago

If nobody ever negotiates the terms of a pre-fabricated contract, then there is no freedom of contract going on, as a matter of common sense. Have you ever been part of a corporate re-org where you were technically laid off and rehired and thus were legally forced to sign a new agreement? Such freedom! All "contracts" that fit a pattern of take-it-or-leave-it with a zillion provisions should be negotiated by the government, a union, or some other collective entity with a reasonable claim to protecting the interests of the side that has no leverage alone. Plenty of agreements are heavily constrained by regulators, (think insurance for example) and we take it for granted, so I am not suggesting any radical idea, just pushing back on the weasels who are always working at corrupting things.

Terr_ 3y ago
To continue on the concept of illusory freedom: > "I should not agree with your young friends," said Marcus curtly, "I am so old-fashioned as to believe in free contract." > "I, being older, perhaps believe in it even more," answered M. Louis smiling. "But surely it is a very old principle of law that a leonine contract is not a free contract. And it is hypocrisy to pretend that a bargain between a starving man and a man with all the food is anything but a leonine contract." > He glanced up at the fire-escape, a ladder leading up to the balcony of a very high attic above. "I live in that garret; or rather on that balcony. If I fell off the balcony and hung on a spike, so far from the steps that somebody with a ladder could offer to rescue me if I gave him a hundred million francs, I should be quite morally justified in using his ladder and then telling him to go to hell for his hundred million. Hell, indeed, is not out of the picture; for it is a sin of injustice to force an advantage against the desperate [...]" -- The Paradoxes of Mr Pond (1937) by G.K. Chesterton http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500421.txt http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500421.txt

by vba616 3y ago

Terr_ 3y ago

To continue on the concept of illusory freedom: > "I should not agree with your young friends," said Marcus curtly, "I am so old-fashioned as to believe in free contract." > "I, being older, perhaps believe in it even more," answered M. Louis smiling. "But surely it is a very old principle of law that a leonine contract is not a free contract. And it is hypocrisy to pretend that a bargain between a starving man and a man with all the food is anything but a leonine contract." > He glanced up at the fire-escape, a ladder leading up to the balcony of a very high attic above. "I live in that garret; or rather on that balcony. If I fell off the balcony and hung on a spike, so far from the steps that somebody with a ladder could offer to rescue me if I gave him a hundred million francs, I should be quite morally justified in using his ladder and then telling him to go to hell for his hundred million. Hell, indeed, is not out of the picture; for it is a sin of injustice to force an advantage against the desperate [...]" -- The Paradoxes of Mr Pond (1937) by G.K. Chesterton http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500421.txt http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500421.txt