5 ms·

I understand the concern, and I agree that real problems arise - relatively often - when people don't take the time to read and understand contracts before they

I understand the concern, and I agree that real problems arise - relatively often - when people don't take the time to read and understand contracts before they sign them. I don't have any data for the following assertion, but I would hazard a guess that the reason most people don't read contracts is not that they do not have the time to read them, but that they do not want to take the time to read them. I think building in a cooling off period is not likely to incentivise people to take the time to read and understand their contracts. The experience of reading and trying to understand a contract is too unpleasant. Could the experience be made more pleasant? I don't know, but if you find a way to crack that nut, you might find a unicorn inside.

Lawtonfogle 12y ago
>people don't take the time to read and understand contracts before they sign them Should an individual be bound by an agreement they did not understand when they entered into it? Take phone contracts. Every time I've spoken with a sales person, they outright lied to me about the contract. I'm one of the only individuals who sit down and read the contract realizing where they lied to me. But friend and parents are far more trusting and have been tricked numerous times. Given the evidence that companies are exploiting both customer's trust and customers limited understanding (especially when you consider that many below average individuals are signing these contracts), I feel these contracts should be just as valid as a contract signed by a 7 year old.
pdkl95 12y ago
> incentivise people to take the time to read That, technically, is not what I'm proposing. I suggest a burden on businesses or other parties that want to require a contract, in the form of a forced delay roughly proportional to the length/complexity of the contract they wish to use. In practice, I expect businesses will find this unacceptable[1]. They would therefor work to find some alternative solution. It might be that there wasn't a need for contracts in some situations, or that the contract language could be made much simpler/shorter. Alternatively, maybe a handful of "well known" standard contracts could become popular, similar in style to the Creative Commons licenses. We cannot (and should not) avoid complex contracts entirely, but we might be able to fix a lot of common "simple" situations that shouldn't use a complex contract that few people read. By setting up the time burden, I expect complex contract (that might already have a "cooling off" period) wouldn't be significantly affected, but everyday small-time stuff will be incentivised to move away from the current practice of throwing usually-one-sided legalease at everything. [1] I have often heard that the reason our current credit card system hasn't been updated to something with actual security (chip+pin, one time numbers, some sort of callback system, etc) is that any of these better methods would slow down transactions, resulting in less sales. Regardless of this being true or not, I'm attempting to utilize the perception.

Lawtonfogle 12y ago

>people don't take the time to read and understand contracts before they sign them Should an individual be bound by an agreement they did not understand when they entered into it? Take phone contracts. Every time I've spoken with a sales person, they outright lied to me about the contract. I'm one of the only individuals who sit down and read the contract realizing where they lied to me. But friend and parents are far more trusting and have been tricked numerous times. Given the evidence that companies are exploiting both customer's trust and customers limited understanding (especially when you consider that many below average individuals are signing these contracts), I feel these contracts should be just as valid as a contract signed by a 7 year old.

pdkl95 12y ago

> incentivise people to take the time to read That, technically, is not what I'm proposing. I suggest a burden on businesses or other parties that want to require a contract, in the form of a forced delay roughly proportional to the length/complexity of the contract they wish to use. In practice, I expect businesses will find this unacceptable[1]. They would therefor work to find some alternative solution. It might be that there wasn't a need for contracts in some situations, or that the contract language could be made much simpler/shorter. Alternatively, maybe a handful of "well known" standard contracts could become popular, similar in style to the Creative Commons licenses. We cannot (and should not) avoid complex contracts entirely, but we might be able to fix a lot of common "simple" situations that shouldn't use a complex contract that few people read. By setting up the time burden, I expect complex contract (that might already have a "cooling off" period) wouldn't be significantly affected, but everyday small-time stuff will be incentivised to move away from the current practice of throwing usually-one-sided legalease at everything. [1] I have often heard that the reason our current credit card system hasn't been updated to something with actual security (chip+pin, one time numbers, some sort of callback system, etc) is that any of these better methods would slow down transactions, resulting in less sales. Regardless of this being true or not, I'm attempting to utilize the perception.