Comment by kolinko
7 days ago
Depends on jurisdiction, just because someone wrote something in a contract doesn’t mean it’s binding.
In Poland/EU we have an (ever growing) list of forbidden clauses that even when written and signed by consumer are null and void. And I think these can be enacted retroactively - when corporations invent new shady clauses, government steps in and tells them these are invalid.
This helps to even out the consumer-corporation field.
> we have an (ever growing) list of forbidden clauses that even when written and signed by consumer are null and void
I'm pretty sure that's true almost everywhere. Law beats contract. The real question is how strong the laws are. In the US not so much because of small government and stuff, especially in red states.
The law matters very little when enforcing it in court often means a multiyear lawsuit against an opponent which employs an army of attorneys, has effectively unlimited amounts of money, will likely cost you ruinious sums of money, and for an outcome that's far from guaranteed.
You can do that too. You can show up, represent yourself and pay a few hundred dollar court fee, while the big company has to waste hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend themselves from you. You'll probably lose the case if you don't have a lawyer, but in a place like the US, you don't have to pay the other side's legal fees unless the case is frivolous (which it won't be).
>The law matters very little when enforcing it in court often means a multiyear lawsuit against an opponent which employs an army of attorneys, has effectively unlimited amounts of money, will likely cost you ruinious sums of money, and for an outcome that's far from guaranteed.
Or when you can't even enforce anything in court as you've already given up your right to spend all your money suing, as binding arbitration is the required and only mechanism to "resolve disputes." To make it extra fair, the corporation pays the arbitration firm for their "objective" decisions and not you.
What could go wrong?
2 replies →
The US is not small government at all. It’s one of the largest governments in the world. It just exists almost exclusively to serve billionaires.
It’s “small government” when it comes to protecting your individual rights, and full flock powered ai surveillance state when someone has an abortion.
I obviously didn't invent that term. And in large part you're right that it means deregulation so companies can do whatever
That’s great! Because then you’re left with the simple task of raising it up with the government.
There are governments with working institutions believe or not.
Also, I just read up and in our legal system a nonindividual agreement is nonbinding if “it is drastically against the consumer’s interests or against ‘good manners’”, with free legal help for consumers affected.
E.g. last year PayPal was forbidden from giving out bans and suspensions of user accounts based on vague and overly broad rationales. They were also charged $25M for that, but that’s peanuts.
If you think about, a good government has institutions where there are people whose full time job is to look at hands of corporations and listen to citizens. I know this may sound like sci-fi if you don’t live in a country like that.
It’s actually the judiciary you’d bring it up with, I believe.
Executive branch in Poland and I guess the rest of Europe as well. Bureau for Consumer Affairs. They make decisions, give penalties to corps and invalidate harmful ToS.
Then if a corporation doesn’t like it (and they never do), they can appeal in court.
E.g. PayPal is appealing rn because their shitty ToS were invalidated last year and they were punished for them.
The judiciary is a branch of government. But more crucially, some countries have better consumer protection agencies, eliminating the need for people to go through costly court battles for common sense stuff.
Funny how the type system works in a legislative framework: null AND void
I'm never going to interpret that one with a straight face.