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impossibleforktoday at 9:22 AM4 repliesview on HN

Here in Sweden the thing that makes something a contract is that you can't change it-- that it has definite provisions that have been agreed and that both parties actually expect the other to hold up their part.

The US breaking its contract law to treat non-contracts as contracts is one of the most insane things I've seen a legal system do to itself.


Replies

Quarreltoday at 9:53 AM

I do not think this is true for Sweden.

The key difference, is that the US is many jurisdictions (Federal + 50 states + a lot of others, from counties to cities to territories to MANY others), and the variance amongst those is high.

The key thing well regulated places like Sweden get right, is that in consumer contracts you have minimum bars that you must meet regardless of what you can get the consumer to agree to. So, for instance, return policies, for goods bought online have minimum standards they must meet.

In the US, these things have huge variability. There are well regulated states, and well, the others.

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victorbjorklundtoday at 9:45 AM

This is not true. It is 100% possible to write a contract in Sweden where one of the paragraphs says that you can change it in this and that way. And if we're talking about business to business contracts, it will probably in almost all cases be enforceable, even if you're writing that one party can just announce changes. In fact, I think most business to business contracts have some kind of clause specifying that it is possible to raise prices or change certain things.

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lesuoractoday at 9:39 AM

Presumable in Sweeden you can agree to new contract that supercedes the current one? That's all that's (argueable) happening here.

To me the insane part is that contracts don't have to be registered with the courts (or some qualified third party) ahead of time.

Like each party could show up with their own piece of paper (or not be able to provide it). Which is largely the issue here in that one party is showing up with a 2021 document and the other a 2023 document.

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