alt Hacker NewsBut some terms were claimed to be reasonable. If power being disproportionate is sufficient to void terms, why not those terms too?
> The government is not there just to enforce laws, but also to legislate such that the scales are balanced. Otherwise we may as well live in a dictatorship.
Should the state just prohibit all agreements between two parties unless the state's adjudicator decides they are exactly equal in "power" and permits it? Sounds horrific, like a dictatorship. The government is not my guardian and does not do my thinking for me. I get that many people are subservient and would much prefer that, but that's no good either. There's an enormous middle ground between anarchy and "the state intervenes to allegedly 'balance the scales' in every aspect of peoples' private lives".
Replies
> The government is not my guardian and does not do my thinking for me.
This is a quaintly (US) American perspective.
The government is and does literally both of those things, and the arguments in these threads are about the fine details of the manner in which they should continue doing so in the future.
> Should the state just prohibit all agreements between two parties unless the state's adjudicator decides they are exactly equal in "power" and permits it?
It's pretty simple. You can write whatever you want into a contract, but if you want to enforce an unreasonable term, you will lose in court and might be forced to remove the term from current and future contracts. That's how it works everywhere. The difference between legislations is just what is considered a reasonable term.
Why needlessly complicate this with so many obtuse hypotheticals when you can just look at other countries that have objectively lower crime rates, greater citizen happiness levels, lower wealth inequality and see how the solved this problem?
> Should the state just prohibit all agreements between two parties unless the state's adjudicator decides they are exactly equal in "power" and permits it.
This is a strawman and you know it. Please at least make an attempt to argue in good faith, otherwise there's no point.
Of course there should be a reasonable middle-ground. The current situation with completely bogus ToS is not it.
Let me turn it around: should the state just abandon it's duty of creating an fair and equal playing field between large corporations and clients and let society devolve into a corporatocracy where laws are enforced purely to further corporate interests? Because that's exactly what you seem to be suggesting.
See? Not particularly conductive to discourse, is it :D
> If power being disproportionate is sufficient to void terms, why not those terms too?
Power being disproportionate is obviously not sufficient to void terms - that's not what the comment you're replying to said. It is necessary to void terms when there is a power imbalance.
> Should the state just prohibit all agreements between two parties unless the state's adjudicator decides they are exactly equal in "power" and permits it?
This is obviously ridiculous and makes me think you are not arguing in good faith. Terms have to justify their existence according to logical principles that we argue about. It does not follow that there has to be a "state's adjudicator"! I am just describing how democracies come up with laws - it is not some fantasy Orwellian nightmare.
> I get that many people are subservient and would much prefer that
Ironic comment!