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Justice Stevens reads the fine print

matthewbutterick.com

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Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#221

Post by xyzzyz »

rayiner wrote: post #197
paxys wrote: post #5

Related to the opening of this article – it is interesting to see how one can get completely soured on certain products or experiences because, by virtue of their profession, they see the dirty underbelly of how things in that industry actually work. Someone who has read cruise contracts in detail will never want to go on one. Cooks with experience in commercial kitchens never want to eat at a restaurant again. Someo…

I don’t know if I agree with this. My experience working for a federal judge made me much more confident in the criminal justice system. In the media we only see the situations where the justice system got something wrong—which is inevitable in a country of 330 million people. Looking behind the scenes made me understand that for every case where there is a conviction on shaky evidence, there are dozens of cases wher…

Did your wife's case actually go to trial, or was it also plea-bargained? If the former, why would the defendant not take the plea in such clear-cut case?

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#222

Post by makeitdouble »

lesam wrote: post #138
makeitdouble wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a complete fiction that normal people read pages and pages of contracts, EULAs, and that type of stuff. I think incredibly long EULAs would be fine if violation on technicalities were lighter, and/or critical sections were put on top, in plain language. For instance, I wouldn't care much about Youtube's terms and services outside of what would warrant an account ban, and what's the privacy boundaries. If Googl…

Re: the house, no, most people don’t sit and read it: https://themortgagereports.com/39671/home-closing-what-you-n... . Even professional investors with millions of dollars of investments don’t appear to read or negotiate the documents until it looks like it might matter: https://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2022/03/odd-lots-pod... People just don’t care that much about legal documents until it looks like it will…

Your links had me thinking for a while.

On themortgagereports, setting aside that the other camp from "the absolutists" is the former HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson, who is like, one man, who could also probably litigate his way out of any serious trouble, it still gets to the conclusion:

> The important point is that there is much that should be read in home closing materials. Whether you should read every word is arguable.

On professional investors, I wouldn't also hold them as the shinning beacon representing what most of us think or do with money, contracts or responsibilities.

I don't get the feeling that most people don't read, just that it's a deeply painful and frustrating experience that some people bail out from. Like tax reports, or homeworks. I still think most people are way too scare to not take the time to check as much as they can, for them these papers could affect the next 30 years of their life.

Also there's whole sections that can be skimmed pretty fast, but it's different to me than "not reading".

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#223

Post by noduerme »

pc86 wrote: post #112
lordnacho wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's impolite to label the original answer stupid, he seems to have taken time to at least think about it, and we should keep a civil tone here. However, I agree with the guy who called it stupid. Not in calling it stupid, but in that it's an answer that creates more questions than it answers. You could nuance it and take the steelman version, which is that everyone should be generally educated and know a bit…

I don't think there's anything uncivil about calling something as stupid as "if you don't want to be a victim of the very legal foundation of the country you live in, you must: a) be smart enough to get into a very competitive professional school (most people don't have a college degree, which is required, and even objectively bad law schools are somewhat hard to get into), b) be wealthy enough to pay for it (it cost…

There's a lot of hostility to unpack in your response, but I'd just say this: It costs nothing to study law, you don't need a college degree to pass the bar, and it's a useful life skill the way understanding code is. If you have the ability to study something that would benefit you and don't choose to, that's a waste of intellect. If you feel the need to deride it as well, that's indicative of having a chip on your shoulder. Ultimately your unfounded class assumptions and indignation at people who try to better themselves by learning as much about the system we live in as possible are a lot of wind and water, and speak more about your insecurities and fear of learning something that seems scary. Make all the appeals to popular emotion you want - they don't change reality. The reality is that people who can read and write legal documents have an ability to execute all of the business strategies that the smartest minds on HN struggle with; for the same reason that those brilliant minds can execute algorithms in binary that the average lawyer can't conceive of. If you could know both languages, why wouldn't you? Your comment is fundamentally no different from one which derides learning math as an elitist activity, when someone else says it's a way of making sense of the natural world. Or who says that learning another language is only for the elite.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#224

Post by noduerme »

atoav wrote: post #68
noduerme wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer according to my family: Get a law degree. I'm the only one who doesn't have one / hasn't passed a bar exam. If you don't want to be victim of that system, treat being a lawyer as a form of hacking. It's no different than being a victim of dark pattern software practices, which you would be if you didn't know how to code. (Ironically, part of my slot involves helping lawyers get around pitfalls in software)…

It saddens me that such a great part of US society (as I perceive it from the outside) has basically given up on fixing any systemic problem at all. Be it small things like robocalls, or bigger things like a broken healthcare system, gun violence, lobbying in politics or things like the housing/opiod crisis — a big part of the US people I talk to have basically given up on any collective way of fixing these issues an…

It saddens me to see a whole generation grow up losing the DIY ethos that let Americans develop into the strongest, wealthiest middle class of any country in history. It's one thing to demand a better social safety net; it's another entirely to abandon the freedom-to-DIY engine that is the reason immigrants like my family still line up for years to come to America. Those who move to Norway get the benefits but those who come to America have the opportunity for greater rewards. Along with much greater risks. It's frankly insulting to assume they don't know what they're getting into.

And if/when a family like mine puts themselves through law school - this generation wants to slag it as if that represents privilege or assimilation?

My father was responsible for having hundreds of criminal convictions overturned in one single civil rights case before the supreme court of California. His parents didn't even speak English. I guess he shouldn't have put himself through law school taking on debt and selling shoes?

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#225

Post by noduerme »

otterley wrote: post #181
noduerme wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd counter that if you expect people to handle all your legal issues, your software issues, your financial issues and your medical issues, without a solid understanding of any of those fields, you're also going to spend (and likely waste) a lot of money h and be less effective than if you knew what was going on. Of those things you mentioned, only the law degree is useful when dealing with issues that arise in all o…

The statistics don’t support your assertion. Most people aren’t lawyers, and the median amount of money a person spends on legal counsel is pretty low.

The question in any given area you outsource to experts isn't how much you spend, but what percentage you waste as a result of lacking domain specific knowledge. For instance, I'm not a good auto mechanic, let alone an expert. But I've read my car's factory service manual end to end, and looked up a lot of what I didn't understand. I don't usually have to ask a mechanic what's wrong, but if a mechanic tells me something I understand what they're talking about and what it should cost, and thus, I might pay $1000 for a job where someone else would pay $3000. Having as much domain specific knowledge as you can is always a good thing. That's the point. Building wealth is not about refraining from spending money. It's about getting what your money is worth without getting scammed.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#226

Post by otterley »

noduerme wrote: post #225
otterley wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The statistics don’t support your assertion. Most people aren’t lawyers, and the median amount of money a person spends on legal counsel is pretty low.

The question in any given area you outsource to experts isn't how much you spend, but what percentage you waste as a result of lacking domain specific knowledge. For instance, I'm not a good auto mechanic, let alone an expert. But I've read my car's factory service manual end to end, and looked up a lot of what I didn't understand. I don't usually have to ask a mechanic what's wrong, but if a mechanic tells me someth…

1. You're improperly discounting opportunity cost, which is making your math incorrect.

2. You might have saved the same amount of money by taking your car to more than one mechanic to get an estimate, without having done all that research.

3. "Building wealth is not about refraining from spending money." On the contrary, that's exactly what it's about, algebraically speaking. Income minus expenses is profit, a/k/a wealth.

Now, don't get me wrong - I don't disagree that it's good to know things; I went to university and then law school to get a well-rounded education (I'm an attorney as well as an engineer). But that doesn't mean I spent my time in the most economical way possible. (Law school was very expensive, and I don't even practice law.) If I scrubbed toilets for a living, I'd be way worse off than I am today, even if I knew how to fix my own car.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#227

Post by noduerme »

otterley wrote: post #226
noduerme wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question in any given area you outsource to experts isn't how much you spend, but what percentage you waste as a result of lacking domain specific knowledge. For instance, I'm not a good auto mechanic, let alone an expert. But I've read my car's factory service manual end to end, and looked up a lot of what I didn't understand. I don't usually have to ask a mechanic what's wrong, but if a mechanic tells me someth…

1. You're improperly discounting opportunity cost, which is making your math incorrect. 2. You might have saved the same amount of money by taking your car to more than one mechanic to get an estimate, without having done all that research. 3. "Building wealth is not about refraining from spending money." On the contrary, that's exactly what it's about, algebraically speaking. Income minus expenses is profit, a/k/a w…

How do you know the second or third mechanic you take your car to isn't shining you on? My hourly time is $200, when I'm on the clock. Nothing spectacular, but not bad for a drop-out. That doesn't mean I can't do 4 hours of yeoman's labor in my free time to save myself $200 in legal or accounting or insurance or construction contractor or mechanic's fees. Plus I end up educating myself in some field I'm less familiar with. Doesn't that education more than offset the lost opportunity cost, considering it's done in my off-work hours and only at the expense of entertainment?

Congratulations might be the wrong word, but I applaud that you chose to become an attorney and an engineer; that type of combination is the gold standard for my family. I can't believe it's something you'd ever regret.

My argument throughout this thread has been misconstrued. All I'm arguing for is that people should use every available opportunity to educate themselves, and that certain things (to me, logic, computer science, legal, mechanical, biological, historical, and literary - but your preferences may differ) are valuable tools that are worth constantly continuing to educate yourself in.

On refraining from spending money: If you buy things that are worth what you paid for them (as an expendable or an experience), or things that increase in value over time, then spending money is fine. i.e. a fairly agreed-upon trade benefits both parties. The loss of net value comes in with friction in the transaction. Generally, spending money unwisely. If you require an expert go-between for every transaction, those fractions add up to the difference between your income and expenditure. Put more bluntly: The money I save on mechanics because I read the manuals and/or do the work myself is money I save. When I do want to spend money, it's not a problem if I'm getting what I expect from it, because it's an equal trade. The only loss would be if I didn't willingly agree to pay for what I got.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#228

Post by noduerme »

massysett wrote: post #191
RugnirViking wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a lot of fine print benefits you I'd love it if you could give examples, preferably more than one. Because most people's view of "fine print" is that it is invariably out to screw you over as hard as possible.

It allows Carnival Cruise Lines to operate cheaply. Cruises depend on cheap labor and low costs. This brings affordable cruise vacations to the masses, as well as employment opportunities in the industry. There are vacation alternatives, such as land-based resorts. But they tend to be more expensive.

The downside to cheapening every experience for the masses is that you then have to create some kind of extraordinarily untouchable / "aspirational" product for the rich. I thought it was better when flying, taking cruises, or going to Vegas were things accessible to the everyman, but which people had to really earn. As a result, they looked their best, dressed their best, and were on their best behavior. Everyone who simply needed to get somewhere could take a bus or a train. People who wanted a dumpy vacation could drive to Disneyland.

Turning middle-class totems like a once-a-year flight or once-in-ten-years cruise into a situation where 90% of it is sold as herd steerage with markups for barely better "business class" or whatever, had this one perverse effect: It separated the truly rich from the middle class, once and for all. For although the upper-upper-middle class still fly Business or First, the upper class only fly in private jets and no longer interact with the middle or lower class whatsoever. The distance between coach and business became a chasm between a commercial flight and a private jet.

It would be cool to start a middle class airline, or cruise, where everything was just expensive enough to make people act civilized.

>> There are vacation alternatives, such as land-based resorts. But they tend to be more expensive.

Yeah, then again, after watching "White Lotus" I guess we're just completely fucked. No one acts civilized anymore.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#229

Post by noduerme »

rovr138 wrote: post #65
noduerme wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The answer according to my family: Get a law degree. I'm the only one who doesn't have one / hasn't passed a bar exam. If you don't want to be victim of that system, treat being a lawyer as a form of hacking. It's no different than being a victim of dark pattern software practices, which you would be if you didn't know how to code. (Ironically, part of my slot involves helping lawyers get around pitfalls in software)…

My "hack" around this is, have a friend that's a lawyer. I lucked out in that we had been friends before. I have answered many development and programming questions and issues for them, and they have for me too. To others commenting, I guess it's about having trust in others and using that. We have friends and family that are in CS, accounting, law, medicine, etc. What we don't have, we pay for. Find a good resource…

That's the right hack in a lot of cases. Where would we be without friends who know more than we do about these things? But those friends also educate themselves in a lot of fields - and they know what they are or aren't qualified to answer. So if I ask a friend who's a graphics guy about lighting he can help me, but he'll point me to someone better. Or if I ask family members about a specific legal thing, they'll refer me to someone more specialized in a particular form of law. Nothing wrong with that. It's more like: I need to know enough at least to tell whether I'm being bullshitted or not; I trust my friends to know enough to tell me if they can't fully answer my question. But there is nowhere in that chain where knowing more isn't valuable.

Re: Justice Stevens reads the fine print

#230

Post by antattack »

lbriner wrote: post #150
antattack wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of a solution could be to require fine print and it's revisions to be posted online so it's easily accessible and up-to-date. Once fine-print is published we could have a review sites (similar to fact checking sites) that could extract the essence from the fine print and point out major points, issues, etc. Another, solution that would dis-incentivize 'kitchen-sink' contracts would be ability to invalidate whole…

You are massively over-simplifying the problem. Imagine someone put their contract online somewhere saying, "you must litigate in Miami-Dade County", what happens next? Is that lawful? Is it reasonable? Is it moral? You could easily have multiple legal professionals arguing about whether it is or isn't and at the end of the day, most people decide with their wallet anyway. The reason we have Courts in many cases is t…

I think it's a step in the right direction.

Single location where people can access fine print and it's revisions (fine print reserving the right to change at any time is such a BS) would make fine print more accessible (you can zoom in, print, etc, and service could monitor for changes and alert you to it.

Argument that one needs a lawyer to understand the contract highlights a problem with contracts. We all could use education and discussion about contract clauses and analyzing contract clauses online would be a perfect forum for that. It would also put pressure on contract writers and companies to make them more reasonable and clear.

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