Market Failure? Arbitration Epidemic

[theunbeholden]

http://www.epi.org/publication/the-arbitration-epidemic/

 

I wish for people to look and discuss this mandatory dispute resolutions being injected into labour contracts, just because those contracts have their own rules that permit all sorts of violations of labor rights and working conditions that favor the business rather than people. The court disallows class action law suits around this allowance of mandatory arbitration much like how it would be in a free market society since the private businesses decide what is a fair labour/consumer contract and there is no universal federal or national system of laws that say how a contract that two people voluntarily entered into is somehow "wrong", even if its mostly one-sided. In a freemarket society there may be different sets of private regulations that can be resolved in other private courts & arbitration (somekind of universal right to a 2nd or 3rd trial in a appellate court of ones own choosing or the human rights enforcement agency representing the citizen that was transgressed), if the mandatory arbitration was extremely biased and unfair ruling BUT those private regulations are designed to favor the business that made it, hence the rulings would tend to favor the businesses. Since the Supreme court ruling in the 80's and subsequent rulings since then having allowed it, it has given rise to a mostly private market run anti-consumer & anti-worker culture revealing the self-interest motivated nature of business and the arbitrary meaningless nature of human, worker and consumer rights.

[Worlok]

There is not fucking way I'm reading all of that. I skimmed like 10 paragraphs.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems the issue is that government has passed laws on what people are allowed to agree to on contracts. This creates the issue where every new law after the fact tries to correct any wrongs with the original law with more rules instead of outright repealing the initial law. Typically, leftists want more and more rules because it didn't work the first 10 times. That appears to the the actual issue, as it tends to be.

 

Obviously, any contract that you voluntarily sign is solely on your shoulders for signing it. Regardless of whether the government passed laws or made rulings to support workers rights (which they have no business doing in the first place) and then turn around and add more bullshit because it wasn't working in the first place. The only labor rights you have are to your own property and labor. If you voluntarily sign a contract, it overwrites your labor rights. You can sign your rights away. It's your right to sign them away.

 

You should know, if everybody doesn't already that US government is a system of corruption and buying votes, whether those votes are those of the people with tax money or if they are the votes of congress bought through donations or valuable information. Laws regarding people and corporations will always go to the highest bidder, and the highest bidder tends to be the corporations.

 

You only have two options and you have to pick one or the other. Does government have no say in what kind of voluntary agreement you can come to or can the government do whatever the hell it damn well pleases? Unless you plan to lead a revolution and depose of government officials or government overall, those are your only two choices.

 

If you can't understand a contract, then you can't consent to it and it is void. If the contract is properly understood on all sides, but one side breaks the contract, you have power to either sue for breech or negotiate for a different, better contract under threat of suit. If you don't like your contract that you chose to sign and you can't get out, then you are a moron and must try to negotiate your way out. No part of a contract requires government and can be handled in civil courts. 

 

I'd say the point is very short and the discussion irrelevant. Government reigns or it is not involved and you are liable for any contract you voluntarily sign.

[theunbeholden]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems the issue is that government has passed laws on what people are allowed to agree to on contracts. This creates the issue where every new law after the fact tries to correct any wrongs with the original law with more rules instead of outright repealing the initial law.

 

 

In a free market society there would be no public laws that limit what people are allowed to agree on (except perhaps private courts that have some standards on contracts) & there would be no labor laws since we enter into contracts voluntarily.  There is a artificial problem here that the laws in question restrict the ability to appeal arbitration decisions & the laws made it illegal to pursue class action law suits but ultimately the problem here is the nature of having no workers/employees rights because of this arbitration (labor laws are superceeded by arbitration laws). If everything would be settled in private arbitration in a freemarket society there would be room for disputing it in another private court that the parties agree on as somekind of universal right (and perhaps some standards on what makes for a valid contract like both parties understanding what has been said & font size or other limits on presentation of contracts etc)... but as I've said the contracts are designed to favor the business and not the employees.

 

 

If you can't understand a contract, then you can't consent to it and it is void. If the contract is properly understood on all sides, but one side breaks the contract, you have power to either sue for breech or negotiate for a different, better contract under threat of suit. If you don't like your contract that you chose to sign and you can't get out, then you are a moron and must try to negotiate your way out. No part of a contract requires government and can be handled in civil courts. 

 

I'd say the point is very short and the discussion irrelevant. Government reigns or it is not involved and you are liable for any contract you voluntarily sign.

 

The contracts are all pretty standardised across all the businesses doing this mandatory private arbitration, none of them provide any of the workers rights that have been fought for over the past several decades just because private businesses are allowed to make mandatory private arbitration. I don't know about this since stance is quite right in every instance, on the one hand I agree in individual responsibility & moral obligations are secondary considerations but the onus can sometimes rest on the employer for putting someone into extremely dangerous working conditions without workers compensation or providing the necessary safety equipment and instructions, by taking advantage of people who lack information on industries or affordable lawyers. We are against the use of force but its clear that private laws & attempts to gain justice would still exist and the negligence for not fulfilling a duty of care that a reasonable person would expect may rest on the employers for not taking the time to find out how to protect workers, instead relying on the ignorance of people to enhance their own profit margins. I would also extend that duty of care to parties that have a advantegous bargaining position with expert lawyers versus a poor person who did not have a lawyer with him when making a decision about selling property, land or goods. But again, in a free market society that kind of onus to a duty of care is all but non-existent depending on which private courts have the best set of private regulations that might make a favourable judgment to people seeking justice, but this private court would have to be voluntarily agreed upon by both the plaintiff and the defendents human rights enforcement agencies or lawyers.

[theunbeholden]

 

 

You only have two options and you have to pick one or the other. Does government have no say in what kind of voluntary agreement you can come to or can the government do whatever the hell it damn well pleases? Unless you plan to lead a revolution and depose of government officials or government overall, those are your only two choices.

 

While I understand that individual responsibility is important element and moral obligation comes secondary atleast to this kind of mentality, I do think it should be prosecutable if it is found that the business did not take steps that a reasonable person would expect to protect their employees, inform their employees of the danger etc Theres problems about what exactly is a "reasonable person", the assumption that the average person is rational and the implausibility of getting everyone to agree on one set of rules without some monopoly on force being used. It would likely take a revolution to institute even a libertarian society so the first option isn't a choice unless you welcome punishment or retreat to unregulated countrysides. Voting for a change of system to lassez faire is possible but another vote could change it back. A either/or position makes things simple but political mobilisation is anything but. I'm totally fine with people making straight forward morally consistent arguments but there are consquentialist positions that point towards less harm being possible under other systems.

 

If govt is to exist (and I'm not saying there is a good moral argument outside of some vague concept of the social contract but rather I present it as something we live with) there must be practical functions of govt that does not entirely infringe on our individual freedoms. I completely agree that greater freedom leads to self determination as the only real way to get out of poverty & that must necessitate a lack of central control over economics or the mandatory contract that is taxation. As in the founding of the US there may be strictly tarrifs as opposed to fixed or progressive taxes on citizens as a way to fund a govt. Objectionable but historically by few. Civil courts need to be able to impose a duty of care under circumstances where the vulnerable enter in contracts, those mentality unable to make such decisions and those without the ability to afford legal representation & for there to be some level of standards for how contracts can be presented. I think that should be preserved but its unlikely that it would be universally under a free market society.

[Nathan Metric]

First of all, there is no such thing as "worker's rights". All rights must be universal. Also, are we really supposed to believe that companies only give workers restroom breaks because the government saids so?

 

Second, when you legislate workers rights into law you create an incentive for corporations to find loop holes such as creating private arbitration systems. Without such legislation there would be practically no reason for them to create such mechanisms except under a belief that arbitration is more economically efficient than the government court.

 

Third, the federal law saids that one cannot appeal a decision by a private arbiter, but in the free market there is no "government" to make an arbiter's decision final.  So what would happen in the free market is either

 

a)the workers and corps would already be subscribed to the same local arbiter before hand.

or

b)the worker's would have their own arbiter, the corporation would have their own arbiter, the two arbiters would agree to select another judge(s) to hear the case and that would make the system fair.

[deadflagblues]

I don't see any difference between this form of attempt to reduce the cost of labour and a more explicit attempt in the form of decreasing wages. Wages cannot be legally decreased past a certain level, so lowering the cost of labour must instead come into place through acts similar to this. A company that pushes this boundary too hard will eventually garner a negative reputation and people will have a higher reservation wage for working there in order to compensate for the gradual encroachment of the company upon the benefits of the workers.

The issue is this and the finality of the decisions of arbitrators.