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If I were to formalize my colloquial understanding of the phrase "ripped off" it would be something like: a transaction took place between two parties where upon evaluation of the results of the transaction after-the-fact revealed that the overall expectations were not met by one party and had the offended party known fully how the transaction was going to play out, the either would not have entered into it or would have only entered into it for a drastically different amount of money. This morning, I went to a bakery and ordered a blueberry muffin. It was fresh and moist and delicious. I was satisfied. If it had instead cost the same money but been dry and crumbly and had a taste of old socks, I would have considered myself to have been "ripped off". But I put no thought into the transaction, I had a wide range of acceptable outcomes, and I did almost no due diligence beforehand to ensure I was going to get the expected result. So now, you ask: > Why does having a contract eliminate the possibility of getting ripped off? If transactions exist along an possibility-for-ripoff spectrum from "ordering a blueberry muffin for breakfast" to "hiring a C-level exec for X years for $YYY,YYY,YYY", then the closer you get to the latter transaction, the more specific the contract should be about expectations. Every step along the way to having a signed contract normally involves an increased awareness of expectations by both parties. That's what the contract is. And the moment of signing a contract is an intentional decision to move forward with the transaction as specified. It's certainly possible to subvert the normal process in such a way that you obfuscate your intentions, but even then, the results of your intentions must show up in the contract language itself, or they won't count. Unless someone is holding a gun to your head, or you're not intellectually capable of entering a contractual relationship, the moment of signing your name to a contract is a moment where you are affirming that you aren't being "ripped off", that you've considered the terms and are willingly agreeing to abide by them. Perhaps it's still possible to do all that and consider yourself to have been ripped off. And perhaps your examples are good examples of such cases. But if your board or C-level executives sign a contract for employment of a high-level executive which includes a 9-figure deal for compensation and they don't have more awareness than a poor person going to a car lot, they didn't get "ripped off", they're ripping off the investors or shareholders by collecting whatever salary they're collecting. IANAL, also not a C-level exec, also not particularly smart about how crypto "works", but this all seems like fairly obvious stuff. |