[MichaelZuo]

Nearly the entire American tech industry has been super heavily selected for people who undervalue the legal language with crazy implications buried everywhere.

Otherwise most of it would not even exist.

Everyone would have continued paying out the nose to the IBM’s of the world year after year (who had unusual willingness to sign short ambiguously worded custom contracts to their own disadvantage, if paid vast amounts of money).

And be on mainframes to this very day… maybe Y combinator and HN wouldnt even exist in that world.

[eqvinox]

> Nearly the entire American tech industry has been super heavily selected for people who undervalue the legal language with crazy implications buried everywhere.

A lot of people in IT seem to think law and contracts are in a sense mathematical. They aren't; they're more like a high school book report - to be interpreted, as objectively as possible, but definitely also establishing the intent behind the letters.

Particularly contracts - no, you can't trick your way into things in most cases. "Surprising" clauses are invalid in most legal systems, in particular if one party to the contract is a layperson.

[MichaelZuo]

> "Surprising" clauses are invalid in most legal systems…

Yes, except… very notably… the USA… (especially certain parts such as Delaware). Which has a judiciary that entertain such clauses much more often than pretty much any other country I’ve heard of.

A clause like: “you agree to deliver your first born son on demand” buried in page 15 would indeed be laughed out of the courtroom.

But less severe clauses buried in page 15 might not be immediately laughed out. Causing a lot of expense and heartache before it gets dismissed.

Just think about it, if it were really just a total joke… why would large firms (FAANG, etc.) with serious legal departments want to look like clowns producing gibberish, year after year?

[Terr_]

I sometimes wonder how much blame should be placed at the feet of cartoons which teach viewers that invisibly-small print is legally binding, and that any term is enforceable.

I mean, it's not like most people have any kind of curriculum to fix those early assumptions.

[TalkingCodeMonk]

That is a false dichotomy. The solution to failed laws and regulations is not crime and corruption. The solution is to hold the policial and business leadership accountable; to fix the laws and regulations.

The entire American tech industry has exported Americas predatory, parasitic, and unethical consumer laws (the majority of which are ghost written by the wealthy and corporate legal teams). When I studied law in school decades ago, tactics like bait-and-switch, false advertisting, intentionally misleading or deceptive practices etc to sell products or contracts were illegal across the developed world.

Those illegal, anti-consumer tactics were the SOP of every tech startup I can think of from the early 2000's onwards; following the same route of initially offering a compelling feature set to attract and entice users – usually for free – until securing a certain number of users or funding, then changing the value proposition to exploit that user base, and extract as much wealth from them as possible, ad infinitum.

Today these tactics are known as enshittification, and the average American pseudo-libertarian software engineer will say this is fine, but that's what every anti-consumer parasite and criminal has said in history. Lying, misleading, and exploiting people for financial gain is fundamentally immoral, corrupt, and sociopathic, therefore it should be illegal. Just because it's the norm, or a digital product, you wrote that in the T&C's, or your doing everything behind the liability shield of an LLC, doesn't change that.

What ever happened to the concept of building a valuable, quality product and stable returns for generations? Working to improve the quality of life and standard of living of the community? Of the world? I feel like a 1950's traditional conservative when I suggest that, but most Americans are so heavily indoctrinated with corporate greed and sociopathy they'd consider that sentiment radical leftist extremism. I'm an athiest, but ya'll need jesus (the real brown socialist one). Many would argue Americas current institutional collapse is the natural result of this systemic corruption.

[ElProlactin]

> I feel like a 1950's traditional conservative when I suggest that...

I wouldn't argue that America's moral standards haven't declined (significantly) but I also think it's a romanization to suggest that 1950s America was the pinnacle of morality.

Lying, misleading, and exploiting people for financial gain has been a part of the fabric of American society since the country was founded.

If we're being honest, humans everywhere have demonstrated a high capacity for this behavior since the dawn of civilization.

[TalkingCodeMonk]

I never implied the 1950's was the pinnacle of morality. I was referencing the tropes that "traditional" "conservative" politicians since Reagan have consistently virtue signaled, while they aggressively worked to achieve the exact opposite.

There is evidence of that being a common 50's perspective though. It was when most conservatives and liberals alike had been burned by the greed of the guilded age, stock market collapse, great depression, and world war. The majority of the working class in the developed world were experiencing significant gains in QoL/SoL thanks to labour movements and aggressive unionization, did not view CEO's as admirable heroes, or fellow consumers and workers with malice and contempt. Hard work actually resulted in financial security, and greater opportunity for your children.

[ElProlactin]

> Hard work actually resulted in financial security, and greater opportunity for your children.

The economy of the 1950s was due to a variety of factors, including lack of international competition (European and Japanese industrial bases were devastated in the war), pent up consumer savings from war time, demographics (the baby boom), etc. Unionization was certainly a part of the mix but it seems you're cherry-picking to support your romanticized view.

And let's not forget: the 1950s were a good economic time if you were a white man. They weren't nearly so great if you were black or a woman.

[TalkingCodeMonk]

How is it a romanticization to assert what the entire history of global demographics and statistics support?

The distribution of work vs financial security was not uniform, but every developed economy had a greater distribution of wealth and stronger economic mobility in the 1950's than in the 1930's, or almost any time in human history. Every country not directly involved in cold/civil war improved in these factors from 1945 until the 80's, and that has continued in most of the developing world until today.

Do you believe black or indigenous populations were in a better position in 1930, or at any time during colonialism/imperialism, than they were in 1950? If you did, you would be wrong, and the only way to support it is by "cherry-picking" and "romanticization".

[ElProlactin]

Let's go back to your original statement:

> What ever happened to the concept of building a valuable, quality product and stable returns for generations? Working to improve the quality of life and standard of living of the community? Of the world? I feel like a 1950's traditional conservative when I suggest that, but most Americans are so heavily indoctrinated with corporate greed and sociopathy they'd consider that sentiment radical leftist extremism.

The implication here was that, at some point in the not too distant past (like the 1950s), the US had less "corporate greed and sociopathy." And that the US was working in some benevolent manner to improve life for future generations and even the entire world.

I made the argument that the economic situation during this period of time was the result of factors like the war and demographic tailwinds, not some sense of morality that has been lost in recent years.

The US has been a violent, oppressive country since its founding. Violence, conquest and displacement, slavery, political assassinations, genocide, brutal individualism.

To suggest that the US of the 1950s, or any other period of time in the 20th century, was morally superior to the US of the 2020s because wealth was more evenly distributed (among working white men) and white men had more economic mobility requires in my opinion a significant romanization about what US society is and was.

The US might have been founded on the highest of ideals but the actual history is very much a story of "actions versus words".