It is actually very dangerous for too many
legal decisions and societal transactions to be based only on contracts and
agreements. People can be tricked,
exploited, and leveraged into any kind of abuse with agreements when there are
no other protections. And even though
everyone has gotten used to being expected to "read the fine print"
and letting signatures be the last word on any matter, I think that more and
more people will soon realize the limitations of legal paperwork without the
foundation of true justice behind it.
All the long and overwhelming "terms and
conditions" that people have to sign before using any technology are one
example of the risks that come with forcing people to agree to things. We all
know that most people not only don't but probably can't read all the terms and
conditions for almost every service that grants us access to most public participation
and trade, and we all know that the personal information that is supposedly now the
property of people who got us to click certain boxes gives complete strangers
an absurd and dangerous amount of power over all kinds of people, including
vulnerable populations like children. At some point, the agreements will have
to be over-rided by more important factors and logic.
Here is a more specific example: I signed up
to pay my rent from an automated system because the property management company
kept pretending not to get my checks.
When I signed up, I had to agree to their terms, and one of the terms
said that they were not responsible for lost money even if the reason was
negligence on their part. I literally
had to agree that negligence would be okay in order to pay my rent. It is absurd, and if negligence happens, do
you think it will hold up in court? I
don't think it will, and I think they don't think so, either, otherwise they
would have done it. But some things they
will go ahead and try to get away with, and in this corrupt society, there is
agreement after agreement that people try to get people to sign in order to
have all the power.
But it isn't automatically justice to honor
all contracts, and if we put too much stock in it, the rampant abuse could
suddenly mean that contracts have no power, which is also dangerous. Systems and laws simply can't save a bad
society. They can only protect the good
that is already there. That is one of
the moral laws that governs reality, whether people agree to it or not.
