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> Today, it is hard to open up a checking account, rent a car, get cable service or check a loved one into a nursing home without agreeing to mandatory arbitration.

This is the part that gives me ulcers, and it's no exaggeration. So many companies insist on us giving up our 7th Amendment rights that we either give in, or don't fly, buy a car, or get a job. We can't even go to the competition because they also have mandatory binding arbitration clauses in their contracts.

As bad as the Equifax breach is, IMO this is a greater danger to our freedoms.

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This is certainly the most important point. You cannot function in society without internet, a cell phone and some sort of transportation, and most if not all force you to sign away rights that should be guaranteed to all US citizens.

Unless you are wealthy enough to do without or fine being homeless, this means you are living under a sub-government that the rules are set by corporations.

When I last purchased a car I used accepting the arbitration clause to extract $150 in accessories from the dealer. The sales agent was a bit confused, it’s usually the paperwork guy that deals with the arbitration and at point most people just want it over with..

I was offered over $1000 off to 'just sign the damned contract', but still ended up walking. I was fortunate to find a different dealer that didn't have an arbitration clause, though. I fear I wouldn't find that next time around, and was really hanging my hopes upon legislation like this.

I'm going to ask what might be a dumb question, because I don't know any better. But is there any statistical evidence that arbitration results in worse outcomes for the consumer, or is all the hate theoretical for now? People on HN and otherwise speak about arbitration like it's an auto-loss for the consumer, but it's not like our court systems are guaranteed to be much fairer.

EDIT:

It looks like the bottom of the article explains that the US Consumer Bureau studied arbitration and found it anti-consumer:

As arbitration clauses appeared in tens of millions of contracts, the consumer agency was specifically mandated to study arbitration under the Dodd-Frank financial law in 2010. That effort culminated in a 728-page report, released in March 2015, that challenged longstanding assumptions about arbitration.

The agency found that once blocked from suing, few people went to arbitration at all. And the results for those who did were dismal. During the two-year period studied, only 78 arbitration claims resulted in judgments in favor of consumers, who got $400,000 in total relief.

The normal system is that these civil disputes are done in a court of law. Justify the change.

The siren call of tort-reform by any other name...

Per the article: "During the two-year period studied, only 78 arbitration claims resulted in judgments in favor of consumers, who got $400,000 in total relief."

It's not clear what the denominator on that sum is, though it is also stated that the rate of customers taking up arbitration was very low

Did the study compare those outcomes to outcomes when taken to trial?

You've found the data, but it's not surprising at all given the circumstances -- the arbiters are chosen by the company, so they know where their bread is buttered. What's more, class-action suits are just impossible under forced arbitration and who's going to go through a long process that will cost thousands because they got ripped off for a hundred bucks?

Arbitration is also secret, so it's very difficult to gather data about its results.

Thanks for giving me another reason to buy only used cars!

In my case it was a used car. It was, however, a manufacturer's dealership. On the other hand, the dealership without an arbitration clause was also a dealer for the same manufacturer.

Arbitration clauses with dealers seem decidedly less evil though.

The loss of class action status is terrible and enabled atrocious corporate behavior.

It doesn't sound like a very big discount, to be honest.

Yeah, between that and the rise of the plea bargain it's practically like the court system only exists for a select few.

Wouldn't Equifax fall under gross negligence and that can never be signed away?

https://ramachandr.in/2017/10/12/fuck-corporations/ (because I feel this post of mine adds something to your sentiment.)

I may be in the minority here, but I do not come to HN to get linked to a random person's blog. This is a concerning trend, and it's one thing when someone actually provides some level of insight in a few paragraphs and says they've written several pages on the same subject at [link].

But this is just bottom of the barrel "you said something vaguely similar to a blog post I wrote a few weeks ago, here's the link with the oh-so-edgy title."

Indeed, HN is all about stealth advertising for some new startup in the form of a blog post, not normal blogs!

In comments?

As far as I'm aware, he's free to submit his blog post as a separate story (assuming he doesn't over-submit his own work or otherwise produce spam).

Yeah, to be fair, half the stuff posted (and often voted up) on HN is blog posts that are thinly veiled content marketing.

Plus, it can get exhausting to write the same argument over and over again. Half the reason I write on my blog or on medium is because I find myself repeating a certain argument and I decide to just write it once and for all.

But of course, you could always copy and paste with some small edits rather than linking. And I agree that it would be better to at least summarize the content of the post for us rather than just dumping the link.

If you're actually replying to specific points in the comment to which you're replying, it's unlikely you'll be repeating things very much outside of the typical flame threads around politics or social issues. If you're not referencing specific points it's much more like a "okay you're done speaking now it's my turn" type of conversation. There's admittedly a lot of that anyway, though.

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