> IANAL, but betting half a million dollars on three hand gestures qualifies as excessive imho.
IANAL either but to me the law/government is there to uphold contracts. Not judge if they are smart or deemed a good idea.
IANAL either but to me the law/government is there to uphold contracts. Not judge if they are smart or deemed a good idea.
("But look at all these other things they do that suck!" - yup, I'm there with you, but the purpose of government is to be just, which is not the same thing as clueless.)
That is but one (very left) interpretation. Good luck getting everyone to agree.
Or are you just disagreeing with the part about contract enforcement in particular?
To pretty much everyone else it's uncontroversial.
Judges very much, all the time, deem whether a contract is exploitative or not. Valid contracts are signed between two parties where both are very much aware of what they're doing and fall within non-exploitative bounds.
You're not allowed to contract yourself into slavery no matter how much you want to. Indentured servitude is similarly illegal. You also can't charge someone a billion percent interest on a payday loan.
Now, granted, some people see the absurd levels of modern student debt as something not so far off from indentured servitude. But the point is that the government and judges absolutely draw lines between which contracts are permitted and not, for the express reason of protecting people from being led into terrible mistakes no matter how much they may want to. Kind of the same thinking behind certain drugs being illegal: the government trying to protect people from their worst impulses.
Of course, libertarians (as opposed to liberals and conservatives) think people should be able to contract whatever they want, hence the "liberty" in their name. But pretty much everyone else on the political spectrum thinks it's pretty essential to protect people from the absolute worst irrevocable things.
Because the libertarian ethos ought to support debt collection 100%. I'd be shocked to see any libertarian state any position contrary to that. Libertarianism is essentially entirely about the role of government being to enforce contracts and natural rights.
I very vaguely recall an article on reason.com that opposed protecting credit card lenders from cancellation if debt post bankruptcy (similar to student debt) but honestly I don’t really remember. I briefly tried to find it but couldn’t.
I’d be more interested in knowing more about the libertarian position on bankruptcy
I probably have a lot about this wrong but I recall the professor saying “if that’s he bargain, that’s the bargain!” Is not a good description of contract law.
Contracts are important and generally are upheld. However there are limits to how much of the governments time, resources, and monopoly on physical force the courts will marshal to enforce contracts.
Reminds me of predatory lending rules like charging more than X% interest is excessive.