20 years ago, Ted Cruz published a law paper proving companies could always beat customers with terms of service

This is pretty much how I feel about the 1% and their cronies…

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Let’s be careful here, folks; a FULL reading of Cruz’s paper is required. I’m still looking for that.

This below from Motherboard online publication. Anything in brackets were added in by me.:

And so what you have here is one of the staunchest supporters of the free market in America [Cruz] arguing that specific aspects of the free market are fundamentally broken [contracts/fine print]. Companies have used this inefficiency to get fantastically wealthy off the backs of their consumers, who can’t do much of anything to fight back. Voting with your wallet generally does not work, and so in 1996, Cruz advocated for regulations or “compensation” for consumers who are harmed by companies.

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LexisNexis might have it.

http://www.xup.in/dl,18708893/2_pdfsam_47HastingsLJ635.pdf/

A link to the paper for anyone who wants it.

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If contracts you haven’t read are invalid, would that also apply to social contracts, i.e., laws?

Thank you!

So it would seem that Cruz, Congress and Bannon all want the same thing - tear down/collapse everything and start over. Once the middle class is wiped out, businesses won’t have paying customers and the whole thing goes down the toilet.
I guess that’s one way to begin a revolution. :cold_sweat:

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Awful lot of symbols there, Zodiac Killer.

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You are a PERSON!

thx.

The point you raise is a valid concern, but a large number of countries have introduced or expanded their social services around health care after January 1995. Taiwan, Thailand, Mexico, Argentina, and Kenya have all massively expanded public health programs after that point.

I knew a guy who grew up in an American enclave in Saudi Arabia, from being a toddler until he went to college in the states at 18. He was well travelled, but when immersed in actual America he was wildly naive about some surprising things. One notable anecdote was his asking me what “PED X-ING” signs meant.

Do you have any more information? The US is a unique case because we went very far in committing our health insurance and other financial services in a number of places, one is called the “Understanding on Commitments in Financial Services” and it has the effect of a “standstill” on new financial regulation, also as I said it captures all deregulatory changes making them irreversible (if challenged ) See these two Public Citizen pubs

and

Also, it should be mantioned that India wants to nip any chance we might break free of this regime in the bud, as they see it as sort of an IOU which we have promised to pay in jobs- India is challenging our existng visa regime in a WTO (WPDR) proceeding as well as proposing a new “Trade facilitation Agreement on Services”

The Trade Facilitation Agreement on Services (not to be confused with the TFA on goods, which has just been finished ) is aimed not just in the US, but we appear to be the primary target.

This is even as jobs are vanishing globally at an exponentially increasing rate to automation everywhere.

The problem with these agreements is their inflexibility, lasting as they claim, forever. Ideas that may have looked like good ideas to oligarchs in the bubble era in the 90s look like economic suicide even to them, now-

The blowback has only just begun, to these posonous trade deals, and they need to be dumped as they have been demonstrably harmful to everyone.

Its clear that rapid increases in labor saving technology should be lowering the prices of essentials (not just labor) but these agreements- and the paralysis they cause in limiting corruption and avoiding volatility, have already arguably caused a major financial crisis the largest the world has ever seen (which although proved - see US GATS Sched. of Specific Commitments Supplement 3 “SC03” pg 31 top has never been acknowledged) and now they want to do it all again

It all just stinks.

Um, the world-wide 1% cut-off was a household income of $34K US.

“No, not that 1%. I’m part of the good one percent. Honest!”

Bang.

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Phew. Safe. But it’s gonna be real fucking quiet round these parts. :slight_smile:

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Meh, I like it quiet these days.

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