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Comment by moron4hire | Hacker News Reader

A lawyer friend of mine one told me that his job was basically to try to see what he could sneak past the opposition's (his sentiment, not mine) lawyers in their contracts. He explained contracts are like a running game of tag for lawyers. "If they don't read it, fuck 'em".

He also said that all contracts are mutable. Just strike in red whatever you want, sign it, and send it back. If they don't object (for whatever reason, including not expecting a non-lawyer to do such a thing and never reading your reply), you've won this round of tag.

Then mentioning that 9/10 contract disputes get settled out of court meant the law didn't really matter, it's just what you can convince others about.

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This reminded of a counter-exemplary story, A Tiny, $25 Million Mistake:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/09/16/348975479/a-ti...

> Levine had always thought a contract was binding. Now he saw two big companies laugh off his little mistake. The other side agreed to revise the contract to pay the extra $25 million.

> The whole experience surprised Levine. "I thought it was a game," he says. "You sort of score points. And they had scored this point through my fault, and they were going to get something for it."

> Business may be a game, Levine realized, but it's not a one-time game. It's more like an infinite game. It's a game in which people have to live with each other, work with each other again, and perhaps, write another big contract.

Text-only link (no ads, no tracking): https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=348975479

This is essentially how all business works. When I got my first job before I went to university I was very surprised to learn that accountants always pay invoices on the very last day of the terms rather than as soon as they can. Since everyone else is going to pay you as late as they poassibly can, if you pay your invoices as soon as you can you'll lose out in the long run.

The way everyone tries to get slightly more from other people than they give back is one of the things I dislike most about humans. I wish we had a system that punished such behaviour rather than rewarding it.

It's not hard to construct a "multi agent" version of the prisoners dilemma, in which only one prisoner defecting would cause every prisoner to defect.

Canonically, the Prisoners Dilema is a game with one round and each player has no idea what strategy the other player will employ; the one round is taken simultaneously. In this version, it doesn’t make sense to say “one prisoner defecting would cause every prisoner to defect.” That sounds more like the tit-for-tat strategy in multi round prisoners dilema.

No, it works in the simultaneous one-round case as well. I think you know what I mean, and it's frustrating when people reply glibly just to try and seem high and mighty online.

Let's say that all defecting prisoners are given a light sentence, and all non-defecting prisoners are given the full sentence. You can work through the rest.

It's often not that they're really trying to screw the vendor, but that their cash flow doesn't allow immediate payment.

A lot of commercial invoices have payment terms like "2/10, net 30" meaning you can take a 2% discount if you pay within 10 days. The cost of not taking this deal is an effective 35% annualized interest rate, so it's a big incentive to pay early, assuming your cash flow allows it.

I used to do this as a freelancer..

Some clients would insist on 45 or 60-day terms for my invoices, and as a self-employed individual (who at the time couldn't afford to be picky about my contracts), this really sucked.

Then someone suggested to me I put a clause offering a 2% discount if they paid within 15 days.

I definitely remember some of my clients taking me up on that and paying quickly, and it was a big help..

I remember the first time I discovered what “30day net” meant. “What? You’re going to borrow my money for 30days???”

I’m a consultant and I charge $N for 30 net and 25% off if payed in 10. (25% is not a typo.) Very few of my clients do the math and decide they want to borrow my money for the full month.

>> When I got my first job before I went to university I was very surprised to learn that accountants always pay invoices on the very last day of the terms rather than as soon as they can.

I was told one company I worked at held off payment beyond the terms - waiting until we owed enough to be worth their bother. The problem was that one guy was trying to order parts to build some prototypes for a customer and they refused to do anything until they got paid. Our sales efforts were being hindered by people refusing to do their jobs - i.e. pay suppliers.

There was a Russian chap that did this exactly this, modified his credit card contract and the bank happily signed the modified contract without reading it: https://www.nasdaq.com/article/updated-russian-man-turns-tab...

Of course, you want some ground rules but you also don't want to be such an ass of a company that you loose customers/collaborators over petty things.

In my company we have a legal department sometimes making contracts that us researchers are ashamed of (we get to use all your samples, any IP is ours when generated during the duration of the contract by the people involved, etc), and then there is our wish to keep collaborating with the other party and keep all of us working happily together now and in the future. These things collide, contracts get ignored.

That's a rules of the game. Every department want to grow its importance in the company, to get more power and resources. Well, sometimes this end up in failing company, but they have no choice - if dep X decide to stop it, other won't - and the company fail anyway, but with dep Y on the top instead, all the difference is who will have more power during some time - then the choice is clear and no department will stop their play.

> our wish to keep collaborating with the other party and keep all of us working happily together now and in the future

And typically, this is not when you need a good contract. When the relationship sours, you will be happy the lawyers did their job.

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