US Supreme Court rules in favor of Coinbase in arbitration dispute | Hacker News Reader

US Supreme Court rules in favor of Coinbase in arbitration dispute

reuters.com

14 pointsmirthlessend5 comments

I love the constant “companies prefer arbitration because it’s cheaper” refrain.

Companies prefer arbitration because they get to buy the judge. Yea, I know that the arbitrators are “unbiased”, but the idea that someone can be unbiased when their job both directly and indirectly is dependent on paychecks from a specific party is objectively BS. In the actual legal system if a judge is being paid, directly or indirectly, by one of the plaintiffs they are required to remove themselves from the trial or the defendant has a more or less guaranteed retrial down the line. Meanwhile in arbitration land those payments are explicit.

So yes arbitration is “cheaper”, but only because it is legally mandated corruption of the legal system. Yes the fines are cheaper: the “arbitrators” don’t want to bankrupt the company paying them. They also ban class action lawsuits making most valid lawsuits impractically expensive: who sues over $50 fraudulent charges given the time and expense required? Class action lawsuits are the only thing that makes punishing such theft possible.

Class action suits have an advantage for the company: They don't need to pay a filing fee for each individual case. Like the $12 million for 5000 arbitration cases against doordash https://www.reuters.com/article/us-otc-doordash-idUSKBN2052S...

Oh yeah, people have finally realized that you can _punish_ companies that pull this BS, or in the case of stuff like Twitter's mass layoffs the individual claims are large enough to warrant legal fees (because twitter is run by unethical scum) and the mass nature of the layoffs means that twitter's malicious behavior is going to cost twitter money.

The end hope is I guess that mass arbitration will cause those companies to settle. Of course the immensely corrupt nature of the current Supreme Court mean Musk will probably just need to write a couple of checks to buy a ruling that say people forced into arbitration are required to pay the costs of arbitration and put up the funds ahead of time. Maybe won't even need a check, just a fishing vacation gift.

Democrats have been trying to repeal binding arbitration in many situations and reform the system for years. As with many problems in the US, Republican refuse to do anything positive (just like with the ongoing tax problems for software development).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_Arbitration_Injustice_R...

If arbitration is so fair, efficient, and good for everyone, everyone should be willing to do is by choice instead of through coercion.

As corrupt as this court is, I have to wonder if they're not protecting larger players:

"BlackRock, Inc. (BLK), the largest asset manager in the world...filed paperwork with the SEC on June 15 to launch a Bitcoin ETF with Coinbase as the custodian for Bitcoin that will be held with the ETF." [0]

[0] https://seekingalpha.com/article/4613021-the-potential-impac...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com