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Comment by somenameforme | Hacker News Reader

Contracts don't and can't override laws.

But if laws can override contracts (which presumably they can), then contracts can appear to establish permissions/restrictions that are illegal. At least one contract I've signed includes something about the rest being enforceable if any part of it isn't enforceable. Perhaps that helps to contain actual mistakes, but I assume employers use it to persuade employees that they're bound by illegal non-compete clauses, for example.

> At least one contract I've signed includes something about the rest being enforceable if any part of it isn't enforceable.

Which is funny, because if it worked like that - that any unenforceable demand in it made the whole thing invalid - then presumably the clause asserting the opposite would also be invalid.

No it means that if parts of a contract are found to be unlawful or unenforceable, the rest of the contract still holds.

Edit: in other words, you're not legally bound to unlawful parts of a contract.

This is my understanding, too. Sorry if that wasn't clear in my earlier comment.

However, I also believe that unenforceable parts of a contract have no effect, except in the minds of the parties to that contract. My suspicion is that contracts are sometimes drafted with this in mind.

In normal states not. But there you have the very popular political system called fascism, where contracts override laws.

That doesn't even make any sense. Fascism is generally about top-down enforced control, whereas contracts are heavily decentralized. The world where you'd have contracts override laws would be some sort of extreme anarcho-libertarian society, which is rather the opposite of fascism.

That's what you heard in school, defending the US style of fascism as "democratic".

Fascism was a scheme to keep the old aristocrats turning industrialists to keep control of the state, whilst still keeping it under the democratic name. This was devised in the US in the 30ies and then in the old states also. Heavily supported by the US industrialists. Without them the fascism movement had no chance.

The US scheme of fascism came up with cooperate contracts overriding state laws, also pleasing the Chicago crowd, with decentralized control. At the will of the cooperations, who know better than the government of course. That's why Rockefeller could gun down strikers without any repercussions. That's why the Railroad Commission could call state military to gun down independent oil cooperations which undercut prizes of the industrialists. That's not liberalism, that's pure fascism/cooperatism/aristocratism.

That's pretty far from the usual views of fascism. Generally fascism can be seen as a form of right wing collectivism organizing all of society into one big hierarchy, with industrialist somewhat below the top and subservient to political leadership. In a fascist society political decrees override both laws and contracts. This means that fascism is inherently centralized and that what companies receive state support depends on who are political favourites at the moment. E.g. a fascist state might support the independent oil companies if it felt the established industrialists were getting too influential, i.e. classical divide and conquer.

By the way, I'm not claiming the things you describe didn't take place for the reasons you claimed. I just don't think it's accurate to describe it as based on fascism.

I call it fascism, even if the US ur-fascist favored the French and German model, over Mussolini. Mussolini was pro-union, and of course all other fascists are contra-union. That's their biggest goal, denying workers rights.

But the US implemented all the subsequent fascist governments until today. If in Europe, Asia or Latin America's.

"Corporatism" not "cooperatism" though, right?

Nothing wrong with cooperatism I think.

Oops, sure

> This was devised in the US in the 30ies

Fascism first evolved in Italy, where Mussolini and his Partito Nazionale Fascista took power in 1922.

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