I was thinking about this the other day looking at a billboard, talking about how Alive/Bob/Carol wasa winner! at the local casino, with a tiny 'play responsibly' box huddled in the corner. I don't have a strong opinion about gambling but I do care about externalities, and I was amused by the idea that some percentage of billboards (reflective of the incidence of problematic gambling) should feature Alive, Bob and Carol losing everything to their great despair, but with the same logo and typesetting choices as the positive advertising.

More seriously, I think first amendment protections for commercial speech are too generous. Game theory tells us that perverse incentives will often win out, and while it's tempting to fall back on caveat emptor it's also a cop out. The reality is that the huge and increasing information asymmetry between organizations and individuals leads inevitably to inequitable outcomes; further, it's entirely predictable that by swamping the recipient of a contract with reading material they'll just go ahead and agree to it because it's not obvious that it will be worth the effort of analysis. I can't remember the last time I read a EULA, and I like reading contracts and legal documents.

Free business idea: a fiduciary AI that parses contracts, simplifies contractual terms for maximum clarity, and rates contracts on their adherence to/deviation from industry norms.

>The reality is that the huge and increasing information asymmetry between organizations and individuals leads inevitably to inequitable outcomes

Consider the following three statements.

Consent cannot exist when the information asymmetry becomes too great.

The information asymmetry between a massive corporation (as compared to some mom and pop shop) and an individual consumer is great enough to invalidate consent.

We allow and legally enforced consent between these entities (with very limited exceptions; even things like arbitration clauses tend to be binding).

One of the above statements cannot be true for us to be moral in our actions, yet all three seem true. I honestly have a moral issue with how this all works, even though I'm not sure how to fix it and recognize a fix may completely change how we do business.

Note that for example in germany (and I'd guess in other parts of the EU also), there is a law that limits what "standard contracts" can do to a consumer [1]. I.e. whenever a business has one contract that it uses for more than one natural person, then that contract is considered an AGB thereby greatly limiting what kind of clauses would be considered valid in that contract.

As far as I understand, many clauses will then be automatically invalid if they are too one-sided for the company. Also maximum durations of contracts are greatly restricted while certain standards for contract cancellation rights are enforced.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGB-Gesetz

In the United States we have a judicial concept called a "contract of adhesion". For a contract to be treated as a contract of adhesion, it must be presented on a standard form on a "take it or leave it" basis, and give one party no ability to negotiate because of their unequal bargaining position. The court will treat any terms outside of the reasonable expectations of the person who did not write the contract as invalid, and any ambiguous terms will be interpreted in their favor also.

Interesting, didn't know this. This seems to be similar to AGB-Law, albeit pretty weak. While the US "contract of adhesion" [1] concept protects against terms "outside of the reasonable expectations", the AGB-Law [2] also protects against terms that are "unreasonably to the disadvantage" of the consumer. Arbitration clauses are not valid, for example.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_form_contract#Contrac...

[2] https://www.buzer.de/s1.htm?g=BGB&a=305-310

Arbitration clauses here in the United States don't even required a valid contract, you can bind yourself to arbitration by simple agreement due to the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Arbitration_Act

For casinos make the odds of winning play a part in the adverts.

99.9% of the casino adds have to show people sad about losing - before we get 1 winning ad

Nah, just require them to disclose the odds for any games of chance.

"Visit Golden Palace photo of a roulette wheel for a 46% chance of breaking even!"

Wouldn't help. Lottery tickets have the odds of winning printed right on them, and people still buy them.

Compounding/causing this issue is people in general don't take expectation values into account - we always subconsciously overestimate the probability of a rare, positive event (winning the lottery) and underestimate the probability of a rare, negative event (dying in a car crash tomorrow).

Spending ten bucks on a lottery ticket doesn't hurt most people while winning the lottery can have a live-changing impact. Every action is rational for a properly chosen value function.

Yep. I'll spend 8-16 bucks a month on lottery tickets. It's what I use spare cash left in my wallet for. It's not going to break the bank and I'm likely not going to win, but it's a nice pipe dream and where I live a decent amount of the money goes to the environment.

Playing the lottery is more paying for the fantasy of winning than actually expecting to. It makes for some fun office chats, and worth a couple of extra bucks.

In small print, though. That is the main issue, people see the possible winnings before any odds are considered.

Wouldn't that be cool if it created a competitive market where casinos advertised their house advantage?

One of them does around here. The one that always amuses me is '05% payout on slots'. I like to imagine some nice people handing a crumpled up $100 to a cashier and getting nice crispy bills in return totalling $95.

That was actually my first idea, but everyone knows that the odds are with the house, and as people pointed out the odds are printed right on lottery tickets and people still buy them despite the terrible deal on offer.

I figured that adjusting say 8% of the ads to reflect an (imaginary) 8% incidence of problem gambling would actually be more effective, by balancing the legitimate commercial desires of the casino, the legitimate worry of gambling addiction, and making the billboards just unpredictable enough to keep people playing...er, guessing.

False or misleading commercial speech is not protected by the First Amendment.

Then super PACs are what again?

Political, not commercial. All politicians lie or are "economical with the truth". If you want to get the courts involved in judging political statements, especially in a country that has already politicised the courts to a greater extent than many other Western countries, then you're on a hiding to nothing.

But the money that funds PACs can come from commercial activities. If all a company has to do is create a PAC, and PACs don't need to be truthful, it seems to me commercial speech is protected.

Commercial speech is not defined by its funding or by whether it's said by a PAC, but by whether it "proposes a commercial transaction."

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

Wow, that is one of the most simple, effective ideas I've ever heard -- kudos. Not joking or sarcasm, I would love for that to be the rule, it would make life so much simpler.

> I propose "the bigger the print, the stronger the statement". Therefore, if you make one claim in 24 point and then attempt to rescind or modify it in 8 point, the 24 is legally binding

The EU has a ton of regulation like that.. For example you can't say "free" if it's associated with a subscription or other tricks. You must advertise the complete price if selling phones with binding subscription, etc..

IMO, there is still many shady business practices to kill. But the EU is doing a great job at this.

--- Good luck in the US, maybe you should just start by targeting the payday loan industry... But not sure the current President is going to help Elizabeth Warren fix anything.

True, the current President has made a significant amount of money from scams like Trump University.

Billboards would be blood oaths guaranteed by the life of the firstborn of the CEO.

A controversial way to deal with generational wealth, but probably not the most controversial

A class action resulting in all plaintiffs becoming inheritors of the CEO?

Same with political advertising. This is a good thing.

Assuming politicians just won't have accepted descendants.

Really, philandering would just increase.

That's already (roughly) the law in the EU.

It's why software licences have some text in capitals.

Actually, this seems like a reasonable court case could test the waters given the right circumstances.

Basically, if your contact/agreement is not upfront about the downsides then those are nullified.

Sadly, people might still decide to do it. Definitely seems like usury laws would apply.

I believe that is a bit of an oversimplification of the overall thing.

Most of the legal agreements - customer/consumer usually lose because of the super vague and often-in-favor of the company providing the loan/service.

I am not sure if you meant font size literally.

I love it. You have my vote!

Brilliant idea

You can bury things just as easily in a stack of single page sized letters.

No, it's really not just as easy--not in advertising.

Although I completely agree with you, I took it as a challenge to come up with something that follows the above rules and is still devious. Here is my 1 min of effort attempt: https://ibb.co/giqgDv

That's pretty legitimate, well played.

Yes.

That is awesome!