Tom's List: 5

Upon my request of issues that concern a liberal that might be hard for a libertarian to handle, Tom very kindly provided six such items.  Herein, I attempt to show the modern libertarian thought process about the next one:

(5) I do not want to have to closely read contracts to ensure that I don't get ripped off.

I must say, this was my favorite question.   Most libertarian responses to all topics fails massively on this, very important count.  On the other hand, I don't think this is hard, given the right set of information (that I didn't have until a few weeks ago). 

De Soto argues in his book that a major portion of the cause of modern 3rd world poverty is unequal access to the law.  The poor don't have access to property rights, legal jobs, or even police protection.
Why not?  The real, total cost of formal legal access is simply too high.  As an example, something like 25 years of waiting and 13 months of average salary to gain legal ownership of a house you built, live in, and rent from no one. 

Claim...this is also much more true than anyone realizes in the West.  Formal, legalistic, lawyers-only contract-law is a big part of the problem, rather than a solution. 
De Soto also provides historical data that suggest that much or most of the US was settled by individual groups, who built homeowners associations, using informal lawyer-free contracts between mostly illiterate or semi-literate immigrants. 

Liberatarian solution:
1.  No lawyerly jury-picking.  1st 12.  Judge may ask 1-3 yes/no questions.
2.  No top-down anti-jury nullification crap.  Of course libertarians are pro- local law. 
3.  Less king's law, more common law.


The law is getting more and more complicated, and less and less accessible to common people, based not on root complexity, but based on the fact that the lawyers have a legal monopoly on the legal system.  Without cherry-picking a jury, and with juries retaining the right to use judgement over following handed-down law...we wouldn't have expensive contracts.

As far as I can tell, the contract complexity problem is CAUSED by our current system...and the law-focus over market-focus we have makes it worse rather than better.  I'd like to know if anyone has some reasons for believing that our approach to law ISN'T the primary cause of complex contracts of the type that everyone except lawyers would prefer to avoid?