Promoting non-exploitation & wellbeing through law

Practical application – all of these principles are high level, but how can they be applied in daily practice?
When negotiating contracts, or developing contracts to be issued to consumers or real estate investors, protecting one party can be achieved whilst still providing a reasonable set of investment criteria and constraints for the other party. Provided a legal professional explains to their client where they wish to provide concessions, reasonableness or even favourable terms to another party, and the client is accepting, better potential balances within contractual relationships can be achieved, which can actually discourage exploitation and disputes if the time comes when one or more parties inspect the contract to consider their ‘options’ in a potential dispute.

This is both an art and a science. Blunt tools, inexperienced rough-edged conduits, produce rough results. Contracts are instruments that must be refined because circumstances and the world in which contracts are struck are not motionless.

If there is a group of people that might potentially suffer from a legal act, such as a community that might be impacted by a building or project, or a person that might come off worse from a situation than others, it is worth seriously considering more than a superficial token designed to improve social perception of the legal act.

Altruism, even when confined to brutal Dawkinianism, is still ultimately worthwhile. It may result in reciprocal altruism, and this may genetically improve the potential for success of next generations within families.

Wrong moves foster bad outcomes
I recently saw an exploiter, a developer in the instance I am thinking of, write a letter to a group who had reached a tipping point of being over-exploited. The developer made threats of further exploitation if the group did not accede to unreasonable demands and become further exploited.

To add insult to injury, this was unashamedly framed as a self-interested proposal designed to allow a family member to take over the management of exploitation, referencing some notional benefits to the group while threatening unreasonable and irrational damage if the group didn’t co-operate. In this instance, many of the group are smart, have reached the end of their patience and are prepared to invest funds in resisting exploitation and achieving a better outcome. Cases are to be filed and entrenched positions have formulated, akin to stalagmites and stalactites that will take years to change their shape.

The group have been advised to consider settlement opportunities, but not in a state of weakness. The outcome of this situation are dozens of arbitration cases and civil claims in the courts. All sides will experience stress, resource wastage and distraction from positive endeavours. However, sometimes it is important to sort out a mess. Further, humans will pay a cost to reduce or avoid exploitative practices; sometimes counterparties seriously underestimate this or are so blind from their exploitative nature that they lack empathy or any sincere altruism.

If a ‘legal wellbeing’ approach had been adopted, even with Dawkinian selfishness, these cases would not likely have materialised. Some form of balance could have been achieved. One party could give away something it didn’t need to hold on to, the other party could adjust their stance to allow the other party to obtain some regular revenue but within constraints to avoid exploitative practice.

Legal wellbeing is therefore not solely in the hands of ‘the lawyers’; in fact, it is in the remit of every participant in legal transactions – which is all humans on the planet. Lawyers and people are not ‘chicken and egg’ in nature. People evolved first, lawyers second – to address the irrational and exploitative nature of humans, not only lawyers.

If we are to evolve further, then in addition to our greenness and carbon footprint management, perhaps our ‘legal wellbeing’ objectives and performance could also be improved. Unfortunately, the aggregate of public policy makers is not suitably qualified or morally equipped to implement tools to regulate society. Society will have to make an effort by itself.