None of the parties should have option to choose it, it should be within govt. justice system, just have arbitration court

I believe what he's referring to is the cost of the legal system. Lawyers cost money, and if the other party has a lot more money, they can play all kinds of tactics to keep the case going (filing pointless motions, drowning your lawyer with huge amounts of documents, etc).

With arbitration, the arbiter can put an end to those shenanigans really quickly, because they're not legally obligated to allow for that kind of crap.

There are ups and downs to both systems. The benefits are there for parties of roughly equal size. The down side is there is no recourse if the arbiter makes a completely unfair judgement (e.g. because he thinks some law should not apply, etc).

> All we really need in the US is for arbitration to be optional, you can start with arbitration but if you believe on good merits you have a case and fail arbitration you should have the right to your day in court.

That just makes it the worst of both worlds! The whole point of arbitration is not to have a war of attrition, and to make the process efficient. Your solution doesn't take care of it. If I'm a business getting into a contract with another business, knowing that you can't outspend me in court is important, and lets both of us make a deal. If I know you still want the option to go to court, it's as if arbitration wasn't on the table.

A better system would be to change the law such that for certain, predefined offenses, you can't waive your right to go through the legal system (e.g. sexual harassment).

And of course, both parties should have say on who the arbiter is.

Finally, you are talking to someone who's had experience with arbitration. You might want to tone things down in your rhetoric if you don't have your own experience to bring to the table. Things might sound fine in theory, but can be really, really bad in practice. As an example, on How I Built This, whenever he's interviewing a founder that went to court to enforce a patent they owned, he asks if it was worth it. The answer almost always is "It was a bad idea and we shouldn't have filed a case." This is coming from those who won in court.

> This is simply untrue, and honestly anyone who thinks our legal system does not provide justice needs to go travel the world to see how it really works for 80% of the global population.

That's weird. Two things can be true at once: arbitrary is better than the American legal system, and the American legal system is better than what 80% of the global population live under.

> All we really need in the US is for arbitration to be optional, [...]

It is! You explicitly have to opt in, that's why Uber needs have it in their ToS that you accept. They can't just force it on you, when you have no contractual relationship with them.

I don't think you really read the comment. They specifically mentioned it for civil matters

Your reasoning makes sense, and I was concerned in a similar way when I filed my arbitration case (for about $8k) against the manufacturer of my leased car. The so called “Lemon law” in California suggests the arbitration as the first step. Surprisingly enough, I won the case, and it only took me about an hour of collecting documents and filling in the forms, and 45 minutes of the phone call.

Even though the car manufacturer does indeed pay for the arbitration, I never felt the arbiter is biased, and the judgement was completely in my favor.

Arbitration is secret. There's no way to determine if it's fair.

I wonder how often this is the case. The one time I read the fine print when signing up for a service, it said that I had the right to disagree with the choice of arbiter, and get some national organization to pick a different arbiter independently.

I don't know how common this is, but yeah, this is a bare minimum that one should have with arbitration.

I thought legislation made a lot of sense:

If you had better laws, arbitration wouldn't be as necessary.

They can't force arbitration on you.

If eg Uber runs you over or bumps your car, you have no contractual relationship with them, and thus they can't force arbitration on you.

That's why they have to write the arbitrary clause into their ToS that they need you to agree on. No forced arbitration.

Of course, if you don't agree with the ToS, Uber is also not forced to transport you. But that's fair enough.

Companies like arbitration because unlike in a civil lawsuit, the plaintiff cannot compel discovery. Paying for an arbitrator is cheaper than going through discovery, especially if the discovery unearths facts materially damaging to the business.