This is really just bad man. It's why people shouldn't get legal advice from places like HN.
First, the vast majority of contract law is common law, not statutes. Second, you seem to think something being illegal means it's criminal or civil. No the contract itself is an illegal contract by its very nature. In fact any contract whose purpose is to acheive an illegal end is an illegal contract. This is not in any statute but rather a common law principle:
Please, I get people don't like my tone, I'm rude, people want to downvote rude people and that's fine... but for anyone reading this please do not get your legal advice from HN. It's really just a very misinformed and poor place to try to understand the law.
In this very thread we have someone saying you can unilaterally modify a contract just by striking sections out with a pen. That just doesn't fly even if you do manage to trick the other party into signing it. And now we have someone who tried to be all clever and pedantic about the difference between a legal contract and a binding contract (before completely walking back on that distinction) and thinks there's nothing illegal in contract law about a contract that requires someone to rob a bank.
Be very skeptical about what you read on this site on matters other than programming and technology. That's all I ask. Too many people pretend to be experts on matters of consequence, and it creates a great deal of noise. Downvote away.
No, you're pedantic. Not that that's much better, but the first step in addressing a problem is achieving clarity about what it actually is.
Go back to the original question I was responding to:
"why in the world is that kind of contract legal?"
The intent of that question is pretty clearly "why does the law not sanction people who draw up that kind of contract in the same way that it sanctions people who (say) rob banks or sell heroin or falsify business records?" And the answer is: because that kind of contract is not illegal in the same sense that robbing banks is illegal or selling heroin is illegal or falsifying business records is illegal. Yes, it is true that as a term of legal art there is such a thing as an "illegal contract" but the word "illegal" in that context has a very different meaning. There are no legal sanctions for drawing up or even signing an "illegal contract". They are simply unenforceable [1].
You are absolutely right that people should not take anything said on HN as legal advice. But by the same token nothing said on HN should be critiqued by the standards of legal advice, especially when the person you are critiquing has explicitly disclaimed being a lawyer. There is a reason that IANAL is a thing.
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[1] https://www.upcounsel.com/types-of-illegal-contracts and note that 1) this page appears on a site offering legal services, and 2) the link for the word "illegal" takes you to a page describing "unenforceable contracts".
First, the vast majority of contract law is common law, not statutes. Second, you seem to think something being illegal means it's criminal or civil. No the contract itself is an illegal contract by its very nature. In fact any contract whose purpose is to acheive an illegal end is an illegal contract. This is not in any statute but rather a common law principle:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_agreement
Please, I get people don't like my tone, I'm rude, people want to downvote rude people and that's fine... but for anyone reading this please do not get your legal advice from HN. It's really just a very misinformed and poor place to try to understand the law.
In this very thread we have someone saying you can unilaterally modify a contract just by striking sections out with a pen. That just doesn't fly even if you do manage to trick the other party into signing it. And now we have someone who tried to be all clever and pedantic about the difference between a legal contract and a binding contract (before completely walking back on that distinction) and thinks there's nothing illegal in contract law about a contract that requires someone to rob a bank.
Be very skeptical about what you read on this site on matters other than programming and technology. That's all I ask. Too many people pretend to be experts on matters of consequence, and it creates a great deal of noise. Downvote away.