> If you were right, most contracts would be breached and
> there would be lot more business for me that there already is.
No, that doesn't follow at all.
> Contracts are promises enforceable by courts, but mostly
> buisness people follow them, in their understanding of the
> agreeement, because they agreed and they expect mutual
> benefits, not because they fear they would have to litigate
> if they broke the promise.
You've totally got it backwards. My grand-dad used to say that the only honest people are those who haven't been given an opportunity to be dishonest. Contracts are used specificially to discourage people from finding opportunities to be dishonest.
And here's my little anecdote: I have a client who is on long-term maintenance for some software that I wrote and that they resell and make money from. Over the years, nearly everyone who I ever worked with is now gone. Last year, they even got a new 'contracts' person who said that she didn't know what they were paying for. I said "you signed the contract, it's all laid out there" ... ultimately she said that she couldn't find their copy, so they weren't going to abide by the terms. I said that was hilarious, and my copy was in storage and if she really made me go drag it out I would, but really: you get the benefit, pay the invoice. I sent her all the relevant supporting material including archives of email exchanges with her predecessors.
No. She forced me to go get my copy of it and make a copy and FedEx it to her. Then all of a sudden I got a check.
Christ.
>> If it's all a cheat and and sham, then any market system
>> would collapse in very short order.
Exactly: contracts stop a good amount of cheat and sham, with the threat of legal action in the case of default.
Just sign me,
"Get it in writing"
/jordan