> "Good faith" is, literally, the term of art used in the legal profession to define the criteria for honoring a contract or order.
No. Honoring a contract and a good faith attempt to honor a contract are not the same. A good faith attempt does not exempt you from the consequences of failing to perform a contract or comply with a legal order. In some cases it is a mitigating factor, but it is not by any means universal.
If the French court wanted Amazon to make a good faith attempt to do something, that is something they could have ordered. But they ordered compliance, not an attempt at compliance (as is their prerogative).
> Obviously, no, the court could be a total jerk about it and demand ridiculous things.
You mean like a 24h deadline for compliance with a large set of changes to operations?
> The whole point behind the "rule of law" is that we trust each other (Amazon, its unions, the courts) to be reasonable, tell the truth, and honor our agreements in the spirit in which they were made.
Tbh I'm not seeing the connection between rule of law and social trust. You can have high trust societies with less rule of law, and low trust societies with more rule if law. They are separate, loosely connected dimensions.
> People who insist on looking like this as a war with combatants are the ones who are missing the point.
I am not such a person.
> I mean, look, the court in France is trying to protect workers. That's a good thing. You agree that's a good thing, right?
I'm not sure I could make any such blanket statement without knowing the state before, the desired state as indicated by the court order, the evidentiary and legal bases of the decision, etc. The impulse to protect the vulnerable is good. The means by which societies choose to implement that impulse can cause harm, and I judge actions by their results, not their causes.
You seem to be assuming that the court ordered something it knew was impossible. That's, to borrow a phrase from the HN code of conduct, assuming bad faith on the part of the court. It seems much more likely to me that it just made a mistake and wasn't itself trying to escalate a war. That's not what courts do.
So... assuming the court thought this was a reasonable request, why shouldn't Amazon just try to comply?
> You seem to be assuming that the court ordered something it knew was impossible.
Perhaps it did, or perhaps it didn't. I don't think it's very relevant whether the court knew whether Amazon would be able to comply. It had its priorities, and it ordered Amazon to abide by those priorities. That's something that's perfectly within its rights to do.
But if the court were interested in Amazon's ability to comply, then it could have asked Amazon what it could and couldn't do in what time frame. It did not ask, or at least discarded the response if it did ask, so presumably its orders are not conditioned on Amazon's capabilities.
> That's, to borrow a phrase from the HN code of conduct, assuming bad faith on the part of the court. It seems much more likely to me that it just made a mistake and wasn't itself trying to escalate a war.
You seem really eager to assign good and bad faith and assumptions of the same to various parties, including myself. I am not eager to do that. I am also not willing to assume the court was incompetent or made a mistake. It gave an order, and presumably it had an understanding of the possible range of effects of that order. If it didn't, it could have availed itself of Amazon's thoughts on the subject before issuing the order. I assume the court did know the possible results, and it considers Amazon shutting down temporarily to be an acceptable short term outcome, if necessary to protect worker health.
> So... assuming the court thought this was a reasonable request, why shouldn't Amazon just try to comply?
Because the court said they would be fined if they failed to comply. I'm not making the connection on why Amazon's behavior should be conditioned on what the court's view of the reasonableness of the request is. Surely Amazon's behavior should first be conditioned on Amazon's view of the feasibility of the request, the potential economic and political consequences of failure, etc.?
No. Honoring a contract and a good faith attempt to honor a contract are not the same. A good faith attempt does not exempt you from the consequences of failing to perform a contract or comply with a legal order. In some cases it is a mitigating factor, but it is not by any means universal.
If the French court wanted Amazon to make a good faith attempt to do something, that is something they could have ordered. But they ordered compliance, not an attempt at compliance (as is their prerogative).
> Obviously, no, the court could be a total jerk about it and demand ridiculous things.
You mean like a 24h deadline for compliance with a large set of changes to operations?
> The whole point behind the "rule of law" is that we trust each other (Amazon, its unions, the courts) to be reasonable, tell the truth, and honor our agreements in the spirit in which they were made.
Tbh I'm not seeing the connection between rule of law and social trust. You can have high trust societies with less rule of law, and low trust societies with more rule if law. They are separate, loosely connected dimensions.
> People who insist on looking like this as a war with combatants are the ones who are missing the point.
I am not such a person.
> I mean, look, the court in France is trying to protect workers. That's a good thing. You agree that's a good thing, right?
I'm not sure I could make any such blanket statement without knowing the state before, the desired state as indicated by the court order, the evidentiary and legal bases of the decision, etc. The impulse to protect the vulnerable is good. The means by which societies choose to implement that impulse can cause harm, and I judge actions by their results, not their causes.