But the question “would anyone who really understood what was going on ever want this contract?” must be a relevant one.
Indeed, and this only seems like the “first-order” version of the question. For example, a credit card with extreme late payment penalties might be of reasonable appeal to someone sufficiently confident in their ability to pay on time. But it would need to derive its appeal from some other benefit, which presumably exists only because enough people fall into the late payment trap. In this way the credit card company becomes more like a “trickery broker”, passing along the spoils to some rational subset of customers while taking a cut.
So a variant of your question might be, “if this contract were only entered into by people who really understood the terms, would it still exist?”
Indeed, and this only seems like the “first-order” version of the question. For example, a credit card with extreme late payment penalties might be of reasonable appeal to someone sufficiently confident in their ability to pay on time. But it would need to derive its appeal from some other benefit, which presumably exists only because enough people fall into the late payment trap. In this way the credit card company becomes more like a “trickery broker”, passing along the spoils to some rational subset of customers while taking a cut.
So a variant of your question might be, “if this contract were only entered into by people who really understood the terms, would it still exist?”