consumers and small businesses by millions sign away their class action rights not because they are all hoodwinked or coerced, but because at some level they have rational grounds to recognize that those class-action rights are very unlikely to pay off for them in durable future benefits (as opposed to benefits for participants in the litigation industry).

Oh, come ON. People sign arbitration agreements en masse first and foremost because they simply want the service, loan, or job that’s conditional upon signing the agreement. Most consumers & employees don’t know the ramifications, or they know they couldn’t afford to litigate anyway, and/or they think it’s unlikely they’ll ever have a dispute worth litigating. The likelihood that they won’t get a big payout in a class action doesn’t even enter into it! Small businesses are in theory better informed, but again, they want the services that companies like Amex provide, and they’re all-too-willing to gamble that they won’t be the victim of a nickel-and-dime scheme that the law normally discourages B2B service providers from hatching.

Your predictable ad hominem is a nice distraction, but even if it were true that anti-arbitration sentiment is fueled by armies of “legal leftists” with dollar-sign eyeballs, you completely sidestep the indisputable fact that arbitration agreements very simply and effectively allow corporations to opt-out of the court system and class actions, thus enabling them to all but completely dodge accountability for systemic violations of employment, consumer protection, and now even antitrust law. The fact that people aren’t coerced into signing, or that they probably won’t get a big payout in class-action litigation, does not excuse or balance out this inherent, shameful disregard for rights that people suffered and even fought and died for.

The one good thing about this development is that the door is now wide open for businesses to really put the screws to each other, instead of just to the little guy. Maybe this will change some stubborn, “pro-business” minds about how fair arbitration really is. Somehow I doubt it, though.