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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: Homestead <homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Homestead] Insurance--a homesteader's viewpoint
  • Date: Sat, 5 Apr 2008 15:46:48 -0500

While reading William Safire's column titled "Moral Hazard,"* which introduction relates to the Bear Sterns bailout or financial market saver--your choice--this statement stopped me in my eye tracks: "There are still those who mutter that burglary insurance discourages people from locking their doors, but the idea of all kinds of insurance — purchased by individuals or given by government — seems to have caught on."

I'm sure that Safire is correct: the concept of insurance, in its myriad manifestations, does indeed seem to have caught on. I know people, and so do you, who pay thousands of dollars each year to "insure" their health, their homes, their lives, their furniture, their potential liability. If not now, no doubt there soon will be insurance to insure that your insurers pay off on your legitimate insurance claims.

While I was raising my daughters, I paid for so-called health insurance, even though I already deemed it to be in fact disease insurance. I wanted to be sure to be able to take care of any of their needs that might arise. Today, I have property insurance on the Phoenix house because it is required by the lender; I have vehicular insurance because it is required by law and there are a lot of bad drivers out there and others who would happily take my property and bankrupt me if the opportunity arose.

On Heartwood, there is no insurance of any kind. This is my sanctuary; this is where I make my stand; this is where I live my values regardless of what the world thinks of me. And yet . . . I know there are those who, while visiting, if they stumbled and fell over their own feet and cracked their skulls, might well seek a lawyer to help them take from me all that I have.

Insurance companies make big profits. They own big buildings in big cities. Their CEOs own third homes on the Mediterranean. I don't know if they still enjoy the immense tax advantages they acquired back when insurance was a new concept and when insurance companies convinced politicians that they needed help through tax exemptions to become strong enough to help those policy holders who against all odds justified their right to a payoff. I do know that insurance is very big business in the land of the free.

Beyond the dollar cost, it seems to me that insurance is an aberration of modernity. It is proof that we are uncivilized, irresponsible, fearful, and probably that there are just too damn many lawyers looking for work.

What are your thoughts on the issue of insurance?

*http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/06/magazine/06wwln-safire-t.html?ref=magazine



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