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Insurer Measures Driver Safety With Smartphone App To Calculate Premiums
Qedward writes "Motorists are being invited to help develop a new driving app that could earn them a discount of 'up to 20%' on their motor insurance. British insurer Aviva is using smartphone technology to create individual driver profiles that will be used to calculate tailored pay-how-you-drive premiums. The driver behavioral app, Aviva RateMyDrive, will monitor motorists taking part in the test for 200 miles, including acceleration, braking and cornering. This data is then turned into an individual score which helps determine the motorist's premium, with 'safer' drivers earning up to 20% off their deal."
Besides the fact that this is begging to be gamed, how to they tell the difference between someone driving carefully and some half-blind octogenarian that's causing traffic accidents around them by driving too slow and failing to react to near-misses that may affect the next driver?
I'm not too sure this is a universally good idea. Sometimes traffic gives you a tricky situation and you need to accelerate or do a quick lane change to avoid a potential accident. In those moments I'm not too sure it's good to introduce the thought, "Oh, but wait, that may increase my premium".
Wonder how they would rate me if I took the bus to work for a week? Certainly wouldn't catch me speeding or accelerating/decelerating too hard, but I wonder how the frequent stops would factor in? Also if you didn't put your phone into airplane mode, would being a passenger in a 737 double your rates when they clock you doing 150+mph at takeoff before you ascend above cell reception range?
Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property; A Corporation is the legal fiction that property is a person.
Drive sensibly while you're running the app, drive like a nutter when you're not.
On a more serious note, if this ran *all the time* then it may provide useful metrics on driver ability without the privacy concerns of GPS tracking. Yes, you could *theoretically* estimate someone's position from the accelerometer data - that is, after all, how Intertial Navigation Systems work - but it wouldn't be very accurate. You could estimate someone's position from cell handoff too, if you included that in the data, but then you'd have to be *trying* to be creepy ;-)
One of the companies I work with installs GPS trackers in vehicles for things like lorries, heavy plant and such. Their system has an option for an accelerometer that will beep if the drivier is accelerating too quickly, and thus wasting a lot of fuel. One biggish fleet has apparently saved about 1 million Euros on diesel alone using this, never mind tyres and repairs.
How long before the insurance company succumbs to the temptation of penalizing those who use their cars too much? The more time you spend on the road the higher the chance that you'll be involved in an incident, regardless of how well you drive. You can see how such information could be used to discriminate against people living in rural areas and those living further from their place of work.
Letting them track you is like talking to a cop who's placed you under arrest... they might convince you that you're being given a chance to prove what an upstanding law abiding citizen you are, but in reality they're only looking for the incriminating parts to hold against you. Its the marketing folks jobs to come up with hypothetical situations where you can save money so you'll switch to their brand... its the bean counters and their lawyers jobs to see that you don't ever actually qualify for said hypothetical discounts, and you are giving them the ammo...
Slavery is the legal fiction that a person is property; A Corporation is the legal fiction that property is a person.
Progressive is already using a feature like this in the U.S. It's just not a smart phone app. It's actually a little box you put in your car. It's called Snapshot. Not my kind of thing. There is just no way for the insurance company to know what is or is not going on around you when you're driving.
So I have to drive carefully for 200 miles to get my rating up and then I can turn it off and go back to my old habits? Or just swap phones with my mum for 200 miles? Or just not take my (primary) phone when I want to have some fun?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
For years insurance companies have been doing the exact same thing of estimating how good or bad a driver you are based on your age, gender, occupation etc. Now they're proposing to allow you to determine how good a driver you are based on using an app for not too long of a time really.
Is there a potential for it to be misused, yeah, but I'd welcome any move to judge my driving over lumping me in with a particular age group or gender.
There is no -1 disagree
Sounds like malignant nonsense. And I hope people don't accept it, else we might soon need smartphones to obtain drivers-licenses. Insurance companies, although happily masquerading as safety-options, are mafia in disguise. They have purchased their way into government and become mandatory by force, compelling people to pay for protection whether they want it or not. Of course drivers need protection from the irresponsible or even honest accidents (collisions) of others, but with such a huge amount of them being fender-benders, which premiums don't cover, insurance companies make fortunes forcing people to pay for what they might do, and often never do - nor get compensated for. I'm not suggesting that the concept of insurance is necessarily intrinsically flawed; but the current model is a state-sponsored scam. They offer "rewards" of reduced extortion fees to those who behave well and age over time. But what about the person who drives for 50 years and never has an accident? If these insurance companies are mandated by force, then they should likewise be mandated by force to offer rebates to the families of deceased drivers who payed for protection but never used it.
They have monopolized upon the hypothetical, or at best the questionably statistical, and have done so with minimal mercy for their subjects. I am more than 100% for safety, so much that I will volunteer my time to empower it, but let us not confuse safety with horse-shit.
A lot of social studies have been done on games and the motivating factors behind them that breed such (understandably) fanatical enthusiasms. Is it so difficult to imagine that we are being gamed ourselves?
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
The idea to customize insurance up to individual profiles is completely opposite to the very first idea of the insurance itself which is a way to share a risk within a large pool of fellows in order to distribute the cost. If you start building precise profiles of individuals and charge them accordingly, you defeat the idea behind the insurance. At term, you will charge the whole risk to each individual and they will no longer see advantages to insure themselves. Insurance is about sharing a risk over the largest population possible.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Does it jack up your rates if you text or talk on the phone while driving?
The modern world is based on statistics and conforming to expectations, whether that's an aptitude test determining what you're "probably" good at to some crude metrics determining whether you're "probably" a safe driver. Everyone is fitted into neat little categories and self-fulfilling prophecies are created, reinforcing existing prejudices and providing little scope for social improvement.
No more is this true than with driving: young men are essentially told that they are high risk. It's like the classical story of parents who started being fined for picking up their kids late from school, so ended up doing it more because they thought they'd now paid for the right to fetch their kids late.
How is this new?
In Spain, MAPFRE has been offering for at least 4 years the YCar line of insurance for young drivers which offers as much as a 40% discount if you install a GPS-like device which sends them information about when you drive, what speed you drive, how many kilometers, etc.
If you speed up, drive on "dangerous" hours (e. g. weekend 2 AM - 6 AM), etc, you lose the discount for next year.
http://www.mapfre.com/seguros/es/particulares/soluciones/seguros-coches-jovenes-ycar.shtml
There are several policies to choose and some of them even allow to adjust the policy clauses, for instance in case you are a young driver who works the night shift.
The reality is that everybody thinks they are above average driver. So if they get a score that is below average, they know they will pay more to offset the drivers who pay less. So they simply walk away. So ultimately exactly half of the drivers would get a worse deal in a perfect world. The insurance company will end up with better than average drivers only ... but these drivers will pay less insurance. The insurance company pays out less but earns less per driver. That is a one to one relationship, so the insurance company has no incentive to do this ... unless people naturally think they are better than average drivers or they think that can fool this application. Then people will flock and the app can be no more an app that has an image of two cog wheels that at the end of 200klms simply tells you that you have qualified for a discount. No different than what happens now that there is a myriad of insurance companies that "specialise" in different groups. You go to three companies and one specialises in people with mustaches and you get a discount at that one. Your sense of value is created by the other two and the third springs the trap. The reality is that there are only a couple of insurance companies and the rest are simply fronts.
but imagine for a moment that everybody just stopped buying insurance, canceled their insurance completely and drove without it.
Within a short time the automated license plate scanners would be connected to an insurance monitoring system and an automated fine-sending system.
What, do you think the appropriate hooks aren't there yet?
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
all cars seized and crushed? From all people? Even if just 10% of people cancel their insurance right now and drive this way, that's millions of people.
You can't handle the truth.
Never understood this. Why crush the car? Why not sell it? Change the locks if necessary, but it's not like the car is being punished here.
If anyone thinks the scumbag insurance companies are going to give anyone a 20% discount, I have some prime swamp land for you.
Well, it's government, it is not supposed to be efficient or intelligent. It's about punishment, show of force, showing you who is the boss, telling you to go stuff it, showing you that they can crash you (or your car).
You can't handle the truth.
Mass civil disobedience happens when people really care about something enough to put their own liberty and property in danger. People don't care that much about their insurance company lowering their premiums in exchange for monitoring their driving behaviour, in fact, most good drivers are going to welcome this (and everyone thinks they're a good driver).
Bring back personal liability. If you drive like an ass, you cause an accident, you are liable for all damages you caused. not your insurance company, YOU.
you were busy texting and hit a motorcyclist? everything you own is now the property of the motorcyclists family, as well as 50% of all your income for the next 30 years.
You dont want that liability? then buy $10,000 of liability insurance at $1500 a month, or stop driving like a moron.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Never understood this. Why crush the car? Why not sell it? Change the locks if necessary, but it's not like the car is being punished here.
Symbolism. That, and the inability to get any value back from the car afterwards.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
No, sure, people don't react and don't do anything because they are the proverbial frog that is being slowly cooked in a pan, not thrown into boiling hot water, they are boiled slowly.
However there will be a breaking point, I believe that breaking point is going to hit when the next economic crisis happens, so when the dollar crashes, the US bonds crash. But the unfortunate part is that if the people did try to get out of that pan right now, it would mean much less blood, less senseless violence. It's not like it's good to have a massive revolt, revolution, guillotines on the streets, etc., it's really bad, it's bad for the economy and society, not just for those, who are unfortunate enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time and have their heads chopped off.
It's bad for the society, because it will disrupt the economy to the point, where it may take not just years and decades to fix, it's better to kick the bad habits sooner rather than later.
You can't handle the truth.
Imagine if tax time came and nobody paid the taxes.
Imagine if everybody cancelled their insurance and drove anyway.
Imagine if everybody had drugs on them at all times.
You just gave the for-profit prison industry a huge erection.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
There is no eventually about it. In the UK we already have a database of all vehicle license plates which is linked to data on which cars have insurance cover provided by the insurance industry. A few years ago it was made a legal requirement to make a declaration to the vehicle licensing authority if your car is "off the road", i.e. not being used on a public highway and therefore not requiring insurance.
There is already a list of the registered car owners without insurance (and also without having paid the road tax) who have not declared their car legally off the road. The database is already linked to license plate recognition systems so if a car which is declared off the road drives past it will be flagged and they can be prosecuted.
This state of affairs is largely supported by the population as there has been a significant increase in uninsured drivers who are involved in accidents (as insurance costs rose and recession bit people stopped renewing their cover). The cost of this ends up being born by the innocent drivers insurer, pushing up premiums for everyone else.
I don't know where you live, but I live in a democracy. If I wanted to stop buying car insurance, and I knew I had all car owners behind me, I would start a political party, get elected and change the compulsory car insurance policy. Your whole idea of "how about if all of society rebelled against society" is weird and stupid.
-- Make America hate again!
If millions of people break the law, it's not a law. Basically laws are relying on voluntary compliance. For profit prisons are the only correct way to have prisons, but that's because there should be no government laws that put people to jail. The court system, the prison system, the policing, all of this should be private. The prison time should be paid by liability insurance and thieves shouldn't even be in prison, they should be forced to return the value of what they stole maybe multiplied by 3.
Only violent criminals should go to prison, and liability insurance should be used to pay for their prison time and the amount of coverage basically then is relative to the holding conditions (and I suppose charitable groups can give them some more money if they care).
AFAIC if you steal from me, I don't want you in prison, I want you to be working for me until you pay it back more than once.
Oh, and obviously gov't creates entire classes of prisoners that should never be in prison ever, under any circumstances. Drug laws? Drug war? That is what gives the woody to the private prisons that are private in name only, because they get government money and gov't laws to subsidise them and to create the prison population for them.
You can't handle the truth.
I don't know where you live, but I don't see any gov't that allows a real choice for the people.
You can't handle the truth.
This is a problem of-course, because eventually the cops will have the license plate recognition systems that are tied into insurance databases and all the other databases and it will be nearly impossible to drive without insurance, but imagine for a moment that everybody just stopped buying insurance, cancelled their insurance completely and drove without it.
Here in the UK we are already there, they are fitting ANPR systems into most police cars already. They are tied into the motor insurance database already. If you are driving a car without insurance it bleeps at them and they pull you over. Once they pull you over you can then tell them your insurance company and they ring them up and check, tell them your name and they look that up and check or they take your car there and then.
You then have a couple of weeks to collect your car (and pay the tow charges) before it gets sold or crushed.
Most UK residents I speak to actually agree with this. Insurance is there so that if you drive into someone elses car they do not have to pay for the damage you caused, you do in the way of higher insurance premiums. It also is used to compensate any people you run over for their injuries. People who are avoiding insurance are braking the law, and should be punished but they should also not be allowed to continue breaking the law. Immediately confiscating their car works pretty well in this regard.
You can buy another car, but then the same thing will happen and eventually you will have to turn up in court and explain your revolutionary actions to a judge. He might even have a good laugh before banning your from driving for a few years and fining you far more than you would ever have paid in insurance. He might even throw in prison for a bit although even if he does not you can still go there anyway if you want by refusing to pay the fine.
The alternative to a system like this is one where some uninsured shit bag can crash into you and you have no way of getting a new car without paying for it yourself and spending a fortune on laywers to try and go after them for money they probably do not have anyway.
Driving without insurance Britain is a very bad idea. The only way to get away with it is make sure you only ever buy foreign cars with European number plates that they cannot lookup in the ANPR system :)
I dont read
There have been ANPR cameras in the UK that do that for a decade already - they do tax, insurance and MOT (certificate of road worthiness), and issue automatic fixed penalty notices.
The reason that we force people to have insurance is because they don't have the money to pay the damages, and the damages have to be paid, how else is the motorcyclist supposed to get his medical care and compensation?
How exactly is getting 50% of your income for the next 30 years going to help the motorcyclist family if your income is 0? And how exactly is it going to help them pay to get all their damages restored right now?
Never understood this. Why crush the car? Why not sell it? Change the locks if necessary, but it's not like the car is being punished here.
Because most of the time the people who drive without insurance drive around in pieces of crap that nobody would pay for.
Legally though I believe they can sell the car if they think it is worth anything. But who would be stupid enough to pay up for a nice new car then not pay a few hundred quid to insure it? Most new cars come with free insurance anyway over here.
I dont read
"Those who value cheaper car insurance over privacy deserve neither."
Most UK residents I speak to actually agree with this. Insurance is there so that if you drive into someone elses car they do not have to pay for the damage you caused, you do in the way of higher insurance premiums. It also is used to compensate any people you run over for their injuries. People who are avoiding insurance are braking the law, and should be punished but they should also not be allowed to continue breaking the law. Immediately confiscating their car works pretty well in this regard.
- it's all fine and dandy, the problem, from my POV is that the government forces people to buy the products.
Government must not have the power to force people to buy anything, to participate in anything, to pay any income taxes (see my sig if you care to understand my POV).
--
If a person doesn't have insurance it does not mean he cannot pay for the problems if he causes the problems on the road. What if you don't want to give up your income to an insurance company, instead you have your savings that you can tap into in case of an emergency?
The point is that what is forced here is involuntary participation in a system in a way that is detrimental to the individual and that really means to the economy and society in totality. The fact that people (who you talk to and others) don't understand it does not change it.
All products that people are forced to buy by the decree of government ends up being a massive misallocation of resources, any type of insurance, including car insurance, including social security and medical insurance and employment insurance, etc.etc.
All of this is involuntary in cases of the so called 'democracies' of the world, none of it is actually voluntary.
Being forced to give up your money to an insurance company that is really getting your money as a subsidy via the laws of the government, that's just another way to destroy the economy, it's also a ponzi scheme of-course and it destroys individual liberties.
If you were not robbed blind by the government in every way, you wouldn't have this problem of not being able to save and invest for yourself, to pay for yourself.
There is nothing that PREVENTS you from buying insurance, but government mandates for all of it just makes it more expensive, year to year.
When was the last time everybody's premiums went DOWN rather than up? The last time (in USA at least) was before the Federal reserve and various other government schemes were set up.
You can't handle the truth.
But what if the economy is the bad habit?
You are welcome on my lawn.
But what if the economy is the bad habit?
- :) I love what you are having, it's great.
Economy is basically everything we produce and trade for. The bad habit is in consuming and trading with fake money for production of some people, and having this codified in the law.
You can't handle the truth.
You won't have all car owners behind you. Speaking as somone who was hit by a moron who didn't have insurance, I was glad I did, so I wouldn't have to re-purchase my totaled brand new car because the moron wanted to text his girlfriend as he was driving.
Lots of us understand what insurance is for and want it. If you have a piece-of crap car, and no savings the person who you carelessly wreck into can go after to recover damages, sure, I'm sure you don't want to pay for insurance.
That's real helpful when you're tetraplegic and you were hit by someone who lives in a caravan.
[FUCK BETA]
While I agree with some of your points, I think you often confuse your own extreme ideology with how things should be.
In the US, you can self insure your cars. Here's what's required by law in the state of Ohio:
$30,000 bond issued by an insurance carrier or authorized surety company.
Certificate of proof of financial responsibility signed by your insurance agent.
Bureau of Motor Vehicle (BMV) certificate showing you have at least $30,000 in cash or government bonds deposited with the State Treasurer.
$30,000 BMV-issued bond certificate, signed by two people owning real estate with an equity of at least $60,000.
BMV-issued certificate of self-insurance (only available to those with at least 26 motor vehicles registered in their name or a company's name).
So, for $30k you can be self insured. Or if you have at least 26 motor vehicles. Both are proof that you can pay for damages should you be at fault in an accident. Problem is - what happens when that $30,000 runs out? Also, if you have to use some of that $30,000 to pay for an accident - now you no longer have the bond and have to go get a company to insure you.
I honestly think in today's world, a $30,000 bond is probably too low; but you can do it.
Karnal
AFAIC just break the law, don't buy insurance. This is a problem of-course, because eventually the cops will have the license plate recognition systems that are tied into insurance databases and all the other databases and it will be nearly impossible to drive without insurance, but imagine for a moment that everybody just stopped buying insurance, cancelled their insurance completely and drove without it.
It's possible to set this up with today's communications than ever before. There should be: "get together to break the law" app that people would get and then all act as one to break the law of the day. This is the only way that doesn't involve violence against the government, with guns and all, that can be used to take the power back from the government.
Imagine if tax time came and nobody paid the taxes. Imagine if everybody cancelled their insurance and drove anyway. Imagine if everybody had drugs on them at all times.
what is the power going to do, when the subjects stop recognising the power? Kill everybody?
Automated license scanners are apparently already commonplace. I saw an interview with a cop the other day that said his car often scanned somewhere in the neighborhood of 10k plates a day. Insurance agencies report when your insurance is cancelled electronically and your license is automatically suspended. With the automated scanners it probably would only be a few minutes before you were in the back of a squad car.
I'd rather buy insurance than have my shit pushed in while in jail.
If a person doesn't have insurance it does not mean he cannot pay for the problems if he causes the problems on the road. What if you don't want to give up your income to an insurance company, instead you have your savings that you can tap into in case of an emergency?
Because the risk is unbounded. You might believe you have enough money to buy a new car for someone when your mistake totals their car. But what if you cause someone permanent handicap such that they need care and treatment for the rest of their lives. What if you handicap a bus load of people? What if you cause a train disaster? Then you're into many millions. Few people could afford to pay the cost of the harm they caused, and no-one would know whether they could or not until after the incident.
Your theory that mandatory insurance means expensive insurance is illogical. Healthy competition exists between insurers, nothing about it being a mandatory requirement removes that competition. Thus good value in insurance is inevitable. If not, then there is something wrong with the capitlist/libertarian belief that competition brings better value.
Typical, lets ignore personal responsibility! No need for you to be able to pay for the damage you cause, no that is evil leftist personal responsibility.
By the way, I would like for the people who are reading any of this to step back and think about this statement that you made:
Insurance is there so that if you drive into someone elses car they do not have to pay for the damage you caused, you do in the way of higher insurance premiums.
This is a false statement.
Insurance is not there so that if you drive into somebody else, they don't have to pay for the damage. That's a completely perverted idea of what insurance is.
Insurance is there so that if you get into a situation that you are betting you may get into, so that you have a claim to insurance so that you don't have to bear the full cost of that situation.
Insurance is there so that if something happens to YOU, not to somebody else, to YOU, that you get covered.
If somebody sues YOU, if YOU get into an accident in any way and YOU are left with high costs, that's what insurance is for. You are buying insurance in order so that you don't have to bear the full cost of an accident, of an unfortunate situation.
That's why health insurance is no longer insurance under Obamacare, because you are no longer buying insurance, you are in a health management plan and the so called 'insurance' company cannot even assess the RISK of insuring your situation properly, and 'insurance' company is not allowed to price the risk for you accordingly or even deny you coverage based on pre-existing condition, which means this is no longer insurance.
You buy insurance so that if somebody hits you, your costs are covered by the insurance that you are paying for (minus the deductible and up to whatever maximum that you are paying for).
You don't buy insurance so that you cover costs of other people. Your insurance is supposed to cover the costs that YOU incur. If you get into an accident and somebody sues you, that's a cost that you want insurance for, your own insurance.
This is what is wrong with the public education, but in reality propaganda system that exists, it prevents people from understanding very basic concepts.
You can't handle the truth.
No, it is because most people agree mandatory insurance is good. Personal responsibility is good. You should either have the cash on hand or insurance to cover damage you may cause.
No, the point is to punish those who drive without insurance. That really is it. Driving without insurance means you will not be able to pay for damage you cause.
Private courts? Welcome to slavery. You will always be guilty and you will always be working to pay that insurance that now costs 100% of what you make.
Welcome to debtors prisons reopening.
Why would violent criminals get insurance?
I just made a comment that answers your question, your question is posed out of a misunderstanding of what insurance is.
Insurance is not there for you to pay for others, insurance is there for you to cover your own costs. So if you don't have insurance and you are in an accident, it is your problem. It's your health and other costs. If you have insurance, then after your deductible and up to whatever the cap is that you are paying for, you'll be covered.
If you are in an accident, it doesn't matter if you are responsible for it or not, your insurance is supposed to kick in above the deductible and cover your costs.
If you can show your insurance company that the responsibility is with the other driver(s), then it's up to your insurance company to go after that driver and/or his insurance. What does government have to do with any of it except providing huge subsidy to the insurance companies and thus driving the costs up?
You can't handle the truth.
So... Translation of "Get Aviva" is "Get a life?"
Woot! /humor
Nonsense. Not participating in a program that is mandated by the government, regardless of what that program is, does not equate to ignoring personal responsibility.
I am talking about destroying the unjust law as it stands, and there is no justification for government to force people to buy any type of insurance.
Here is what insurance is supposed to be, it's a way to hedge your own bets, to cover your own costs, this shouldn't ever be dictated by government.
You can't handle the truth.
If a person doesn't have insurance it does not mean he cannot pay for the problems if he causes the problems on the road. What if you don't want to give up your income to an insurance company, instead you have your savings that you can tap into in case of an emergency?
That is called self insuring and is legal in most jurisdictions you just have to put 50k+ into escrow. So you actually do have the money.
If you want to self insure go for it. What you really want is to not be responsible for yourself. You want to be able to have no insurance and no savings and screw over the people you harm. Your kind is why I have to also pay for uninsured/underinsured motorist coverage.
This is the stupidest thing I've ever read and I see this shit all the time on FB from some of my anarcho-capitalist leaning friends. Literally, all you are doing is substituting "The Government (tm)" for a different government, and just cleverly avoiding the use of the word.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
As I said, your comments are pure nonsense talk. I am talking about the law that should not exist, not the fact that people should abdicate personal responsibility.
You can't handle the truth.
Instead of measuring acceleration, etc They should write an app to determine if you play with your phone while you drive. That would most likely be a much better predictor of how likely you are to be in an accident.
Since $30,000 is not enough to cover any medical bills for a serious car accident, what this means is that the people who are paying for car insurance are giving a handout to the people who decide to "self insure" by virtue of higher premiums. Effectively, if you can self-insure for only $30,000, you are no better than a cheat without any car insurance.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Your comments are nonsense. Self insuring is a thing that exists and you are not even educated enough on this subject to know that.
Without this law people will abdicate personal responsibility. Even with it they try to. This is why in my state if your insurance is cancelled you must return your license plates.
What makes you think people would act otherwise?
Someone with a jalopy and no savings has no incentive to get insurance and no money for an injured party to collect.
You think it's stupid not to allow the government to pass laws that criminalise behaviour of individuals, their freedom of choice, freedom of association, their freedom of private property, starting with their own bodies (drug laws).
Government must not be allowed to pass laws that criminalise behaviour of individuals. There have to be competing court rooms, there have to be competing points of view and it should be up to the individuals to choose the courts they go to, which means that it is not government at all, so your point is simply wrong.
You can't handle the truth.
If you want insurance to cover only the buyer, it is an interesting idea but sadly not attainable. It perverts the economic incentives. It means that a poor driver can feel free to crash into others with no penalty. The victims insurance premiums go up and the poor driver is free to carry on in his behavior. Unless you want to use another system to punish poor drivers in conjunction with your idea it is just unworkable.
Health insurance is similar, if you allow people to go without they will. Then they will use the ER and those who do pay for healthcare will be paying the uninsureds costs. Far better to require everyone to carry coverage.
So then I should be free to cover my property in radioactive waste? Even though I live next to a school and am now killing the students and poisoning the groundwater.
I should then also be free to only allow myself to be sued in a court that will never find against the property owner? Or to just refuse to ever go to a court that the victims select?
Who the hell marked this up as "Insightful"?
A car is a potentially lethal weapon, and when I'm driving, I'm thankful that I know everybody else on the road is insured. Remember, if your car has no value, you can always insure it third party only.
(my other account is now waiting for 24 hours to pass before more comments can be made, and you probably want me to answer, yes?)
Private courts? Welcome to slavery. You will always be guilty and you will always be working to pay that insurance that now costs 100% of what you make.
- right, because without government meddling all of a sudden there will be no competition in insurance. Because without government criminalising behaviour, somehow more people will end up in prisons? Ha, what an interesting notion. People's behaviour that is criminalised by the government, lands them into prisons, allows the public police force to confiscate their property without any trial, without any hearing, nothing.
You are already guilty of everything in the eyes of the government, you have to prove that you are not.
And as to debtor prisons - there is nothing wrong with it.
As to violent criminals and insurance - in a free market system plenty of people will have liability insurance, because without gov't meddling, there will be plenty of space for private lawsuits to deal with property and contract issues as well as criminal charges and those also have to be paid for.
If you end up hurt by somebody criminally, it's up to YOUR insurance to cover the cost of the case and put the criminal to prison and it's up to the insurance company to extract the payments from the criminal in prison. Yes, it's not simple, no, it shouldn't BE simple to put people into jail.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
It could in theory, but tends not to in practice be the case.
It is far more often the case that someone with $30k in escrow has far more money than that and can be sued for it. This also means that person will get some sort of coverage that kicks in only once his funds in escrow are exhausted.
1. If there are no government laws that should put people in prison, but some people (eg violent criminals) should still go to prison then who exactly decides what rules these theoretical private courts and police should enforce?
2. If the courts and the police are all private entities, who hires them? Who ensures their objectivity (or do you even care about that)? Who makes sure they don't abuse their authority? Hell, who defines what authority they even have?
3. If someone steals from you and can't repay the value + damages (that you seem to have arbitrarily defined without need for any laws that specify what those damages should be) what then? Death? They work it off slave labor style? What do you do if the thief declines to show up for his forced labor? What happens if I'd rather not have hardened criminals doing work around my home or business?
4. If private prison sentences are to be paid for by liability insurance who ensures that criminals will keep up on their insurance premiums? Because you know I'm sure that violent criminals (the only people that should go to jail remember) wouldn't dare walk around without paying for their insurance.
In short, I think this plan could use some more work.
I wish I were as sure of anything as some people are of everything
That's the point of having extreme ideologies in the first place. Else: why bother?
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Maybe in your dream land, but here in reality my car insurance only covers medical and damage I do to others.
Your comments are ... well, I wrote what insurance is for here (sorry, can't post under my first account, have to use this one, that's because people don't like what I have to say though they for some reason like to participate in the discussions).
Insurance is not there for the OTHER side to be covered, it's for YOU to be covered.
There is no reason at all to allow government to dictate to the people that they must buy insurance! Your insurance is there so that YOU are covered, not the other side.
It's up to the insurance company to try and recoup the costs if it's possible from the other side, but as far as you are concerned, all you need is your insurance to kick in when your costs go over your deductible limit, you shouldn't care that the other side doesn't have insurance and government certainly shouldn't be mandating any of this.
I suggest to people that they should buy insurance if they don't have enough savings that they are comfortable with to cover their own costs, but I will never force people to buy insurance, but that's where the threat of government violence comes in handy for you and people that share your totalitarian ideology.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Nothing wrong with debtors prisons?
Are you fucking stupid or just ignorant of history?
Are you dumb enough to think violent criminals have any money for insurance companies to collect? You want the victim to pay for incarceration? I bet you want women to pay for their own rape kits too.
Hopefully, one day you will grow up.
Most people are good drivers, at least 99% of the time. It's that 1% of the time that we all lapse and scare the hell out of everyone else...
Ibid.
Uh, no. YOU are responsible for damage you cause to others. It is called liability. The government requires you to have insurance so you can meet that responsibility.
You are required to have liability insurance to protect me from damage you cause.
You are not required to insurance that protects your property (collision, comprehensive, etc).
This is a private property issue, nothing to do with government. If you are causing pollution to OTHER people's property and possibly even causing harm to other people's health, not yours, that's your problem, other people. Then it is up to those other people to sue you, that's all. There are property rights and there is criminal code.
Now, as I said, I wouldn't have government put people to jail, it should be completely private. The courts would be private, the private prisons, the private police force. Would there be courts, that would find against the property owner? Maybe, it's possible. However it is not up to the best interests of the court not to protect private property, that type of court wouldn't last for too long.
People have private property, most people do, and they want private property ownership to be upheld. Would a court survive the competition for too long in such a system?
Since in most cases it would be the private INSURANCE that would pay for such cases, it would be beneficial to the insurance company to have the court that upholds private property rights in almost all cases. Certainly it makes no sense to not uphold private property rights, after all, even insurance companies need private property laws to work.
If you refuse to go to court and such, again, it would be up to the insurance companies to deal with you, because your behavior may cause untold DAMAGE TO THE INSURANCE COMPANIES because your behavior may eventually lead to too many payouts, as insurance would have to cover all the people's problems that you may cause.
Yes, private security force may be hired and you may end up in prison and your property may end up being leaned and seized to pay for the decontamination and other costs.
AFAIC there is nothing that the government does today that would be anywhere near as efficient as a system would be based on private courts, private insurance and private security. What did government do with BP spill? What, the 75 Million USD per incident liability limit? How did that help anybody?
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Seems to me that this program is missing some critical metrics of driving safety. As an app it has the potential to monitor other phone activities while driving. I think that beyond the basic GPS based speed / location measurements and the accelerometer data they should be interested in how distracted the driver is by their mobile.
Say they're texting or browsing the web while driving but still doing the speed limit. The way this program is being described there would be no penalty. In reality the driver is by far more of a hazard to those around them and should pay a higher premium as they are more likely to be involved in an incident.
> Driving without insurance in the UK will get your car seized and crushed.
Maybe Britain is radically different from the US in this regard, but I'd be shocked if any such law weren't written in a way that made it impossible to actually DO that to any car that was secured by a bank loan, as opposed to a car that was paid off and driven by an uninsured owner. At the *very* least, the law would be written with "safe harbor" provisions that exempted any car used to secure a loan as long as the lender made a good-faith effort to enforce compliance (regardless of whether or not the lender's efforts were actually successful and effective).
(same person, different account, the other one is limited now, I can only post there in 24 hours it says).
Liability only means that YOU are covered by YOUR insurance in case YOUR costs of protecting yourself against a lawsuit by the other side goes above your deductible limit.
This is a huge misunderstanding that is created by the government propaganda machine on purpose, you are paying insurance so that your costs are covered, and your costs may be costs of a lawsuit against you.
The other side, the other person, his insurance is there so that he has his costs covered above his deductible.
The point to buy insurance is not to cover anybody else but yourself, the government wants you to be totally in the dark, totally misunderstanding the point of insurance as well as completely misunderstanding how money works, how economy works, everything is set up so that you can be robbed.
Remember, they need you to be only intelligent enough to participate in the economy by working somewhere, but not intelligent or knowledgeable enough to understand that you are getting robbed by the system.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
It depends on how you define a good driver. In my state, rules of the road say that when turning onto a multiple-lane highway, you turn into the lane closest to you. Yet, I constantly see people in the small town I live in who seem to believe that multi-lane means multi-choice. OTOH, it provides me a little fun because instead sitting at the intersection, waiting to turn left while I let all the right-turn drives pick their lane, I turn left into the lane closest to me and, every once in a while, see the 'right-turning' driver swerve to get into the proper lane. (Yes, I know, it won't be that much fun when it causes an accident. Then, again, it will be fun when the other driver gets a ticket for illegal lane usage.)
In my experience, the less valuable the car, the lower the difference between fully comp and third party. I've had quotes about £10 apart, and the fully comp came with a lower excess!
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You are mistaken, just like this guy, and my reply to him is the same as it is to you. Your insurance is there to cover you, not anybody else.
Liability only means that if somebody sues you, your insurance still covers those costs. The other person needs to have his own insurance to cover his costs.
Whether the other person has insurance or not is actually irrelevant for him suing you (anybody can sue you, insurance or not), and that's what liability actually means, that you are covered in case of a lawsuit like that and maybe you win or lose that lawsuit, the costs are covered by your insurance.
It is your personal responsibility to cover yourself with enough insurance so that if something happens to you, you do not have to worry about paying for your bills and such.
That's why having government mandating this is complete fraud and totally above and beyond what should be allowed to government.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
You are completely wrong. You (not an insurance company) are responsible for harm you cause to others. Period. By far, most people could not afford to pay for that harm. The government requires them to buy insurance so they will have the resources to pay for the damage they cause.
Your idiotic scheme places the responsibility on the victim instead of the person causing the harm. Nobody but you supports that.
It's what the point of insurance is, to cover yourself, not somebody else.
That's why people bought health insurance before there was government health insurance (I have a journal entry on this, people preferred private health insurance actually).
Those are the only incentives, there are no other incentives, everything that government is doing with mandates goes completely above and beyond what the individual economic imperative is.
You should care about covering yourself, that should be your goal.
As to 'poor drivers hitting rich drivers' more if they are not forced to buy insurance - in a free market the insurance costs were always going down, not up. Your question doesn't encompass the reason for why there are poorer drivers - it's the government that prevents poorer people becoming wealthier.
Otherwise how do you think it is possible, that people that you call 'poor' CAN OWN AND DRIVE CARS? That's because the market works to make cars affordable, because that's the best way to make the most profits (Sam Walton didn't become one of the richest people on the planet by selling to the rich).
Also as I said earlier, it is up to the insurance company to attempt and recoup the costs from the other side if it's possible, but the insurance is there to cover YOU.
You bought it, you didn't buy it to cover other people, you bought it, you are paying for it, just like with any other product - to cover yourself.
If you truly believe that this is "an interesting idea", then I am flabbergasted, because it never occurred to me that somebody can really look at it and think that this is something extraordinary - buying things that you buy, so that they are there for you to use. It's amazing to me, actually, what country are you from?
MY OTHER COMMENTS
What you fail to understand is that if you cause an accident 'your own costs' include the harm to the other party. So if you run into me and cause $100K in damages (medical bills, lost income, property damage, etc), do you have a spare $100K laying around to pay for that? Most people do not, so the government requires them to buy liability insurance so they can meet those obligations.
Under you brilliant idea, what happens when you cause $100K in damages, can't afford that, and have no insurance? Either the victim or society pays for your actions, thus you have evaded personal responsibility.
Nobody cares if you can't afford to repair of replace your own car, you are not required to have insurance for that. But society in general certainly does care if you can't afford to pay for damage you cause to others, thus the mandatory liability requirement.
In my scenario I have no money and no property other than the now worthless polluted land. What should the victims do?
Why would I have insurance on my nuclear waste site?
Why would I not kill the private security force?
Why would I allow them on my land?
yeah, there is nothing wrong with debtors prisons. If you owe me money, I want it, and I want to get it out of you, and it shouldn't be up to government, it's a private matter.
As to violent criminals - absolutely they should have insurance collecting from them, but that's not the point.
The violent criminal should be prosecuted because the victim has insurance (unless the victim wants to pay out of pocket) and the court system needs to be paid, same with the prison system, it's not free.
If somebody beats you, whatever, you should be able to seek retribution via the court system, with insurance, yes, your insurance. It's the same principle that you are asking for, you want government to be the insurer, you want other people to pay for you, I am saying that's the wrong approach, I am saying that if you want insurance, it should be private.
As to rape kits, etc., yeah, it's up to the insurance company or your own money if you want.
Now, an insurance company may be very much interested in incarcerating a person who is a violent offender, that's because the violent offenders WILL COST INSURANCE MORE MONEY IN CLAIMS.
Thus it makes sense for the insurance company to minimize its costs by working hard against that offender in court and by paying for his incarceration if nobody else is picking up the tab, and if he has his own insurance, then his insurance is there to cover his costs. The insurance company of the victim may seek their costs to be covered by the insurance company of the offender (if he has it), sure, there is nothing wrong with it.
As to "one day you'll grow up", I am not expecting to change my opinion on any of this even if I live another 40 years, why would I?
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Are you really that stupid? What if the other party is a pedestrian, or a passenger in a vehicle they don't own, or is standing at a bus stop or sitting at a sidewalk cafe? What you are in effect saying is that instead of you, the owner of a vehicle that can cause untold damage, being forced to have insurance to protect us from you, everyone else should have to have insurance to protect themselves from you.
I here that from some person for over 30 years. Guess what? still hasn't happened. Not even close.
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You fail to understand what I said again.
If the insurance cannot collect from said uninsured driver the premiums go up. This means less people get insurance and on and on. Eventually no one will bother with it.
I am not basing my responses on anything as juvenile as ideology, I am basing them on practicality.
If the State demand you have auto insurance, then the state should provide the min coverage at cost.
Don't think the people wanted this. Mandatory insurance was forced through by the insurance companies.
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No. Most driver are bad driver 90% of the time.
We didn't evolve any real mechanism for being in a box hurtling down a road at 50 miles an hour. Most people, most of the time, aren't really paying attention. Not paying attention is what causes most auto accident.
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You are completely wrong. You (not an insurance company) are responsible for harm you cause to others. Period
- you are absolutely wrong on this, it's just not the case, not even under the current system.
Who is paying for the criminal investigation under the current system? Is it the person committing the act? NO! Absolutely not! The system steal money from everybody to cover these investigations, incarceration, etc.
You are only responsible if you are proven to be responsible in the court, so there is nothing to say "period" about there, see? You can't make such statements, they have nothing to do with reality.
You are paying for insurance so that if something happens to you, that you are covered against, where the costs go above the deductible, you don't have to pay above the deductible.
What do you think happens when you get into an accident, because of somebody who has no insurance? You are covered by your insurance.
You are covered by your insurance, that's what you are paying for. Which part of it is so hard to understand?
You are paying for your food to feed yourself, not somebody else.
You are paying for your clothing, so that you can wear it, not somebody else.
You are paying for your house insurance so that if you get robbed or there is a fire or a flood or whatever damage, so you can recover your losses, it's not for somebody else.
You are supposed to be (in a sane society) paying for your health insurance so that if you get a difficult disease that is expensive, you can the put a claim above your deductible, it's not for other people, it's for you.
There is one type of insurance that is somewhat different, but that depends on who is paying for the premiums - life insurance.
If you want to know that for example your children have money if you die, you are going to buy life insurance, but actually it makes much more sense for your kids to pay for your life insurance, it's just that while they don't have jobs, they can't pay for it. That's the one case where it's not you, who benefits, it's your kids (or your spouse or whoever you choose as the beneficiary), but again, you are doing it probably for yourself, because if you want to ensure your kids financial future, you are not doing it for the society in general, it's your personal preference.
So when you say silly things like this:
you are completely wrong
- that's just ignorant.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
I have a better idea. Give everyone a data-capable plate reader and a little LCD touchscreen in the dash and let us thumbs up or thumbs down someone's driving. That person driving like a crazy person with 1000 thumbs down and 0 thumbs up should probably cost a little more, lol.
"If millions of people break the law, it's not a law"
Wrong, It's still a law. In fact, it's now a law with so many people breaking it, law enforcement can get away with cherry picking who gets arrested for breaking it.
" I want you to be working for me until you pay it back more than once."
Great, now people who are arrested will become defacto slaves. What could possibly go wrong? I'm sure groups of people wont get together and lie so they can get free slaves~
I don't think they should go to prison, I do think they should be part of a training / workgroup program. Clean our roads and parks, and maybe get a trade. THAT is far better for society then prison.
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Are you really that stupid?
- you ever stop for a second, and think about a possibility that it is in fact you, who is ignorant and doesn't understand the situation? I don't believe you do.
A pedestrian should have his own life insurance, his own medical insurance, critical illness actually, that's the point of insurance - to insure against costs that you may run up in the course of your life due to circumstances that you have no or little control over.
Fire insurance, flood insurance, critical illness (or health insurance), etc.etc., none of this is to help somebody else, it's to make sure that you are not placed in a financially untenable situation.
A pedestrian being hit by a car has a possible lawsuit against the driver, and that's what the driver's insurance may cover if it goes above his deductible. If the pedestrian wins the lawsuit, then the driver is lucky to have insurance, because that's the point, he won't be paying for the damage, it's his insurance that he bought to insure himself against such eventualities.
If neither the pedestrian nor the driver have any insurance, this doesn't mean that the driver is off the hook! It only means that he may be sued and will have to face financial consequences of paying the pedestrian for a long time.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
The police used to sell these vehicles because I saw them regularly turn up at car auctions. Normally of course when people sell at auction they clean up their vehicles to make them attractive and get the best price, however the no-insurance cars were exactly as they were when seized. Very strange to see half-eaten lunches on the passenger seat and so on. Without exception they had the messiest nastiest interiors with cigarette butts and junk all over the place. Maybe there is a certain type of person who cheats on the insurance.
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
Under you brilliant idea, what happens when you cause $100K in damages, can't afford that, and have no insurance
- it's not "my brilliant idea", it is the purpose of insurance, to cover your costs that you may incur above the deductible.
If you don't have insurance and you are sued, then if you lose you are going to be financially responsible, it doesn't matter that you don't have insurance, you have to pay.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
raise your rates 20%.
i am so very tired....
Another approach is for the lender in those environments to buy the insurance directly (and charge through their costs with a penalty added) should a buyer not properly self-insure.
Heck -- if the lender always acts as an intermediary in the insurance-purchasing process in such cases, there's no need for a legal safe-harbor at all.
Mandatory insurance was forced through by the insurance companies.
Sort of like Obama's mandatory health insurance. The only people who truly benefit are the insurance companies as they rake in the money from the healthy people who don't use it.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
It is not irrelevant to if he pays me or not.
No insurance, means no point in suing as odds are there are no assets to collect. Then the premiums go up.
Why is that hard for you to understand?
Please learn some fucking history. Private jails and courts have ALWAYS been used by the powerful to indenture everyone else. ALWAYS.
We are seeing the problem with this in America, right now.
Who created 3 strikes laws? Private companies who own prisons.
Who keeps pushing longer sentences? Private companies who own prisons.
Who pushes for more arrests in poor neighborhoods? Private prisons.
Yes, private security force may be hired and you may end up in prison and your property may end up being leaned and seized to pay for the decontamination and other costs."
and since it will be a private court, you will always be found guilty.
"government does today that would be anywhere near as efficient "
The US government is far more efficient then people think. Have you read the account reports? budgets? I have, for government and private sectors. The US government is many times more efficient in most cases.
Compared to almost every other government? more efficient, and far more honest.
Maybe you should learn about the system before talking about it? no, no just keep being stupid.
" What did government do with BP spill? What, the 75 Million USD per incident liability limit? How did that help anybody?"
And not having a government BP would have done more? Or do you think the people would have more power and money then BP?
BTW, BP paid 45 BILLION, not 75 million.
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The you are stupid, using it as an excuse to also be lazy.
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Puerile naÃveté. Systems of justice, insurance, etc. have no validity unless sanctioned by a democratically-elected government that derives its authority from the populace at large. Competing prisons and security forces are no different than foreign invaders and would be treated as such. Any sort of court and its judgments would be meaningless. There is no personal motivation whatsoever to respect such arrangements.
The first 150,000 years of our species consisted of a system that precisely fulfills your fantasy world. And Somalia. Suffering and survival of the most violent. Life becomes a struggle for mere survival and nothing more, ie meaningless. Civilization implies you cannot get your way all the time and need to comprise so that a larger population can generally get along better. Humanity at large is not going to give that up for a failed ideal fapped upon by a fringe element.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
No, the insurance money would make far more money by charging higher premiums and letting the criminals continue to cause havoc. Claims do not harm insurance companies, they are another justification to raise rates.
Why would they do anything else.
I hope in another 40 years, you might begin to see how reality works.
If the insurance cannot collect from said uninsured driver the premiums go up. This means less people get insurance and on and on. Eventually no one will bother with it.
- this wasn't a problem at all before the mandate for insurance. There are always uninsured individuals, mandate or not, and there always will be, there is about a 15% chunk of population that won't be insured whatever the requirement is.
Now, why wouldn't insurance be able to collect from uninsured driver? He has property, he has a car, he has something, a lean can be placed against it, there are all sorts of ways to recoup some of the costs at least. But you see, you think you are driven by practicality, yet in practice what we do know is that insurance costs have not come down since the government mandates started, yet all costs used to go down before government intervention into the economy, so while you may not be driven by ideology, you are also not driven by practicality. From what I observe in people who argue this way, you are driven by a false sense of 'equality', some form of 'social justice' or some other nonsense like that (which I obviously not just do not subscribe to, I think it is the most vile idea that comes out of the mob in pursuit of punishment of people that they perceive as 'outsiders', those outside of their current social norms).
MY OTHER COMMENTS
I hate the people that right turn into the left lane.
In Philadelphia, not taking the left that you describe gets you honked at. Where I live now taking it will cause the right-turners to panic and honk.
Of course in Philadelphia it's socially acceptable to "park" in the middle of the only lane on a one-way street for a quick visit, so those drivers suck too.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
I mean poor drivers as in drivers of low skill not drivers of low economic status.
My point is that in your system it cannot work. Premiums would skyrocket as the drivers of lowest skill kept dropping out. Then the premiums would go up again, and again another layer of drivers would drop out.
Because he has no property, his car is now totalled and he may well not even be employed. You cannot get blood from a stone. In my state uninsured drivers are at a far lower rate than 15%.
I do not see why costs would go down, nor do I see that as a goal even. I would rather everyone paid more if it meant problems like this were solved. The options are I pay more because I would be one of the last few insured, or we all pay a little more each to all be insured. You want to be a leech.
I challenge you to find any government propaganda stating that. It's propaganda from private insurance companies.
Just like their lies about lawsuits.
And yes, I am old enough to remember the 'debates'. Which where nothing more then insurance representative stating lies, and when they where called out on them they responded with the equivalent of ' "Nu-uh'
When it first came around, people weren't happy, then the idea of the government providing at cost min. coverage and people where ok with it. Then that piece was removed at the last minute.
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It's funny when you have this in the same comment:
I hope in another 40 years, you might begin to see how reality works.
and this:
Claims do not harm insurance companies
This is hilarious, what can I say, satire.
As to this, again, you completely misunderstand how the companies make the most money
insurance money would make far more money by charging higher premiums and letting the criminals continue to cause havoc
Sam Walton didn't become one of the richest people by selling at higher prices to fewer people, he became one of the richest people by selling at lower prices to more people.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
imagine for a moment that everybody just stopped buying insurance, cancelled their insurance completely and drove without it.
If everyone drove without insurance, then the people that cause accidents would be forced to pay money to the people that they run into while people who drive safely would go scott free. The insurance system we have in place insures that good drivers share some of the burden that bad drivers would have to shoulder all by themselves (plus a healthy profit for the insurer, of course). What are you, some sort of anti-socialist?
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
You are pretty clueless. You should probably understand how insurance companies work.
My insurance company will sue your insurance company. Yes, they also cover me, but that's only part of how the system works,.
If you don't have anything, then my insurance company can't go after you for anything; thus raising everyone premiums.
Insurances is about offsetting and distributing risk in society.
Regardless of your minimal understanding of insurance, the government is suppose to represent the people, and the people want every to be insured, so suck it.
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Bring back personal liability. If you drive like an ass, you cause an accident, you are liable for all damages you caused. not your insurance company, YOU.
That's a fantastic idea. Let's start by making sure everyone has the money to pay those kinds of damages out of pocket. So the first step is eliminating poverty. How do you plan to do that?
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Private jails and courts have ALWAYS been used by the powerful to indenture everyone else.
- only as far as they are enjoying help of government, because this simply means absence of competition and subsidy by the government.
And never mind the past, how about the current? The present? What is happening in USA with so called 'private prisons', that in reality are funded by the government stealing money from everybody? What about all the drug laws and all other laws that criminalize normal human behavior?
There was no time or place on this planet until NOW that there were so many people incarcerated in one so called 'democratic' country, and it's done with government passing laws that turn normal people into criminals, government subsidizing the private jails that only exist because of gov't subsidies and gov't laws that provide the jails with nearly infinite prison population.
Obviously you are not reading my comments, you are not thinking about the present, you are not seeing that what you are supposedly against is here, right now, and it's not about to become better.
All of those things - the 3 strikes laws, etc., all of this is only possible because the government is massively destroying individual freedoms (and from former comments of yours, I know that you are not a proponent of individual freedoms, you are some form of a socialist). Yet you are complaining about the private system that never put as many people into prisons as your government is doing today.
As to BP - they were given a 75 million USD limitation of liability. Just because the gov't backed down and BP paid more than that, doesn't change the fact that the government create the moral hazard.
Billions of dollars were taken from BP because of the public outcry, I wonder how much of that will be given back to BP somehow in various government deals, I didn't look into that yet, I should.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Auto insurance protects the policyholder against financial loss in the event of an incident involving a vehicle they own, such as in a traffic collision.
Lets not wallow into the 'whose fault' it is quagmire. It's irrelevant to this piece.
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My wife's a much better driver than me. What's to stop me putting my phone in the back seat of her s 1.2L runabout that she rarely exceeds 50 mph in and letting her drive about for a while?
Did you just get out of a time machine from the 1980s?
ANPR systems linked to the insurance database and the PNC (police national computer) have been a reality for over 10 years in the UK.
If you drive past a cop car or a stationary camera with an ANPR link it will immediately ding you and check for valid insurance, tax, MOT and any outstanding markers on the car (eg, if it's been linked to a crime).
Driving on UK public roads with no insurance is an exercise in futility. It won't be long before a cop snags you (probably a couple of weeks before you trigger a camera, depending on where you drive) and they'll simply seize the car at the roadside and hit you with 6 points on your licence.
Premiums would skyrocket as the drivers of lowest skill kept dropping out.
- well, see if the bad (not poor then, bad) drivers stopped buying insurance, they would be on the financial hook for every accident they cause personally and without insurance it would ruin them fairly quickly.
As to insurance premiums going up, if they did because the bad drivers dropped their insurance, then some of the good drivers also would drop their insurance, this would simply signal to the insurance companies that the prices are too high, they would lower them.
What would actually happen more likely (probably beyond you) is that it's not that the premiums would go up, it's that the pay outs would be limited to lower amounts and deductibles would go higher. But there is nothing wrong with that, if there was more efficiency found somewhere there, there would be new insurance companies appearing with lower premiums.
Again, you are coming up with various scenarios that are simply taken care of by the market, and you are arguing for giving more power to the government, to create MORAL HAZARD for BAD DRIVERS TO BE ON THE ROADS.
Do you not understand what I am saying? Government creates moral hazard with all these subsidies. Why are there bad drivers on the roads? So many people are forced to buy insurance that they bad drivers can continue driving, and AFAIC I would rather see FEWER DRIVERS on the road because they couldn't either afford insurance nor could they afford to drive without it, so they would take TRANSIT, there would be a new healthy market appearing for private transit, there would be more taxis at work, more buses, whatever.
You see, you have this hammer (government) you want to use on everything, you see everything as a nail to hit with it.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
"does not equate to ignoring personal responsibility"
in this case, it does.
" and there is no justification for government to force people to buy any type of insurance."
there is actually a LOT of justification. Economic, safety,
Do you know what this means:
"25/50/25"
If you are at fault, Your insurance ends up paying for damages to MY insurance company. Without that, my premiums go up EVEN WHEN IT ISN'T MY FAULT.
From Wikipedia:
There is a risk of nonpayment in car accidents and compulsory auto insurance is the best way to deal with this risk.
Personal financial responsibility laws are inadequate to remedy the risk of nonpaying, at-fault, drivers.
The best way to ensure that at-fault drivers will pay for damage they cause is to require insurance before registration, and to penalize drivers if they fail to meet this requirement.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You are mistaken, just like this guy, and my reply to him is the same as it is to you. Your insurance is there to cover you, not anybody else.
I'm not mistaken about anything. The topic of who's liability is covered wasn't part of my post. My post was regarding the fact that mandatory third party liability insurance is there to ensure that you can afford to pay when your errors when driving a car cause harm to others.
And in my country at least, the injured party does not sue you. It is you legal duty to provide your insurance details to the other person whenever you are involved in a road traffic accident, and they do indeed claim directly from your insurance. You do not have the option to personally refuse to pay for example. The insurance company pays them directly, not you.
It is your personal responsibility to cover yourself with enough insurance so that if something happens to you, you do not have to worry about paying for your bills and such.
It's more than your personal responsibility. it's your legal duty. The law is there to protect people from idiots that think they don't need insurance, and who then are not able to pay when they cause harm to others.
Your attitude to perfectly reasonable rules of law is more than a little cranky. Fraud? You're nuts.
They do auction off the good ones, but the majority of the ones worth any money tend to get claimed back - they don;t crush them right away and give you an option to pay a huge fine and a storage and towing fee so you can take it back if you can also prove you now have valid insurance for it.
Most uninsured drivers who do it habitually tend to drive real beaters that aren't worth selling on.
Just from watching cop shows, there are only two types of car that get seized for no insurance: really shitty beaters or really, really expensive flashy cars. The former are driven by people who just don't care, and will probably have no licence either, the latter are driven by people with a huge sense of entitlement who think they can smooth talk their way out of the car being taken off them.
I'm not sure I understand this. My car was once hit by a co-worker. He contacted his insurance company, which got in touch with me, and covered it. I never even notified my insurance company.
Stop! Dremel time!
The preferred it over nothing.
" in a free market the insurance costs were always going down, not up":
You are an idiot. I see that now. That is false. every piece of evidence shows that insurance rises very sharply without regulation.
You might want to look into auto insurance. It covers:
Bodily Injury Limit (per individual)/Bodily Injury Limit (total)/Property Damage Limit For example
As any moron can see, clearly it's not just for YOU. see I can use caps to.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"Facing financial consequences" does not mean anything. The point of the lawsuit is not to punish the driver (although there may be an element of that), it is to make the victim whole. The victim has medical bills, loss of income, property loss, etc NOW, not in dribs and drabs 'for a long time'.
Your entire premise seems to be: you can do anything you like - if you hurt someone in the process that is their problem. Sorry, but society says a resounding 'no!' to that.
It does not matter if it will ruin them. They will not buy it, end up broke and the victim will end up with nothing to recover. Thus again premiums go up and less people get insurance. This again drives insurance prices up and rinse and repeat.
Just so you know:
Poor:
5. deficient or lacking in something specified
In this case it was driving they were poor at.
Yes, let's just conveniently ignore little realities like the fact that the people most likely to not have insurance (especially if not mandated) are the ones who can not afford to pay for damage they cause.
No he became rich by strong arming business into selling him inferior products carrying a strong brand so he could sell garbage at low price. See Levi's signature jeans and walmart only versions of electronics.
He gained a portion of his income doing what you say, but the real money was made later.
Insurance companies want claims and the fear of events occurring otherwise their product is useless.
What you meant was "the people that cause accidents would go scott free while the good drivers (who are vicitms) would be forced to bear the costs".
When I first saw the OBD2 data recorders that can give you an insurance discount, I figured I would have done this but make the plug do nothing. This limits your liability of breaking someone's car. Also, I'm under the impression that a driver will change their habits and drive safer when they feel like they're being watched. The actual data doesn't matter. An insurer doesn't care what your car does. They care how safe you are, and someone conscious about being safer is safer.
//TODO: signature
Must be different in Canada.I can't recall being asked what my mileage was when renewing my insurance.
They *do* have different brackets depending on your distance to work. Having =15km from work to home /w no more than 6 days/month over is a reduced rate, but overall driving for year doesn't seem to be a factor here.
Where you live, what you drive, your age, and probably tons of other stuff is though.
Why are those considered dangerous hours?
Maybe if you're driving tired, but if you're a night-shift worker etc they may actually be safer due to less others on the road.
Why at not cost?
Should they also provide water and trash collection at no cost?
People did want this, I know I did. Mandatory insurance means there is someone to pay for the damages that I can sue.
Because he has no property, his car is now totalled and he may well not even be employed.
- and how many unemployed individuals are driving around without insurance and are going to hit you, what type of a contrived non-existing scenario are you setting up?
Actually with government mandates, government taxes, government regulations there will be more and more unemployed individuals driving around who have nothing and even that is probably on a 0% mortgage, subsidized by the fake money created as credit by the federal reserve.
If we are going to go down the road of discussing this, realize that you are much more likely to be hurt and have bad coverage and the situation that you are describing in an economy that is destroyed by the huge government (and you are one of the people who want a huge government, that is the entire point of this, isn't it?)
In a vibrant economy without gov't mandates, taxes, regulations, inflation people have jobs, people have savings, majority of people do not have a problem buying some form of insurance.
What you are clearly INCAPABLE of understanding is that I AM NOT AGAINST INSURANCE AS A PRINCIPLE.
Insurance is just another product, I am against the huge government with the ability to force people to buy insurance and that is the crux of the problem. It's not the few people who can't afford insurance but still have cars in an economy subsidized with fake money and borrowing.
This is about the fact that government is meddling with the economy, this is about the fact that government is forcing people into its ponzi schemes, into its moral hazards and that's exactly what destroys the economy.
Would you rather have a vibrant economy with a possibility that some number of people don't have insurance (and whatever you do, it's up to 15% that don't have it at any moment) or would you rather have your vision? Your vision - government in everything, forcing everybody into what it wants, but in the process creating all of the moral hazards, all of the fake money and thus inflation, all of the regulations and rules and taxing people's income, so people are moving all of their productivity somewhere else?
What economy do you choose? I know what I choose.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
In any given moment, 15% of people are uninsured, with or without your government regulations.
The problem for everybody is not that some people are uninsured, the problem is that the economy is so weak, that people have nothing, no savings, no jobs, no productivity, they are hoping to keep living off of other people's productivity.
Insurance is about you, yourself, setting a bet, making a choice that you will pay some premium in order to avoid a much bigger loss in the future, it is nothing else than that.
As to your last statement, that gov't is supposed to force everybody to have insurance (that's what your statement comes down to), yeah, that is exactly what you have now, a government that destroys the economy and thus the society in process with all these regulations, inflation, income related taxes.
You think you are going not to have risks, you think you are going to have a risk free life because you abdicate your own responsibility for your life to the government? The only thing that you are getting for this is not risk free life, what you are getting for this is the eventuality of life full of risks. Risks that are much worse than what you understand. Risks of not having a working economy at all.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
That's how it is here (Illinois), but I can bet that if I turn right while a left-turner across from me picks my lane out of two, I'll still get the ticket. They don't care what the law says, they don't like spurning the average person to satisfy the pedant.
And someone out there still has the keys for it, too. And the car finder alarm button on the keyring.
Insurance company make money by having thousands of costumers,
A well-dressed driver is less likely to get into an accident.
And accidents DO happen: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-447704/Crushed-council-30-000-classic-car-parked-legally.html
Progressive is already using a feature like this in the U.S. It's just not a smart phone app. It's actually a little box you put in your car. It's called Snapshot. Not my kind of thing. There is just no way for the insurance company to know what is or is not going on around you when you're driving.
I actually use snapshot. I do agree it is frustrating sometime when the system registers a "hard break", which drops my discount when it was that hard break that prevented an accident through no fault of my own. Then again, when you think about it from their prospective, they was me to minimize my risk of an accident in any fashion, regardless of fault (in case of an uninsured motorist). So even if the hard break isn't my fault, if I do most my driving in stop and go traffic on the freeway, I am more likely to get in an accident than on a less congested city road.
I really don't mind the program or tracking. According to them, they only track speed, time of day, and breaking, but honestly even if they tracked more, I wouldn't really mind. The whole reason I signed up for it to begin with was because my wife is a stay at home mom and only drives her car two or three times a week and then not very far.
Mandatory insurance was forced through by the insurance companies.
Sort of like Obama's mandatory health insurance. The only people who truly benefit are the insurance companies as they rake in the money from the healthy people who don't use it.
You do not understand insurance. Insurance - as originally designed - is 2-dimensional. It covers a lot of people at one time so that the vast majority of the people pay in so that benefits may be paid out for the few. Or, if you prefer: corporate-sponsored Socialism, if you subscribe to the popular conceit that the only thing that socialism is good for is taking and giving.
The second dimension is time. Just because you didn't get hit by a truck, fall down a manhole, have an aneurysm or whatever last week and probably won't this week doesn't mean that it can't happen next week. "Being healthy" only goes so far. So in part, you "pay it forward", amortizing projected expenses from the past, while you're still financially solvent to pay for the possible future when you aren't. And insurance companies have made it a fine art to try and predict if and when such things will happen. That's what actuaries are for.
Since catastrophe is subject to statistical bubbles, insurance companies are required by the goddam meddling gubbmint to maintain a certain level of reserves, so that, for example, when another Hurricane Hugo hits North Carolina, the money will be there to pay. The insurance companies further hedge their bets by taking some of their spare cash and investing it, which can lower premiums.
At least that's how it started. In more recent times, anything more than 3 months in the future doesn't exist for most people/companies and sophisticated analysis tools have resulted in cherry-picking/lemon-dropping so that the pools are often very shallow, very narrow, and very profitable. Until the statistical bubble hits it and it gets wiped out entirely. Which is essentially what happened to the mortgage investment market.
For all its numerous warts, one thing Obamacare does attempt to do is reverse this focussing trend and make the pools wider and deeper again.
Imagine if tax time came and nobody paid the taxes.
Imagine if everybody cancelled their insurance and drove anyway.
Imagine if everybody had drugs on them at all times.
"You can say that I'm a dreamer..." -- John Lennon
Free Martian Whores!
Driving without insurance means you will not be able to pay for damage you cause.
Unless you are rich or unless you save up the money you otherwise would have paid to an insurance company and put it in an interest bearing account. If everybody did this, on average, they would save money, because they are not paying the insurance company profit. What sucks is that when you most need that money is generally early on when you are a sucky (and also usually cocky) driver, and you haven't saved up much money yet.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
You think I want huge government for its own sake?
Are you really this crazy?
I would like one that works, sadly taxes are required for that, otherwise we cannot enforce even fraud laws.
That is not driving without insurance, that is called self insuring. You can do that in every state I know of.
It would take about 50 years though for me to save enough insurance premiums to be able to self insure, if that is the measure you want to use.
Having insurance is already required by law. Me, I'm waiting for the ultimate in government redundancy, mandatory uninsured motorist insurance.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I don't know about you, but I will likely never have $2,000,000 in the bank. That is how much coverage I have for my car insurance
Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. This comment may not be copied in any way including, but not limited to caching.
So how can people afford cars yet cannot afford insurance? To answer this of-course, one has to step back and realize that so many people also cannot afford their vehicles and the only reason they have them is because their driving is also subsidized by the fake government set interest rates, by borrowing and printing (inflation).
There are many fronts on which the economy is being simultaneously hurt by the government.
Quite a number of people shouldn't even be driving, they can drive only because of the fake interest rates that go to subsidize their loans.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
However there will be a breaking point,
Done slowly enough, I don't think so. And it goes back to your frog example.
Just like the security theater put on by TSA currently, do you think that would have been acceptable all in one step immediately after 9/11? I don't. I think they intentionally roll this shit out over time, and as people get used to the level of pain, they just crank it up another notch.
Just another day in Paradise
Government must not have the power to force people to buy anything, to participate in anything, to pay any income taxes (see my sig if you care to understand my POV)
They arent. If you dont have a car, you are not forced to buy insurance. Similarly, you are not forced to buy a car. You want to drive a car, you get insurance. It isnt some grand company-funding conspiracy. It's so if you hit someone, they get their car repaired/replaced without having to pay for it themselves or lawyer up and sue.A lawsuit is much more expensive than an insurance policy.
If a person doesn't have insurance it does not mean he cannot pay for the problems if he causes the problems on the road. What if you don't want to give up your income to an insurance company, instead you have your savings that you can tap into in case of an emergency?
Because the cost of insurance is far lower than the cost of repairs, replacement car hire and injury payments to the people involved. I dunno about the USA, but here car insurance is not expensive unless you are young (which is what the scheme in the article is about). My own insurance costs £240 a year. A lot cheaper than paying several thousand for a new car if I totalled someone elses in a crash.
There is nothing that PREVENTS you from buying insurance, but government mandates for all of it just makes it more expensive, year to year.
When was the last time everybody's premiums went DOWN rather than up? The last time (in USA at least) was before the Federal reserve and various other government schemes were set up.
Premiums go down every year as you prove you are a safe driver (called a No Claims Discount - it can be as much as 75% off a premium). Also, there are a LOT of insurance companies here which helps to keep the market competitive and prices down.
We already have that in the UK. They can stop you if the APNR cameras say your car is untaxed, take your car and crush it. If you have no insurance, they hold it till you have. but some people cannot get insurance because of their postal address!. This system is an outrage, but so far, people have not done much about it, because the alternative party is hell bent on worse.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
devolved from consumers to criminals. In the eyes of an insurer you're nothing more than the outlander, or tank girl. Destined to destroy everything in your path with that used toyota corola, you must be fined heavily for the pontifications made in your honor behind the meeting room doors at the insurer. Once you have proven to be a safe driver, once we have broken you into where when and for how far we wish you to drive a car, we will throw a pittance your way. if its going to cost $1600 for your car to be insured for a year in what we consider the city, we will should you consider a shitty car, and a slow commute, throw as much as but not more than $320 at you. Should you however raise our ire in even the slightest, youll not see more than $50, if even that.
and god have mercy on your soul should you not continue to make accurate, diligent payments in perpetuity to our insurance company for long as you shall live. we will enact a non-continuous coverage fee on you for daring to give up your car for a few years and use the bus to save on gas.
Good people go to bed earlier.
This is a private property issue, nothing to do with government. If you are causing pollution to OTHER people's property and possibly even causing harm to other people's health, not yours, that's your problem, other people. Then it is up to those other people to sue you, that's all.
Since you're on slashdot I'll assume, perhaps mistakenly, that you're not stupid, but simply young (unlike that old rich Libertarian liar you've been listening to). If pollution could be stopped by lawsuits, the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act wound never have had a reason to come into existance.
Let me tell you, son, the world doesn't work that way. Before 1970 you had to roll up the windows driving past Monsanto, even in a hundred degree weather and no AC, because the air literally burned your lungs. Hundreds of thousands of barrels of extremely poisonous waste was buried across the river from St Louis (I have a copy of the EPA report). Rivers, streams, creeks, and lakes were so polluted that they actually caught fire.
Yet there were no lawsuits, you would have to have proved that your cancer was caused by the polluters' waste, and that's about impossible. And you would have had to have been rich enough to hire better and more lawyers than Monsanto had on payroll already.
Yeah, I was one of the kids writing the officials I was too young to elect to try to affect government and effect change.
Your idea is a rich man's utopia and a normal man's hell. If you aren't pulling in half a million dollars per year and you're pushing for this anarchic rich man's utopia your'e not only a deluded fool, but incredibly stupid.
Free Martian Whores!
Whose fault is not irrelevant, it is the entire point. Nobody is required to have insurance to cover your own loses, you are required to have insurance to cover your liability for other people's loses.
If you wreck your own car, and don't have collision insurance and can't afford to fix it, well that is your problem. Too bad.
If you wreck MY car, you owe me for the repairs/replacement, and 'sorry, I can't afford that' is NOT an option. That is why liability insurance is required. It is a financial loss to you, but not being able to cover that loss is not acceptable.
Where did I say anything about not being able to afford insurance? Choosing not to buy is not the same as can't afford.
It is entirely possible (in fact, very likely) that someone can afford an insurance policy and other driving expenses, yet chooses not to purchase insurance. That does not mean, however, that they would have the financial wherewithal to pay for damages they caused in an accident.
Dude, you've seen his insanity here before, why bother? It's pretty obvious that he's a teenager with delusions of grandeur who should be getting treatment for his mental illnesses.
Free Martian Whores!
Valid point.
How is your local bar doing? I remember you saying they had cheap beer.
I am not going to assume anything about you, you are just a number with the wrong ideas in your head.
The Clean Air and Clean Water acts were only necessary in USA because the country sold out its principles of private property rights long time ago and it is the government that provides the protections to the companies against any liability for their actions.
As much as everybody here, that is arguing for the government mandating the auto-insurance, is completely full of nonsense on what the insurance is supposed to be for and how it is supposed to work in an actual free market (covering you, not anybody else in case you happen to be in an accident, covering your costs, be it a broken vehicle or your legs or a lawsuit against you by any other party), just as much the people are wrong on the idea that government can or does protect the environment for them.
The only thing that protects the environment is private property ownership and being able to sue the people that pollute your private property.
Government gives the companies green light to pollute on these so called 'public properties', which shouldn't exist in the first place, and if they do exist, no business can be allowed to do anything there. The pollution may be initially created by some business, but given private property protections and the free market, this problem eventually goes away, because private property ownership is paramount and must be protected just like all other individual rights, which is what the government is supposed to be for in the first place.
Government creates the moral hazards, the incentives and the means (all of this in the form of limited liability, so called public property and various licenses and permits). The government protects the businesses against their real liability and the government prevents other private property owners from ever being successful protecting their private property.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Looks like it's passive GPS and accelerometer sensors only, with no video recording and no link to the OBDII connector.
As such, it can't detect if you use your turn signals when turning or changing lanes. Huge fail on detecting "safe" driving.
IMHO someone who changes lanes on a multi-lane highway without signaling just as dangerous as someone going maybe 20% over the speed limit.
Since $30,000 is not enough to cover any medical bills for a serious car accident
Well, it probably would be if the doctor's would charge what they would actually get paid by an insurance company.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
And what the Sam Hill does that have to do with discussion point posed? OK, you are smart and are part of the large majority who want to have your own insurance. Good health to you. You (and I) almost certainly don't have a thing to worry about from the speculative point raised.
FAIL. Do these featherweights somehow think that accelerating at 1 mph every minute makes you a safer driver? Judging braking and cornering is just as nonsensical without being able to witness the CIRCUMSTANCES and evaluate the CAPABILITIES of the driver.
Of course the test would be absurdly easy to game, though.
AFAIC if you steal from me, I don't want you in prison, I want you to be working for me until you pay it back more than once.
So in your hypothetical perfect world, the thief basically becomes a slave of the person he stole from until they can compensate the damage?
Okay, then. I wonder about the specifics. Like, when he's working for me, I'm the one setting the price of labor, right? And I know you're against minimum wage laws - so can I set it to, say, 1 cent per hour? Also, what about work time and conditions? I mean, the guy could be some slacker who refuses to work for me more than an hour every day, surely that's wrong? So can I force them to work every single moment they are awake until the debt is paid out?
I wonder, would you permit "selling" them, too? I mean, you can sell someone's debt to you today, logically this is quite similar. So if someone steals my car and they don't have insurance to pay for it, can I sell their debt (i.e. their obligation to work for me - effectively, my rights to them as a slave) to, say, some mining company? I just don't have anything that needs to be done requiring such copious amounts of manual labor, but clearly I should have some financial recourse, right?
Finally, I can't help but wonder what happens if my slave has a child. If all their wages are garnished to repay the debt, clearly they can't afford to so much as feed them. I would be quite eager to let them retain part of their earnings for themselves for those purposes, but only under certain conditions, like, say, requiring that the child in question also enters into a lifetime contract with me under similar terms to compensate for my lost repayments. This is obviously a valid arrangement, but do I only need the agreement of the kid, or must his parents also assent?
(this is my second account, I get on and off ability to comment here now, you can imagine it's not easy to be able to refute dozens of posts without being moderated down and being shut out of the forum)
So in your hypothetical perfect world, the thief basically becomes a slave of the person he stole from until they can compensate the damage?
- if you want to put it this way then yes, of-course. There is nothing wrong with somebody being your 'work slave' for debts AFAIC. You can't abuse them, they are supposed to pay you, not to die for you. That's the exact same situation as alimony or taxes.
What's the difference between this and paying alimony or child support or income taxes? You are forced to by the system, it's exactly the same thing.
It's worse with income taxes than with alimony, income taxes don't stop until you stop earning, alimony and child support stops.
If you steal from me, I want you to work for me, I want your wages to be garnished.
I don't need you to work for me in my company, (I wouldn't hire you, dirty thief), but I want you to repay the damages and with interest and the interest is set by the court.
If it's not the first time you steal, then the interest is higher. The interest should be a multiple of what you stole, maybe 3 times, maybe more, if it's not the first time you are stealing.
If you are going to run away and not pay, I want you caught and fines added. If you are not working, I don't want you to get any support from the gov't (it's my taxes too). If you are completely refusing to pay, I want you to be thrown into debtor prison. Maybe the prison will assign you to a job and it's not me, who is setting the value of your labour, it's the market. I don't need you to work for me forever for 1 cent an hour, I want you to do what you can in the market to earn the wage and to pay back your debt with interest.
This is far better than throwing you to jail and having MY money spent on holding you there.
I am not talking about 'selling' you, no more than the people who have to pay alimony are 'sold'.
As to child issues, etc., as I said, I want your wages to be garnished, the is exactly the same situation as with alimony, you are NOT paying 100% of your paycheck to me, but you are obligated to return the debt.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Now you've got to explain how exactly you plan to enforce all those restrictions in a society with private law enforcement, private courts and private prisons. What's there to stop you from literally making people your true slaves, in full meaning of the word, when they end up in a debt to you? The beauty of a private justice system is that you can get the most convenient one for you that your money can buy. Why wouldn't there be one run by and for a slave-owning community?
By the way, here is the government turning the prison population into slaves and having the public support in this by promising cheaper goods, while creating slave labour competition to the still existing real private businesses in USA.
Thatâ(TM)s a reality Michael Mansh, president of a small apparel factory in Olive Hill, Ky., faces every day, according to CNNMoney. In February, Mansh reportedly learned that his 100-person factory, Ashland Sales and Service, risked losing a contract to make windbreakers for the U.S. Air Force. The main competitor was Unicor, a government-run enterprise that employs 13,000 inmates at wages as low as 23 cents an hour. .....
That mission hasnâ(TM)t changed much since the government created Unicor in 1934. Advocates for the program point to the fact that inmates employed by the corporation, who earn between 12 cents and 40 cents per hour, are less likely to reoffend after being released.
You see, now that is the true evil - an incentive for the government to have more and more prisoners and this is cheered by the stupid population.
-
As to your question, a society with private law enforcement, private courts and private prisons is a society with competition in the justice system, competition in the law enforcement and prison system. Without government setting the absolute laws there is nothing that cannot be attempted by the free market. Yes, you are right, there will be abuse, I am certain of it.
But what I am also certain of is that having abuse in a free market system is much less detrimental than having abuse the way it is done right now - with a central authority creating the incentives, providing the power, the legislation, providing the money for this abuse.
You can't handle the truth.
I will likely never have $2,000,000 in the bank. That is how much coverage I have for my car insurance
The only time an accident is likely to cause you to have to shell out $2 million is if the found out that you had $2 million in the bank or that you had $2 million worth of insurance, otherwise, you would likely have to just pay the actual cost of an accident, which even for a bad accident is unlikely to be more than $50,000.
The largest payout that I was able to google was one in Canada of $17 million dollars, but this was because the delivery truck company had a $20 million insurance policy. If they did not have that much, then the settlement would likely have been much lower. In fact, the high dollar insurance policy was really a liability, as the lawyer and the family that sued probably would not have gone to such lengths and paid so many legal fees to try to obtain the money if there had been less money to get. The really outrageous thing is that the delivery truck driver was not at fault. The teenage driver of a Honda ran a red light and got hit by the truck, but the truck company was forced to pay $17 million because the boy tried to auto-darwinate himself. Such is our legal system.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Government gives the companies green light to pollute on these so called 'public properties', which shouldn't exist in the first place, and if they do exist, no business can be allowed to do anything there.
So barges should be banned from rivers? Do you have any idea how much more everything would cost, especially food, if barges weren't allowed on the Mississippi or the Great lakes? Rivers were America's first highways, and for a long time its only highways.
How is anyone supposed to know who to sue when their well water winds up with some nasty chemical? How are you going to find out who caused the pollution, let alone prove they did it?
I'm afraid reality trumps your ideology, kid. It just doesn't work in the real world.
Free Martian Whores!
Mike never hurts for business, especially since he also owns a construction company and all his employees drink there.
Some kid was murdered at the bar down the street from there over the weekend.
Free Martian Whores!
I just made a comment that answers your question, your question is posed out of a misunderstanding of what insurance is.
Insurance is not there for you to pay for others, insurance is there for you to cover your own costs. So if you don't have insurance and you are in an accident, it is your problem. It's your health and other costs. If you have insurance, then after your deductible and up to whatever the cap is that you are paying for, you'll be covered.
If you are in an accident, it doesn't matter if you are responsible for it or not, your insurance is supposed to kick in above the deductible and cover your costs.
If you can show your insurance company that the responsibility is with the other driver(s), then it's up to your insurance company to go after that driver and/or his insurance. What does government have to do with any of it except providing huge subsidy to the insurance companies and thus driving the costs up?
I know this is an old thread but since this is about something happening in the UK I thought I would explain why in the UK it is important that government mandates all drivers have insurance. The main reason is that if someone runs over someone else or smashes into their car it is very difficult to go after them for any money if they do not have insurance.
Here in the UK you cannot be sued for money you do not have so a great many people who do not own their own home or have any savings could drive like crazy nut jobs without even having to worry about the costs they were inflicting on other people. I believe in many other countries you can sue people and they have to pay the money by instalments if they do not have it, here that is not possible for damages, only fines imposed by criminal courts.
So if you are a fairly poor individual who lives in rented social housing (you call them housing projects) you can drive round crashing into people at will providing you never get convicted of criminally bad driving by actually killing someone. Just driving like a twat and causing other people cars to go to the scrapheap prematurely is not a criminal offence here.
This sounds retarded but the poor over here have very little to lose so it is not far wrong. Maybe if we had fewer safety nets to stop people falling out of society like you do (in this country you can carry on claiming unemployment benefit your whole life, many now do) things would be different.
I dont read