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So, the motor insurance renewal invoice came through. £142.80. Yes, $285.00, for a journalist, living in central-ish London. Good value, or what?
Americans curious as to how my rate can be so low should look to their politicians and study the handicaps of living in a socialist egalitarian society. I refer of course to the US, not the UK.
Here in the UK, insurers employ actuaries, who calculate a technically correct price. The insurers then set that price and, if it's too high, no-one buys it. That's it. The free market works.
In the US, your beloved politicians have ensured that actuaries can't use many categories to establish a technically correct price. In some states, the rates are actually tariffed. If you are a credit-worthy guy, who drives safely, you should be paying a rate similar to mine. If you are paying more, then you are subsidising someone else. Insurers would like nothing better than to charge a "fair" rate that reflects the risk you represent. However, there's hardly a government in the the US (where insurance is state-by-state regulated -- a system fiercely defended by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners and which also leads to higher prices) that doesn't impose "do-good" restrictions that make no mathematical sense. In California a decade ago this reached the farcical situation whereby a convicted drug-dealer who owned a pink cadillac in Watts would pay the same as a guy who owned the same car but who lived in a gated community in Malibu.
The reasons given by lawmakers were the usual mix of sophistry and ignorance.
1) The drug-dealer might be an equally safe driver, so it wouldn't be "fair" to charge him more. (Logical flaw - a feeling that insurance rates should reflect good intentions and ability of policyholder, and not anything that he cannot control).
2) The drug-dealer is more likely to be black, so to charge a higher rate is racism by default (Logical flaw: Confusion of correlation with causation).
3) The cars are worth the same, so the premium should be the same (Logical flaw, completely ignores likelihood of claim taking place).
Of course, US politicians have no monopoly on logical lunacy - those in the UK can run them fairly close and at times beat them hollow. But it is rather irritating when a country is claimed by many of its inhabitants to be a paragon of free enterprise, when it's actually considerably more state-controlled than we are in the UK.
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I actually managed to win a few bucks at Full Tilt last night, but the site continues to be a bok. I'm up on the site for the year in terms of big bets, but I'm a buy-in-and-a-half down at both $100 buy-in and $200 buy-in. All within the realms of standard variance (no more than 5,000 hands at one level and 2,000 hands at another) and more than compensated for elsewhere (I've been running hot on Stars and I've had a consistently long good run on Party). I actually get the feeling that, for the hours that I play, Full Tilt is tougher. But how many hands do you need to play before you can be sure that it isn't just a case of running bad?
Americans curious as to how my rate can be so low should look to their politicians and study the handicaps of living in a socialist egalitarian society. I refer of course to the US, not the UK.
Here in the UK, insurers employ actuaries, who calculate a technically correct price. The insurers then set that price and, if it's too high, no-one buys it. That's it. The free market works.
In the US, your beloved politicians have ensured that actuaries can't use many categories to establish a technically correct price. In some states, the rates are actually tariffed. If you are a credit-worthy guy, who drives safely, you should be paying a rate similar to mine. If you are paying more, then you are subsidising someone else. Insurers would like nothing better than to charge a "fair" rate that reflects the risk you represent. However, there's hardly a government in the the US (where insurance is state-by-state regulated -- a system fiercely defended by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners and which also leads to higher prices) that doesn't impose "do-good" restrictions that make no mathematical sense. In California a decade ago this reached the farcical situation whereby a convicted drug-dealer who owned a pink cadillac in Watts would pay the same as a guy who owned the same car but who lived in a gated community in Malibu.
The reasons given by lawmakers were the usual mix of sophistry and ignorance.
1) The drug-dealer might be an equally safe driver, so it wouldn't be "fair" to charge him more. (Logical flaw - a feeling that insurance rates should reflect good intentions and ability of policyholder, and not anything that he cannot control).
2) The drug-dealer is more likely to be black, so to charge a higher rate is racism by default (Logical flaw: Confusion of correlation with causation).
3) The cars are worth the same, so the premium should be the same (Logical flaw, completely ignores likelihood of claim taking place).
Of course, US politicians have no monopoly on logical lunacy - those in the UK can run them fairly close and at times beat them hollow. But it is rather irritating when a country is claimed by many of its inhabitants to be a paragon of free enterprise, when it's actually considerably more state-controlled than we are in the UK.
++++++++
I actually managed to win a few bucks at Full Tilt last night, but the site continues to be a bok. I'm up on the site for the year in terms of big bets, but I'm a buy-in-and-a-half down at both $100 buy-in and $200 buy-in. All within the realms of standard variance (no more than 5,000 hands at one level and 2,000 hands at another) and more than compensated for elsewhere (I've been running hot on Stars and I've had a consistently long good run on Party). I actually get the feeling that, for the hours that I play, Full Tilt is tougher. But how many hands do you need to play before you can be sure that it isn't just a case of running bad?
