Re: [at-l] MAKE EM PAY!!!

["Bucky" <mfuller@somtel.com>]

Saunterer wrote:
> Bucky wrote:
>>Fallingwater wrote:

[...]

>>> Why should I pay for some ass that want's to drink himself into a stupor
>>> and need a liver transplant years from now. Yet I've read many post
>>> extolling the virtues of beer on the trail.

>>Funny how welfare statism makes people's private vices everyone else's
>>business. "He who pays the fiddler" and all that.

>The very nature of insurance is "shared risk". Paying only for your own is
>called a savings account. We have both public and private insurance in this
>country. Usually the public insurance through government programs covers
>covers those who can't afford the private type. Social Security covers us all.

Sorry, it is not "insurance" when the premium is calculated based
on income rather than risk. That is simply a transfer of wealth;
one that provides the nation's polypragmonocrats a rationale to
dictate to others -- especially the poor -- how to live.

Compulsory "shared risk" turns otherwise tolerant people into
ballot box tyrants. It is this "sharing" (such a nice word, that)
that inspires many people to take to the trail in the first place.

And now for some Bitter Bierce:

INSURANCE, n. An ingenious modern game of chance in which the
player is permitted to enjoy the comfortable conviction that he
is beating the man who keeps the table.

INSURANCE AGENT: My dear sir, that is a fine house -- pray let me
insure it.

HOUSE OWNER: With pleasure. Please make the annual premium so low
that by the time when, according to the tables of your actuary,
it will probably be destroyed by fire I will have paid you consid-
erably less than the face of the policy.

INSURANCE AGENT: O dear, no -- we could not afford to do that. We
must fix the premium so that you will have paid more.

HOUSE OWNER: How, then, can I afford *that?*

INSURANCE AGENT: Why, your house may burn down at any time. There
was Smith's house, for example, which --

HOUSE OWNER: Spare me -- there were Brown's house, on the contrary,
and Jones's house, and Robinson's house, which --

INSURANCE AGENT: Spare *me!*

HOUSE OWNER: Let us understand each other. You want me to pay you
money on the supposition that something will occur previously to
the time set by yourself for its occurrence. In other words, you
expect me to bet that my house will not last so long as you say
that it will last.

INSURANCE AGENT: But if your house burns without insurance it
will be a total loss.

HOUSE OWNER: Beg your pardon -- by your own actuary's tables I
shall probably have saved, when it burns, all the premiums I
would otherwise have paid to you -- amounting to more than the
face of the policy they would have brought. But suppose it to
burn, uninsured, before the time upon which your figures are
based. If I could not afford that, how could you if it were
insured?

INSURANCE AGENT: O, we should make ourselves whole from our luckier
ventures with other clients. Virtually, they will pay your loss.

HOUSE OWNER: And virtually, then, don't I help to pay their losses?
Are not their houses as likely as mine to burn before they have
paid you as much as you must pay them? The case stands this way:
you expect to take more money from your clients than you pay to
them, do you not?

INSURANCE AGENT: Certainly; if we did not --

HOUSE OWNER: I would not trust you with my money. Very well, then.
If it is *certain,* with reference to the whole body of your
clients, that they lose money on you it is *probable,* with ref-
erence to any one of them, that *he* will. It is these individual
probabilities that make the aggregate certainty.

INSURANCE AGENT: I will not deny it -- but look at the figures in
this pamph --

HOUSE OWNER: Heaven forbid!

INSURANCE AGENT: You spoke of saving the premiums which you would 
otherwise pay me. Will you not be more likely to squander them? We
offer you an incentive to thrift.

HOUSE OWNER: The willingness of A to take care of B's money is not
particular to insurance, but as a charitable institution you command
esteem. Deign to accept its expression from a Deserving Object.

>>> There are no easy answers.

>>Make me dictator -- I'll stop this kind of Schumer inside of a week. It
>>won't be pretty, though.

>Hiking is about freedom. Dictators are incompatible with freedom. Looking
>out for one another (whether or not it is 'deserved') makes freedom
>possible without being rich first. 

Can I opt out of this system? If not, don't talk to me about freedom.
Just freedom is not subsidized by coercion. 

[...]

>>Sanction of the victim.

>They should be fined for violating any rules they broke but the rescue
>should be free.

The victims that I was referring to are the rescuers.

--
mfuller@somtel.com; Northern Franklin County, Maine         $
The Constitution is the white man's ghost shirt.  }>:-/> --->






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