7 ms·

In the true market "ship" model you'd pay 1/10 of what you're paying now. In the government enforced model you're overpaying 10x+ fold.

speedgoose 6y ago
I don't understand. My car insurance is run by a mutual organization and they don't collect 10 times more money for no reasons. If you reduce the income of the insurance, who is paying ?
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  Maybe OP is suggesting there’s a lot of fraudulent claims in auto insurance, or poor driving/maintenance practices that lead to more claims. When your insurance company has a lot of customers, you don’t care about your big claim’s contribution to rate increases because it will be pennies/month. (Yes, I understand your rates can go up if you’re at fault, but you can also stop driving, drive without insurance (in some places) or reduce your policy). While this ship has thousands of containers, they probably run through a handful of shipping agents that won’t be in business for long if they make fraudulent claims.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    I don't know how insurances work outside of Germany but processing insurance claims is the only thing where insurances can lose money so they will reward you for good driving/maintenance practices with lower fees. If you run a insurance company your goal is basically to become redundant. The best case scenario is to collect a monthly fee but never pay out any insurance claims. Fraudulent claims are pure losses so there is already a strong business incentive to avoid those.
    - Scoundreller 6y ago
      I guess your tow truck drivers are more respectable than ours that cloned police’s pricey “encrypted” radios to get to accidents faster, charged insurecos hundreds for the tow, would add damage to cars and bring them to sketchy repair shops: https://nationalpost.com/news/toronto-cop-part-of-organized-crime-group-involved-in-vicious-tow-truck-wars-chief-says https://nationalpost.com/news/toronto-cop-part-of-organized-... For some reason, health care expenses related to motor vehicle accidents are paid by the at-fault’s insurer instead of the public health system, so there’s lots of fraud there too. And more product for insurers to sell. Since the at-fault insurer pays, there’s a lot of incentive for fraud for the “victim”. Some call it the auto-lotto. Because we created lots of arbitrary fault-determination rules so insurers can’t fight eachother to assign fault, it’s not difficult to stage an accident where someone else is at-fault.
      - iso1631 6y ago
        > I guess your tow truck drivers are more respectable than ours that cloned police’s pricey “encrypted” radios to get to accidents faster, charged insurecos hundreds for the tow, would add damage to cars and bring them to sketchy repair shops: In my country the insurance company has a list of approved garages and sets the price. Nobody is going to pay a tow truck for preemtively moving a car, they might arrest them for taking without consent. If a car really needs a tow for safety purposes, the police will organise that based on their pre-existing contracts and paid for a known price (by the insurance company, or the car owner) If the car is abandoned the council will eventually shift it and claim the cost back as littering If the car is safe though it's upto the owner to contact their insurance company and arrange for them to come out and shift it. Multiple companies racing to the scene sounds like something from the 1800s with fire brigades sabotaging each other.
    - HPsquared 6y ago
      The bigger the risk that needs to be insured, the bigger the market for the insurers, and profits scale with the size of the market. Insurers are incentivised to minimise claims on their own policies, yes, but as a group they are perfectly happy with rules which increase the overall size and amount of claims, provided it affects everyone equally.
  - eru 6y ago
    > While this ship has thousands of containers, they probably run through a handful of shipping agents that won’t be in business for long if they make fraudulent claims. I don't think they can even make fraudulent claims. Whether a container gets thrown over board or not is a binary outcome. How much value to declare upfront is self-policing: If you declare a high value and someone else's containers gets thrown overboard, your share of the averaged losses is bigger.
billylindeman 6y ago
There's significant counterparty risk in that model. What happens when there is an incident and people don't have the money to pay up?
- eru 6y ago
  You seize their cargo.
  - billylindeman 6y ago
    You seize the lost 1800 containers?
    - eru 6y ago
      The people who lost containers get paid compensation. If they don't want it, the shipping company doesn't care. The people who didn't lose containers are the ones who have to pay up their share of the losses. If they don't pay, you seize their cargo.
Retric 6y ago
Car insurance is an extremely competitive market which is the opposite of a monopoly. Food is also ‘mandated’ by basic biology but still ends up being available for cheap.
- sushshshsh 6y ago
  Yeah, $50 a month for liability insurance always felt like a really fair deal to me. Pleasantly tolerable fee for a day where my car hits black ice and physics takes the wheel
  - metaphor 6y ago
    > Pleasantly tolerable fee for a day where my car hits black ice and physics takes the wheel Hope that day doesn't come because, ironically, liability won't cover your losses. It may, in full or part, cover the incidental loss of others impacted, but not your own.
    - gambiting 6y ago
      What do you mean? In the EU every car insurance has to cover minimum 1 million euro in personal liability and 5 million in 3rd party liability. My own with Aviva covers 5 million euro for personal and 20 million for 3rd party. But car insurance typically doesn't pay healthcare bills since healthcare is nationalized, so it's very hard to imagine how payouts would be anywhere near those sums. You'd need to crash into multiple buggati veyrons to get close to the maximum liability limit. I'm paying £400/year.
      - dmurray 6y ago
        > In the EU every car insurance has to cover minimum 1 million euro in personal liability and 5 million in 3rd party liability. Source on this? I've always understood you only needed third party insurance, and the EU website [0] seems to back this up. > it's very hard to imagine how payouts would be anywhere near those sums. If you kill someone or permanently incapacitate them, you could be on the hook for their lifetime loss of earnings. Here's [1] a family being awarded €650,000 following the death of their mother. Agreed, it's still hard to rack up €20 million and I don't know what the precedent is if you run over a billionaire, but in theory I believe the payout here is uncapped. [0] https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/vehicles/insurance/validity/index_en.htm https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/vehicles/insurance/val... [1] https://www.personalinjuryireland.ie/news/fatal-car-crash-injury-compensation/ https://www.personalinjuryireland.ie/news/fatal-car-crash-in...

speedgoose 6y ago

I don't understand. My car insurance is run by a mutual organization and they don't collect 10 times more money for no reasons. If you reduce the income of the insurance, who is paying ?

Scoundreller 6y ago
Maybe OP is suggesting there’s a lot of fraudulent claims in auto insurance, or poor driving/maintenance practices that lead to more claims. When your insurance company has a lot of customers, you don’t care about your big claim’s contribution to rate increases because it will be pennies/month. (Yes, I understand your rates can go up if you’re at fault, but you can also stop driving, drive without insurance (in some places) or reduce your policy). While this ship has thousands of containers, they probably run through a handful of shipping agents that won’t be in business for long if they make fraudulent claims.
- imtringued 6y ago
  I don't know how insurances work outside of Germany but processing insurance claims is the only thing where insurances can lose money so they will reward you for good driving/maintenance practices with lower fees. If you run a insurance company your goal is basically to become redundant. The best case scenario is to collect a monthly fee but never pay out any insurance claims. Fraudulent claims are pure losses so there is already a strong business incentive to avoid those.
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    I guess your tow truck drivers are more respectable than ours that cloned police’s pricey “encrypted” radios to get to accidents faster, charged insurecos hundreds for the tow, would add damage to cars and bring them to sketchy repair shops: https://nationalpost.com/news/toronto-cop-part-of-organized-crime-group-involved-in-vicious-tow-truck-wars-chief-says https://nationalpost.com/news/toronto-cop-part-of-organized-... For some reason, health care expenses related to motor vehicle accidents are paid by the at-fault’s insurer instead of the public health system, so there’s lots of fraud there too. And more product for insurers to sell. Since the at-fault insurer pays, there’s a lot of incentive for fraud for the “victim”. Some call it the auto-lotto. Because we created lots of arbitrary fault-determination rules so insurers can’t fight eachother to assign fault, it’s not difficult to stage an accident where someone else is at-fault.
    - iso1631 6y ago
      > I guess your tow truck drivers are more respectable than ours that cloned police’s pricey “encrypted” radios to get to accidents faster, charged insurecos hundreds for the tow, would add damage to cars and bring them to sketchy repair shops: In my country the insurance company has a list of approved garages and sets the price. Nobody is going to pay a tow truck for preemtively moving a car, they might arrest them for taking without consent. If a car really needs a tow for safety purposes, the police will organise that based on their pre-existing contracts and paid for a known price (by the insurance company, or the car owner) If the car is abandoned the council will eventually shift it and claim the cost back as littering If the car is safe though it's upto the owner to contact their insurance company and arrange for them to come out and shift it. Multiple companies racing to the scene sounds like something from the 1800s with fire brigades sabotaging each other.
  - HPsquared 6y ago
    The bigger the risk that needs to be insured, the bigger the market for the insurers, and profits scale with the size of the market. Insurers are incentivised to minimise claims on their own policies, yes, but as a group they are perfectly happy with rules which increase the overall size and amount of claims, provided it affects everyone equally.
- eru 6y ago
  > While this ship has thousands of containers, they probably run through a handful of shipping agents that won’t be in business for long if they make fraudulent claims. I don't think they can even make fraudulent claims. Whether a container gets thrown over board or not is a binary outcome. How much value to declare upfront is self-policing: If you declare a high value and someone else's containers gets thrown overboard, your share of the averaged losses is bigger.

billylindeman 6y ago

There's significant counterparty risk in that model. What happens when there is an incident and people don't have the money to pay up?

eru 6y ago
You seize their cargo.
- billylindeman 6y ago
  You seize the lost 1800 containers?
  - eru 6y ago
    The people who lost containers get paid compensation. If they don't want it, the shipping company doesn't care. The people who didn't lose containers are the ones who have to pay up their share of the losses. If they don't pay, you seize their cargo.

Retric 6y ago

Car insurance is an extremely competitive market which is the opposite of a monopoly. Food is also ‘mandated’ by basic biology but still ends up being available for cheap.

sushshshsh 6y ago
Yeah, $50 a month for liability insurance always felt like a really fair deal to me. Pleasantly tolerable fee for a day where my car hits black ice and physics takes the wheel
- metaphor 6y ago
  > Pleasantly tolerable fee for a day where my car hits black ice and physics takes the wheel Hope that day doesn't come because, ironically, liability won't cover your losses. It may, in full or part, cover the incidental loss of others impacted, but not your own.
  - gambiting 6y ago
    What do you mean? In the EU every car insurance has to cover minimum 1 million euro in personal liability and 5 million in 3rd party liability. My own with Aviva covers 5 million euro for personal and 20 million for 3rd party. But car insurance typically doesn't pay healthcare bills since healthcare is nationalized, so it's very hard to imagine how payouts would be anywhere near those sums. You'd need to crash into multiple buggati veyrons to get close to the maximum liability limit. I'm paying £400/year.
    - dmurray 6y ago
      > In the EU every car insurance has to cover minimum 1 million euro in personal liability and 5 million in 3rd party liability. Source on this? I've always understood you only needed third party insurance, and the EU website [0] seems to back this up. > it's very hard to imagine how payouts would be anywhere near those sums. If you kill someone or permanently incapacitate them, you could be on the hook for their lifetime loss of earnings. Here's [1] a family being awarded €650,000 following the death of their mother. Agreed, it's still hard to rack up €20 million and I don't know what the precedent is if you run over a billionaire, but in theory I believe the payout here is uncapped. [0] https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/vehicles/insurance/validity/index_en.htm https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/vehicles/insurance/val... [1] https://www.personalinjuryireland.ie/news/fatal-car-crash-injury-compensation/ https://www.personalinjuryireland.ie/news/fatal-car-crash-in...