Yep, insurance is really at quantifying and transferring risk. Maybe the best thing about it is that it translates high, unlikely costs in the future into small

Yep, insurance is really at quantifying and transferring risk. Maybe the best thing about it is that it translates high, unlikely costs in the future into small, certain costs today, and the latter are far easier to respond to rationally and proportionately. As a minor point, there's nothing inherently capitalist about it - the largest personal lines auto insurer in the US (like many of the smaller ones) is a mutual company, meaning that it doesn't have outside shareholders and functions more or less as a cooperative owned by its policyholders.