Comments on: Buying Protection

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 03:10:16 +0000

Which is why it is correctly called life assurance - you cannot insure a life. I tend to look on it as an attempt to try to ensure that your genetic legacy (your children) have a good chance of a decent survival to adulthood.

By: TGGP

TGGP — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:38:28 +0000

More an ev-psych thing. Geoffrey Miller makes it quite clear he’s a liberal and his last book was all about signalling. Libertarians are probably more likely than the general populace to accept not only evolution but also sociobiology, though founders of that field like Trivers & E. O. Wilson are hardly libertarians either.

By: Rick Russell

Rick Russell — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 04:25:09 +0000

I have to wonder if the author ever bought life insurance.

Insurance really has two purposes: (1) to cover debts if the event of your death and (2) to give your family some breathing room. For example, my wife would be stuck raising an autistic 7-year-old and a 1-year-old by herself with no income in the event of my death.

By: chrismealy

chrismealy — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 03:52:24 +0000

Can somebody decode the libertarian econ blogger obsession with signaling? It’s some lame attempt to preserve homo economicus, right? They can’t believe that people are nice, so they render them diabolically nice.

By: teageegeepea

teageegeepea — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 01:51:36 +0000

Have you ever played “Day of the Tentacle”? Hoagie claims that washing his car causes it to rain, so he never washes it. At some point he needs lightning to strike Ben Franklin’s kite, so he washes a carriage.

But anyway, isn’t it often the insured person themselves who is buying life insurance? You don’t financially benefit from your own death (unless you fake it!).