THE PROBLEM WITH INSURANCE
Oh no, since some people drown in water, now I am getting a drowning tax on my monthly water bill!
Not really, but kind of. I already pay for all the other costs inherent in getting water to me, like possibly paying too-high salaries, or maybe too little water in the first place. I am paying for the work, which is supposed to overcome all the effort, inertia or entropy working against getting that water to me. If that entropy increases - like for example INFLATION - then I must pay more and more for that work, and so that water.
My water bill is insurance. The water utility exists so that everyone who chips in and pays gets water in return. It would be very difficult, and time-consuming, for me - or anyone - to get and clean and control and store water. It would be impossible for the utility to do it without its many customers, trading their coercion by thirst for coercion by the Company. This is a form of insurance. Since it is basically required, in all areas of the country, it is also a tax. Insurence coerced is the better part taxation. This can be a problem.
Back to insurance, per se. A bunch of farmers pitch in and store their grain on one big pyramid. The 'company' storing the grain takes a percentage off the top. As time goes by, the farmers feel pretty confident, and so they overwork the land. The land starts going barren. The central pyramid company seeks to keep all the farmers in line, making them work more, making them pay more, and buying up land. The price of insurance becomes so absurd, the authorities institute religion, which backs up their demands upon the farmers, who become sheeplike. The land turns to sand, AND, now everybody is paying the central pyramid company more and more for water. There is war to get more food and water, and the farmers are all taxed for this. And so on.
What is happening is that individuals are paying to help themselves overcome personal costs or effort. By collectivizing, that cost is averaged over all members. No one pays for sudden, personal catastrophe. In the beginning, this brings an economic boost. It brings better efficiency and surplus. It brings certainty, which stabilises prices and encourages investment and work. And, it brings confidence - (eventually overconfidence and hubris).
But, because the system is trying to bottle entropy itself, which is impossible, then the insurance gradually costs more and more, in several ways at once. Imagine each person as a ratio. On average, each person is 3/4th Order and 1/4th Entropy. Entropy means the sum total of misfortune, mistakes, missed opportunities, and, heck, the cost of maintaining the Mrs., lol - in other words, the costs of the estate - of each person. But some are only 1/5th Entropy, while some may be 3/5th Entropy. In the collectivist system, efficiency eventually serves not the lowest entropy, but the lowest common denominator: Meaning that the laggards and squeaky wheels become very costly, bringing down the real efficiency of the System in overcoming General Entropy.
In addition to this inherent flaw, and more importantly: When you try to control all individuals' entropy in one collective system, this actually tends to increase centrally managed entropy over time. Costs. Again, at the beginning, this is not apparent. Later, entropy presses in from all sides - economically, sociologically, politically, etc. - and so centralisation increases, while the cost to each individual, for the protection racket of insurance, rises. Central dictators arise, central capital arises, elites arise, all in parallel with the rise of collective entropy, meaning to control that entropy. But, can you control the weather? Can you control the cumulative consequences of your own mistakes?
So, insurance turns into taxation, even while it may become now less costly for each individual to opt out and take care of his or her own entropy and life. When taxation becomes too much, compared to how well a large number of individuals see themselves faring on their own, then you get upsets like 1776. Because what had started out as insurance here and insurance there, as social ($) support here and social support ($) there, basically aggregated as various taxes into one big poll tax. One general tax per head. This is how people become serfs. And this whole process reflects how we human beings, and our civilisations, are largely a function of changing climate and resources. No wonder the failing Pharoes turned the peoples' heads towards the sun god, or the rain god, and so on.
Where do poll taxes come from? They begin as people in a society trying to help each other, then those people getting coerced by entropy and tyrants into paying all manner of taxes, instead of freely chosen insurance. Finally, all this taxation and coercion becomes one big ball of blame upon each person in society, for whatever reason convenient to the power of tyrants. The death penalty is a lot like a poll tax, in this way. Society becomes like a collective psychopath, and gives it the authority, via its elites, to decide this or that offensive person is so wrong that it is fine to take away their life.
So, we had the move to include poor people, and those with preexisting conditions, into our health care system, an insurance system. Even when I supported this, I saw that tricks were played upon, and in, SCOTUS in order to pass Obamacare, (which began as GOP Neocon Romneycare). As humanitarian as it may have been touted at the time, and whether or not it was humanitarian, this inclusion was a monkey wrench of additional entropy being thrown into the system. And, for all its worth, it was justified by additional taxation, being called NOT taxation. But it was taxation, precisely what I am saying happens when insurance acquires too much cost or entropy. Too much more than each average member freely chooses to pay. More than might possibly be the cost of opting out. Now it becomes a system of control. And that way is madness.
Knowing that taxation is generally an extension, and often a perversion, of insurance, then look at how the insurance called taxation may snowball into a system of tyranny. To insure that those who are shot by guns are compensated in some way, for humanity's sake, taxes are imposed on the innocent owners of guns, and the company who make guns. Gone too far, this control can destroy the good use to society than guns afford, primarilly in guaranteeing freedom from foreign or domestic tyranny.
Some people are dangerously allergic to peanuts. They are higher than average entropy, or cost. For humane reasons, should our insurance be extended to include these people by taxing everyone else, including the companies which make peanut butter? (credit: caller to, "Redeye Radio") Everybody has some flaw or some special expense, some more than others. Should we everyone a little more in order to compensate blacks who may or may not have descended from slaves, even though blacks in America are richer than the richest country in Africa? Humane.
Should we tax everyone to build extra toilet facilities for the extra-gendered, including litter boxes for the cat people? Humane. Everybody pays more to bail out those who can't pay back their student loans. Humane. And everybody pays more for the exorbitant damages rewarded in blockbuster lawsuits. Humane. But, all of this accumulates as greater overall cost to the system, and greater pressure upon the great majority of taxpayers.
Meanwhile, we pay to contain the rising entropy of crime, by building more prisons. Gotta feed these people. We pay for the rising cost of infrastructure. We pay for pollution and dwindling water and drugs and illegal immigration and poverty and graft and political mistakes and the military and the backlash of terrorism and viruses and war and drought and general decay and rust, disease and death. We pay for it all, because we are human like that.
But you can't get away from the fact that prices keep rising, in this way or that. In fact, some make a career of encouraging prices to rise. Encouraging entropy to rise. Profitting by proliferating destruction. Just as the narcissists and psychopaths amongst us exploit good people and normative ethics. Along with all of this decline, what? The relative concept called, "hubris." Even in the decay, egos balloon, like flowers out of mud. Wants become redefined as needs. Needs becomes redefined as rights. Rights become redefined as entitlements. Taking humanity to its logical conclusions.
Rome fell because internal costs became too much for the citizens to endure, and too much compared to what Barbarians had to pay, just to be free. Founded on concepts of liberty and the nobility of man, Rome choked itself to death, and in came the hoarders, and up rose the slaves, and there was no insurance for such a huge, shall we say, "Act of God," catastrophe. One would do better to fan out into the Campagne and eke out a living making bricks from sod.
And what else, simultaneously brought Rome down? Climate change. The inability to control the wavering water supply. Unpredictable crops. Unpredictable trade. Invasions from the east, by hoards fleeing climate change, looking for food. And, in Rome, politicians were conniving and stabbing each other, and having sex with horses, and people were demanding pots of gold, and freedom from slavery, and more water, and so on. For many years, Rome tried to assuage its growing demands, and rising entropy, by imposing imperial control over much of the known world.
But, we all know that empire is tragically flawed. Just as water systems are doomed to get old and cost too much to repair. Just as credit cards and deficit spending never buy a stale future, but only eventually collapse, as entropy creeps in as interest and fees and fines and, sometimes, imprisonment. Slavery. This is where poll taxes come from. And this is where slavery comes from. What better way to save energy, and reduce costs, than to remote-control another human being. Or entire populations?
To simplify: Insurance seeks to reduce and share risk. Emerging entropy is the unplanned increase of risk, which increases costs, and ultimately undermines the insurance, after artificial supports are added, such as meshing the insurance with other insurances, or such as borrowing, or such as taxation, or such as pogroms.
There is a big reason why insurance seems to work for a fair amount of time. Actually two related reasons: Technology and information. Technological advance makes work more efficient, saves energy, and reduces entropy. It is a successful protraction of order. A better assurance of a good future. Insurance, in a way. Similarly, the standardisation and propagation of information - via new technologies - makes work more efficient, saves energy, and reduces entropy. Communication, as via the internet, is a great boon to economy. But neither of these tools contradicts the essential, degrative nature of social insurance, and economies which calcify into taxation and tyranny.
Both technology and information standardisation serve, along with production, trade and evaluation, the emergence of Capital. A discussion of capitalism, though, is not what I'm going here.
The rise and fall of civilisations is an inevitable process resulting from how we deal with entropy, from within and without. How we deal with entropy, or the way we interpret and manage time and space, is, itself, an extension of nature, and of entropy itself. Better management, better technologies, better info and communications - better force and imperial control - these can all forstall decline, but never disprove it in reality. Never stop it. The idea that we are immortal beings here on earth, it doesn't fly. The road to hell is paved with pretense and food intentions.
Insurance is not a bad thing. It is a natural extension of our nature as social beings. But it has an Achilles heel. Economy itself, likewise, is tragically flawed. At least, as far as this or that empire goes. Nevertheless, life - the organic contradiction to chaos - goes on. We keep on associating, thinking, building our tools, and communicating. We live and die, and empire moves on to new continents. Sooner or later. Until it has nowhere left to go.
I have deliberately avoided looking back at my past posts on Insurance, hoping that this post might be both complementary and duplicative of various ideas there. I will deal with editing and tagging this post later.
Oh - I forgot to add: As what once was a freely chosen contribution turns into a general tax upon your head, a society which moves to more and more tax everyone because of the special needs of smaller groups will eventually turn on its head and become a society where the majority more and more blames and harms various minorities. Insurance going to seed. Naturally corrupting. The taxed majority becomes resentful and angry. Ironically, this majority includes so many of the special minorities, as well. So, a succession of witchhunts ensues. Often manipulated and directed by the elites. As a way to divert anger away from themselves. What started off as a way to ensure the welfare of special minorities becomes the fascism of majority, mob rule. That's what happens when people no longer get to opt out of a virtual Pyramid scheme.
Goodmorning!
Not really, but kind of. I already pay for all the other costs inherent in getting water to me, like possibly paying too-high salaries, or maybe too little water in the first place. I am paying for the work, which is supposed to overcome all the effort, inertia or entropy working against getting that water to me. If that entropy increases - like for example INFLATION - then I must pay more and more for that work, and so that water.
My water bill is insurance. The water utility exists so that everyone who chips in and pays gets water in return. It would be very difficult, and time-consuming, for me - or anyone - to get and clean and control and store water. It would be impossible for the utility to do it without its many customers, trading their coercion by thirst for coercion by the Company. This is a form of insurance. Since it is basically required, in all areas of the country, it is also a tax. Insurence coerced is the better part taxation. This can be a problem.
Back to insurance, per se. A bunch of farmers pitch in and store their grain on one big pyramid. The 'company' storing the grain takes a percentage off the top. As time goes by, the farmers feel pretty confident, and so they overwork the land. The land starts going barren. The central pyramid company seeks to keep all the farmers in line, making them work more, making them pay more, and buying up land. The price of insurance becomes so absurd, the authorities institute religion, which backs up their demands upon the farmers, who become sheeplike. The land turns to sand, AND, now everybody is paying the central pyramid company more and more for water. There is war to get more food and water, and the farmers are all taxed for this. And so on.
What is happening is that individuals are paying to help themselves overcome personal costs or effort. By collectivizing, that cost is averaged over all members. No one pays for sudden, personal catastrophe. In the beginning, this brings an economic boost. It brings better efficiency and surplus. It brings certainty, which stabilises prices and encourages investment and work. And, it brings confidence - (eventually overconfidence and hubris).
But, because the system is trying to bottle entropy itself, which is impossible, then the insurance gradually costs more and more, in several ways at once. Imagine each person as a ratio. On average, each person is 3/4th Order and 1/4th Entropy. Entropy means the sum total of misfortune, mistakes, missed opportunities, and, heck, the cost of maintaining the Mrs., lol - in other words, the costs of the estate - of each person. But some are only 1/5th Entropy, while some may be 3/5th Entropy. In the collectivist system, efficiency eventually serves not the lowest entropy, but the lowest common denominator: Meaning that the laggards and squeaky wheels become very costly, bringing down the real efficiency of the System in overcoming General Entropy.
In addition to this inherent flaw, and more importantly: When you try to control all individuals' entropy in one collective system, this actually tends to increase centrally managed entropy over time. Costs. Again, at the beginning, this is not apparent. Later, entropy presses in from all sides - economically, sociologically, politically, etc. - and so centralisation increases, while the cost to each individual, for the protection racket of insurance, rises. Central dictators arise, central capital arises, elites arise, all in parallel with the rise of collective entropy, meaning to control that entropy. But, can you control the weather? Can you control the cumulative consequences of your own mistakes?
So, insurance turns into taxation, even while it may become now less costly for each individual to opt out and take care of his or her own entropy and life. When taxation becomes too much, compared to how well a large number of individuals see themselves faring on their own, then you get upsets like 1776. Because what had started out as insurance here and insurance there, as social ($) support here and social support ($) there, basically aggregated as various taxes into one big poll tax. One general tax per head. This is how people become serfs. And this whole process reflects how we human beings, and our civilisations, are largely a function of changing climate and resources. No wonder the failing Pharoes turned the peoples' heads towards the sun god, or the rain god, and so on.
Where do poll taxes come from? They begin as people in a society trying to help each other, then those people getting coerced by entropy and tyrants into paying all manner of taxes, instead of freely chosen insurance. Finally, all this taxation and coercion becomes one big ball of blame upon each person in society, for whatever reason convenient to the power of tyrants. The death penalty is a lot like a poll tax, in this way. Society becomes like a collective psychopath, and gives it the authority, via its elites, to decide this or that offensive person is so wrong that it is fine to take away their life.
So, we had the move to include poor people, and those with preexisting conditions, into our health care system, an insurance system. Even when I supported this, I saw that tricks were played upon, and in, SCOTUS in order to pass Obamacare, (which began as GOP Neocon Romneycare). As humanitarian as it may have been touted at the time, and whether or not it was humanitarian, this inclusion was a monkey wrench of additional entropy being thrown into the system. And, for all its worth, it was justified by additional taxation, being called NOT taxation. But it was taxation, precisely what I am saying happens when insurance acquires too much cost or entropy. Too much more than each average member freely chooses to pay. More than might possibly be the cost of opting out. Now it becomes a system of control. And that way is madness.
Knowing that taxation is generally an extension, and often a perversion, of insurance, then look at how the insurance called taxation may snowball into a system of tyranny. To insure that those who are shot by guns are compensated in some way, for humanity's sake, taxes are imposed on the innocent owners of guns, and the company who make guns. Gone too far, this control can destroy the good use to society than guns afford, primarilly in guaranteeing freedom from foreign or domestic tyranny.
Some people are dangerously allergic to peanuts. They are higher than average entropy, or cost. For humane reasons, should our insurance be extended to include these people by taxing everyone else, including the companies which make peanut butter? (credit: caller to, "Redeye Radio") Everybody has some flaw or some special expense, some more than others. Should we everyone a little more in order to compensate blacks who may or may not have descended from slaves, even though blacks in America are richer than the richest country in Africa? Humane.
Should we tax everyone to build extra toilet facilities for the extra-gendered, including litter boxes for the cat people? Humane. Everybody pays more to bail out those who can't pay back their student loans. Humane. And everybody pays more for the exorbitant damages rewarded in blockbuster lawsuits. Humane. But, all of this accumulates as greater overall cost to the system, and greater pressure upon the great majority of taxpayers.
Meanwhile, we pay to contain the rising entropy of crime, by building more prisons. Gotta feed these people. We pay for the rising cost of infrastructure. We pay for pollution and dwindling water and drugs and illegal immigration and poverty and graft and political mistakes and the military and the backlash of terrorism and viruses and war and drought and general decay and rust, disease and death. We pay for it all, because we are human like that.
But you can't get away from the fact that prices keep rising, in this way or that. In fact, some make a career of encouraging prices to rise. Encouraging entropy to rise. Profitting by proliferating destruction. Just as the narcissists and psychopaths amongst us exploit good people and normative ethics. Along with all of this decline, what? The relative concept called, "hubris." Even in the decay, egos balloon, like flowers out of mud. Wants become redefined as needs. Needs becomes redefined as rights. Rights become redefined as entitlements. Taking humanity to its logical conclusions.
Rome fell because internal costs became too much for the citizens to endure, and too much compared to what Barbarians had to pay, just to be free. Founded on concepts of liberty and the nobility of man, Rome choked itself to death, and in came the hoarders, and up rose the slaves, and there was no insurance for such a huge, shall we say, "Act of God," catastrophe. One would do better to fan out into the Campagne and eke out a living making bricks from sod.
And what else, simultaneously brought Rome down? Climate change. The inability to control the wavering water supply. Unpredictable crops. Unpredictable trade. Invasions from the east, by hoards fleeing climate change, looking for food. And, in Rome, politicians were conniving and stabbing each other, and having sex with horses, and people were demanding pots of gold, and freedom from slavery, and more water, and so on. For many years, Rome tried to assuage its growing demands, and rising entropy, by imposing imperial control over much of the known world.
But, we all know that empire is tragically flawed. Just as water systems are doomed to get old and cost too much to repair. Just as credit cards and deficit spending never buy a stale future, but only eventually collapse, as entropy creeps in as interest and fees and fines and, sometimes, imprisonment. Slavery. This is where poll taxes come from. And this is where slavery comes from. What better way to save energy, and reduce costs, than to remote-control another human being. Or entire populations?
To simplify: Insurance seeks to reduce and share risk. Emerging entropy is the unplanned increase of risk, which increases costs, and ultimately undermines the insurance, after artificial supports are added, such as meshing the insurance with other insurances, or such as borrowing, or such as taxation, or such as pogroms.
There is a big reason why insurance seems to work for a fair amount of time. Actually two related reasons: Technology and information. Technological advance makes work more efficient, saves energy, and reduces entropy. It is a successful protraction of order. A better assurance of a good future. Insurance, in a way. Similarly, the standardisation and propagation of information - via new technologies - makes work more efficient, saves energy, and reduces entropy. Communication, as via the internet, is a great boon to economy. But neither of these tools contradicts the essential, degrative nature of social insurance, and economies which calcify into taxation and tyranny.
Both technology and information standardisation serve, along with production, trade and evaluation, the emergence of Capital. A discussion of capitalism, though, is not what I'm going here.
The rise and fall of civilisations is an inevitable process resulting from how we deal with entropy, from within and without. How we deal with entropy, or the way we interpret and manage time and space, is, itself, an extension of nature, and of entropy itself. Better management, better technologies, better info and communications - better force and imperial control - these can all forstall decline, but never disprove it in reality. Never stop it. The idea that we are immortal beings here on earth, it doesn't fly. The road to hell is paved with pretense and food intentions.
Insurance is not a bad thing. It is a natural extension of our nature as social beings. But it has an Achilles heel. Economy itself, likewise, is tragically flawed. At least, as far as this or that empire goes. Nevertheless, life - the organic contradiction to chaos - goes on. We keep on associating, thinking, building our tools, and communicating. We live and die, and empire moves on to new continents. Sooner or later. Until it has nowhere left to go.
I have deliberately avoided looking back at my past posts on Insurance, hoping that this post might be both complementary and duplicative of various ideas there. I will deal with editing and tagging this post later.
Oh - I forgot to add: As what once was a freely chosen contribution turns into a general tax upon your head, a society which moves to more and more tax everyone because of the special needs of smaller groups will eventually turn on its head and become a society where the majority more and more blames and harms various minorities. Insurance going to seed. Naturally corrupting. The taxed majority becomes resentful and angry. Ironically, this majority includes so many of the special minorities, as well. So, a succession of witchhunts ensues. Often manipulated and directed by the elites. As a way to divert anger away from themselves. What started off as a way to ensure the welfare of special minorities becomes the fascism of majority, mob rule. That's what happens when people no longer get to opt out of a virtual Pyramid scheme.
Goodmorning!