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- From: aburt@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu (Andrew Burt)
- Newsgroups: co.general
- Subject: Re: Colorado amendment 2 information / boycott
- Message-ID: <1993Jan12.142152.9888@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>
- Date: 12 Jan 93 14:21:52 GMT
- References: <1993Jan10.032748.21387@mercury.cair.du.edu> <1ish0rINN323@hpfcbig.sde.hp.com> <1993Jan12.045400.6256@ncar.ucar.edu>
- Distribution: co
- Organization: University of Denver, Dept. of Math & Comp. Sci.
- Lines: 43
-
- In <1993Jan12.045400.6256@ncar.ucar.edu> rosinski@isis.cgd.ucar.edu (Jim Rosinski) writes:
-
- >>Eric writes:
- >>
- >>: Hate to differ with you, but I'm paying higher auto insurance rates
- >>: because I am a single male, under 25 years old. I'm clearly being
- >>: discriminated against because of my marital status, sex and age, but
- >>: you don't hear me crying about it.
-
- >But maybe he *should* have a case. To those of you squawking about how
- >terrible "discrimination" is: Do you have an answer to the question Eric
- >implied: Why is it "bad" to discriminate against someone because they are
- >black, gay, or female, but "ok" to discriminate against someone because they
- >are male, under 25, or single? Hint: "Because the law says what it does",
- >... is not sufficient.
-
- My 2 cents... If insurance were voluntary, then because the basis is not
- arbitrarily concocted, but based on measured probabilities, as insurance is,
- it isn't a prejudiced rule (there is no "pre" judging of the whole group,
- there is "judging" of the whole group, based on equal observation of the
- whole population).
-
- BUT -- when insurance is mandatory, e.g., auto insurance, I'll have to say
- that I agree it should not charge selectively. The whole idea of insurance
- is to spread the risk, so if everyone is required to have it, the risk should
- be spread evenly among that whole group. (Where it's voluntary, the free
- market system can kick in and companies can charge whatever they want.)
-
- I tend to think that many insurance companies "take advantage" of this
- freedom (for voluntary insurance) by making the rates so high for the high
- risk groups that it ceases to be "fair",alas. (I.e., they quit spreading
- the risk from the high risk to low risk groups together; seems to me like
- it defeats the purpose, but it does of course make them money.)
-
- So in the sense of "discrimination = prejudicial behavior", this isn't
- discrimination. (And it isn't really right to complain about it in the sense of
- "discrimination = fairly judged behavior", since that includes things like
- giving felons the right to carry guns, etc.)
- --
-
- Andrew Burt aburt@du.edu
-
- "But if he was dying he wouldn't bother to carve "Aaaaargh", he'd just say it."
-