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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   38610 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 15, 2024

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I am increasingly sympathetic to the idea that systems too complicated for stupid people are deeply unfair, even if I personally have no trouble understanding and even benefitting from these systems.

While I understand the general sentiment, the OP's thread is about car insurance, and quite frankly, the people who don't understand car insurance should not be given sympathy, they should have their licenses pulled. Not only are these people, statistically, terrible drivers, but by not having/not having enough insurance they just are a driving externality on the road. The solution isn't to make insurance easier to understand (its already incredibly easy), the solution is to put it on the drivers exam and fail people over and over and over until they learn. Or learn that they can't learn.

For car insurance, there's also a third option- make people buy a government decided insurance package, maybe allow opt out to buy different insurance after passing a test or financial threshold.

This would turn into a boondoggle immediately, just like federal flood insurance is.

Well the problem is that Americans built a country where the vast majority of adults simply cannot live and work without a personal car.

That was caused by the same people who don't understand insurance moving to cities.

Nah, other countries with similar diversity still have much more widespread public transport.

Because they can't afford cars.

And don't have the space for suburbs.

There's a solution to that, fortunately. Personal cars. Would work even better if it weren't for New Urbanists, Traffic Calmers, Net Zero, and other anti-car types trying to mess things up.

And what of the small but substantial minority of people who are too stupid, high time preference, incompetent, poorly-sighted or irresponsible to drive?

They can go somewhere they can take public transit, and be outside that "vast majority".

‘Let them move to Manhattan’

W. C. Fields may shudder, but there's also Philadelphia.

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