The Disservice Economy and its Bad Goods: Powering the Global Money Engine 1
I have listed in a Word document file in the course of the past half an hour over 100 discrete absurdities of economic life whose crazy adverse consequences I have experienced personally recently here in UK; a 100 plus number of items which I am pretty sure will ring on your bell also wherever you are in the global marketplace.
There was little strain upon me to have listed a 100 plus items of such bad jokes; and from off the top of my head. This is because there are so many abuses to choose from, and because these stupid inconveniences and bear pits continue to be encouraged to spring up and multiply like dragons teeth daily by those persons who presume to govern us and by those others who casually and arbitrarily hold non-accountable sway over our lives.
I intend over the course of some weeks, step by step to itemise and describe individually each of the 100 plus items of absurdity I have been able to list. There are many more; and I’m sure you can do your own sets of explications.
- Uninsured Drivers’ Insurance
This item is advertised as offered for sale by a number of UK motor insurance companies. The blurb I myself read told me that over 1 million drivers in the UK drive without owning motor insurance. The insurance sales line was for a prudent driver to insure against being in an accident involving one of these million uninsured drivers. So it’s a bit of a scare approach…. What if….????
Kindly lookers-on might adjudge this pitch to be insurers plugging a hole they have discovered in the marketplace, and in adequate road safety protection for conscientious drivers?
Firstly I ask; is the statistic offered correct? Was it backed up by any source information? Not that I was able to discern, no. So, to begin with we are taking on trust an insurer setup which aims to be, and stands to gain from, informing us and thereby causing us to take fright at such a 1 million driver statistic.
I point out secondly that given the statistic is correct, what of the dereliction of government and of law enforcement in this 1 million insurance-less drivers being allowed to have accumulated in UK. 1 million drivers are perhaps 5% of all drivers in UK? One driver in every 20 one meets with daily, thereabouts: An epidemic of serious law breaking.
Consider the revenues lost. Non-insured drivers will not hold current road tax licenses; one needs to show proof of insurance to obtain this license in UK. Nor even do they perhaps hold a driver’s licence to drive; nor probably do they hold an MOT roadworthiness certificate for their vehicles. All this represents loss of revenues on a large scale to government; and it also represents loss to insurer companies, repair garages, and others of otherwise appropriate lawful expected income.
I ask: is the solution to be found in insured drivers taking out additional insurance as it were on behalf of those who drive without insurance? Is such a surrogate cover for the accidents of uninsured drivers in fact coming close to condoning drivers being uninsured? Helping also to normalise the situation of insurance-less driving in the UK? De facto alleviating, detrimentally so, the pressures placed quite rightly on police and authorities to tackle with vigour this epidemic of insurance-less driving in UK. Thus are insurers usurping de facto the proper place of law and order; by means of a private sector intervention which appropriates a situation which should be solely, wholly, within public sector space.
This intrusion of private enterprises into areas which have de facto been by way of an indifferent dereliction vacated by public authorities, areas appropriated privately but which de jure belong only in the public spheres; this effrontery is a common thread to be found in many of the examples I am going to follow through with as I write of them some more. The overstepping the mark by private business into areas either in a remiss state of public neglect; or else into areas into which pubic reach ought to have expanded, but it has been tardy of, even sometimes deliberately held back from, keeping abreast of – this state of affairs is a trigpoint which locates the precise social economic character of the present era.
Further, should not a normal fully comprehensive driver’s insurance policy already be sufficient to cover for uninsured drivers bumping into a driver? If not, then the name of fully-comprehensive given to such a policy is a misnomer. And if fully comprehensive insurance is not sufficient; then has it been so in the past; previous to the insurers offering uninsured drivers’ insurance?
I do believe that here in the UK there is a scheme, and has been for years, run by government, using public funds, which kicks in so as to cater for and care for those who meet accidents from uninsured drivers. If this is so, then for the most part uninsured driver insurance is redundant, unless a driver wishes to have heavy cover or over an d above protection?
All in all I believe uninsured driver insurance to be by and large approaching the status of a scam. It appears to me to be a provision of an additional and a quite unnecessary service; and being offered simply to generate revenues for insurers from premiums from policies in numbers otherwise not likely to have been sold. Given that insurance companies I believe almost across the board will not pay out whenever an insured person holds duplicated insurances; or else when a person has been compensated elsewhere for the same injury or loss; then what use might uninsured drivers insurance be to drivers overall?
You can also find this article at our anomalist design blog: https://blog.anomalistdesign.com/the-disservice-economy-and-its-bad-goods-powering-the-global-money-engine-1/
This article is also posted at linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/disservice-economy-its-bad-goods-powering-global-money-matthew-raymer/