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Comment by gamblor956 | Hacker News Reader

Almost all commercial insurance policies exclude pandemics and terrorist acts.

Where exactly do you propose they buy this mythical insurance policy that includes pandemic coverage?

(On another note, insurance is literally the socialization of losses. It's just a privately run socialization of losses with your fellow policyholders.)

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When people complain about socialization of losses, they're talking about socialization across parties that did not consent to bearing those losses, which doesn't cover the privately-run case, so I don't know why you think that comment is applicable.

If I understand correctly, why do you think it's proper for the organizers and attendees of SXSW who would lose money if the event was cancelled, then be compensated for such losses by other individuals who DO NOT consent to bear such responsibility?

I wasn't taking a position on that, I was addressing the oh-so-clever remark that was trivializing complaints of "socialization of losses" with the argument that "duh, that's what insurance is, what's the problem?".

Got it! Sorry. I thought I might not have absorbed the sarcasm.

My original comment wasn't sarcastic.

Insurances that exclude high-cost low probability events... that's funny.

What are they for?

They exclude unmodelable high-cost low-probability events.

The exist to cover modelable high-cost low-probability events.

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