
We Can Protect the Economy from Pandemics. Why Didn't We? - deegles
https://www.wired.com/story/nathan-wolfe-global-economic-fallout-pandemic-insurance/
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dv_dt
This is an interesting story in terms of the details of how insurance valuates
risk trying to function as a post-event risk mitigation mechanism. but there
is a bypassing of a discussion of if it makes any sense for private entities
to be the ones in our economy and society to be the ones mitigating this risk.
For one, it makes little sense to pay private insurance to buffer for one
class of remote risks, when what businesses (and society) needs is good
general resilience measures for a whole set of potential correlated low risk /
high impact events.

As to why didn't any but insurance for pandemics, one should think about the
root causes on why the US does such a bad job of mitigate all sorts of general
disaggregated risks of catastrophic health outcomes with universal healthcare,
as well as why the nations of the world to varying degrees, basically don't
mitigate the general correlated risk of climate crisis. Imo the private
financialized insurance mechanisms are an inadequate risk mitigation tool for
many issues.

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richajak
I think we should not outsource things that we should do by ourselves to
government or insurance companies. If the problem is too big, these entities
can fail. We should start by taking those responsibility personally.

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perl4ever
Hasn't all of history gone in the opposite direction? People used to be more
"self-reliant", and then when something unexpected happened, say, crops failed
in a region, millions would die and millions more would have to take
everything they had and migrate somewhere with more opportunity.

If you need something, and it exists in the world, what fundamental advantage
is there in having that thing be off limits? Or in having the burden of
providing placed on a few rather than many?

