Why don't Palestinians just convert to Judaism? Most of their ancestors used to be Jews and it would gain them the right to return to Israel, where they could live much better lives. If the answer is that they are devout Muslims and Christians, then do we need to save them from their own irrationality by either somehow getting them to convert anyway or by forcing Israel to give in to their demands so that they don't suffer the consequences of their bad choices?
If this happened at a mass scale, would Israel not allow it? I suppose they would doubt their sincerity and make it more difficult to just convert so that you can move to Israel.
Is this just hard to coordinate on a mass scale? Invidual Palestinians may not want to convert and immigrate and leave their communities. But that still leaves open the question of how bad things must really be if they don't do it anyway. Israel may be an ethno-state, but I think it's the only country in the world that anyone can immigrate to if they're sufficiently motivated to convert to a belief system.
Glassnoser
2d ago
Yes. It would be agreed to as part of your insurance contract.
Glassnoser
2d ago
If we're not thinking of the same people, then what does being able to down vote accomplish?
Glassnoser
2d ago
Sure, but at least they'll only have to lie about things that actually affect their driving ability enough for insurance companies to care about them, and the insurance companies will be incentivized to find ways around these problems, such as by making certain medical tests mandatory.
Glassnoser
2d ago
If they can profitably insure dangerous drivers, what is the problem? Society is being compensated for the risk those drivers pose.
Glassnoser
3d ago
Your insurance company could impose penalties on you as part of the agreement to be insured by them. They could also do things to prevent you from getting in the accident in the first place. The whole point of my proposal is that insurance companies should have the same tools available to them to prevent accidents as we currently give the government (including the right to issue and revoke licences to their customers), but with the only difference being an incentive to do it right.
Glassnoser
3d ago
The insurance companies want to maximize public safety so as to minimize their payouts. They want to minimize the costs for their policy holders to maximize the demand for their products.
I'm not involuntarily celebrate. I recently got out of a relationship. It's just hard to meet women, especially offline, and I feel like my options are more limited than they could be. And before that, the girl I wanted to marry broke up with me in part because of how my career was going.
Online dating is extremely difficult in my new city. I think I was borderline for being attractive enough in my last city to make it work, and the dating environment in my new city is less forgiving. I think things will look up if I can move to somewhere with more opportunity.
Do you think your professional misfortunes are reversible? Are you at least on track to make your money?
Who knows? My boss seems to like promotions more than pay raises that keep up with inflation and doesn't seem to mind high turnover. So I have to find something else.
I'm smart, but maybe I don't have the social skills to navigate the working world. I have very little idea of what sort of careers paths exist in my chosen field or how to get and pass job interviews. I think not knowing many people limits the secondhand knowledge I get about these things.
My ex-girlfriend asked me to come up with a five year plan, and I can't even begin to figure what that means. My goal is to get a job that pays more and that I like better, and I don't know enough about what's out there to "plan" that. Things were a lot easier in university when I just had to attend lectures, do the labs, learn the material, and ace the tests.
Are you fit and manage to dress well?
Somewhat.
Glassnoser
3d ago
I guess they won't be satisfied then. I don't think the justice system should be retributive.
Glassnoser
3d ago
I'm somehow in the worst of all worlds. I'm nerdy, shy, and introverted and did a degree where there were very few women and I had almost no free time, have had very little career success since graduating, and am now no longer part of a social circle that involves going to parties or meeting new people after moving back to my hometown and now only hanging out with friends from high school and having not succeeded at making friends in university.
Glassnoser
3d ago
What social circles are those?
Glassnoser
3d ago
Is it just a correlation or is it causal? Because I can think of lots of reasons autistic traits would be correlated with having kids later.
Glassnoser
3d ago
So being a recent graduate is a bad time to date?
Glassnoser
3d ago
But it likely does maximize the tradeoff between public safety and the individuals' interest in being able to drive plus their interests in saving other costs. And it probably maximizes the tradeoff you mentioned better than driver's licences do.
Glassnoser
3d ago
I think you'll probably die if you try this. Given that, my answer would depend on whether it is more likely that I am wrong about that or whether it is more likely that you just get very lucky. In the first case, I think you'll have some confidence that will increase the likelihood of your trying it again. In the latter case, I guess you'll be scared off of doing something so stupid. I think both probabilities are low and so it's hard to judge which is higher.
All that said, I think if you planned this better (e.g. do not bring skis), you could survive this. It would be very challenging and very risky, but from the small amount of research I've done, doable.
Glassnoser
3d ago
I cannot figure out what your point is. Yes, I agree that people driving without insurance is bad. But I don't see how my proposal would have any effect on the number of people driving without insurance.
Glassnoser
3d ago
Your simple faith in this religion of the free market is touching, I have to say. There's an argument that the instances in the original post are indeed over-regulation for the sake of it, but to put it all on the free market is optimistic in the extreme.
If it were faith, I wouldn't be asking for reasons why it might not work. I don't think you're quite going this far, but there's this really common and very annoying thing that a lot of people do where, if you express any kind of belief that markets ever work, you're accused of being a free market fundamentalist. It's a subject on which people struggle to see nuance and seem to default to gesturing vaguely at market failures which they've heard exist but can never explain why any given case is one.
Every insurance company has its own licensing body? Multiple licensing bodies? Or in effect a monopoly? Any common standard, or LicenzRUz gives you one if you can turn the ignition on, nothing more required (and the insurance companies that take this licence then charge you out the nose for coverage) while Rules Rule Inc. ask for your family medical history three generations back?
Competition and choice would be great, but we can't do worse than the current monopoly.
Law cases even more lucrative for lawyers as the survivors of person killed in crash by "minimum requirements only" licence holder fight it out with the insurers, and judges have to rule on whether the driver was adequately licenced or not?
Why would it matter whether the driver was licensed? The compensation would be based on the harm caused and who was at fault. Why would this be any more difficult than it is already?
This is where we get things like "Jet's Law" in the first place, and the subsequent over-reach.
How so?
Adjusting the free market grave by grave may be one way of doing it, but I think most people would prefer a less final method than "Okay, fifty thousand extra deaths due to lax licence rules, pressure on insurers to put pressure on third party bodies to tighten up their requirements".
I'm not following this at all. What do you mean by "final"? Why would there be an increase in deaths? Why would there be any kind of grave-by-grave adjustment of the free market?
Whatever way you do it, the government is going to get dragged in by cases such as led to Jet's Law. After all, the 'free market' allowed the epileptic driver to operate a vehicle, and it was the consequences of that which involved the government:
Why would the government get dragged in?
Glassnoser
3d ago
We need a rule against long-form bullshit then.
Glassnoser
3d ago
Then get rid of upvotes too.
Glassnoser
3d ago
- That's what moderation is for.
- I don't understand what your second point is saying.
Glassnoser
3d ago
We wouldn't need to have those debates though if we relegated the question to the free market, and I'm wondering if there is any good reason why we don't just do that.
Glassnoser
3d ago
I don't think this makes any sense as a question. If you die, obviously you won't try it again. If you don't try it at all, you can't do something again that you haven't done once. You're really just asking how likely you'll do it again assuming you survive.
Glassnoser
3d ago
OK, so why don't we find out? There's a good chance they would come up with a better system of testing and licensing than we have now. Is there any reason the government needs to issue licences?
Glassnoser
3d ago
Why don't we get rid of driver's licences entirely and just rely on car insurance? If you pose a risk to others by not having the skill to drive or by having some medical condition, your insurer could require its own tests. It could ask you to get a licence from a third party private organization. Then the free market would figure out the optimal test of driving ability.
The Anarcho-Statists of Spain: An Historical, Economic, and Philosophical Analysis of Spanish Anarchism by Bryan Caplan
Maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but it may be interesting. It focuses on anarchism.
More options
Context Copy link