--- Original Message ----- From: "Tim May" <tcmay@got.net> To: "Yardena Arar + Christian Goetze" <kitties@best.com> Cc: "Nathan Saper" <natedog@well.com>; "Cypherpunks" <cypherpunks@cyberpass.net> Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2000 9:00 PM Subject: CDR: Re: Re: why should it be trusted?
Gambling is about assessing risk and rewards and payoffs. A person seeking insurance knows things about his or her health that the prospective insurer may not know about. Likewise, the prospective insurer may come to know things about the candidate.
This is the way markets in general have always worked. Economists talk about "preference revealing" and "selective disclosure of information."
But the Bob has no control of his risk (genetics), or at least not yet :). The insurance company does. I don't have a problem with insurance companies raising rates for people who smoke, are overweight (cough, cough), or have high cholesterol (cough, cough, cough). That's behavior that can be changed. Neil M. Johnson njohnson@interl.net http://www.interl.net/~njohnson PGP Key Finger Print: 93C0 793F B66E A0C7 CEEA 3E92 6B99 2DCC