Become a Gambler Who Never Loses!

Just get into the auto insurance business. Today we received a notice from our car insurance company (who shall remain nameless but who is associated with a small green lizard -- which seems very fitting now that I think about it) that our insurance will be canceled unless we remove our daughter from our policy.

Now our daughter is 20 years old, a college student with a high GPA, and happens to have had the misfortune to have had two minor accidents over the past two years. Otherwise our driving records are clean. The Lizard says that "after careful consideration" (which -- believe me because I am a software architect -- means that some type of data mining software flagged our account and generated a form letter signed by an "underwriter"), it was determined that we did not meet its stringent requirements.

In other words and in more direct terminology, "You can pay us usurious rates as long as there is no indication that it will ever cost us anything, but if there exists any evidence that we might ever be required to actually stand behind the policy for which you are paying, well, then you represent a poor risk."

A quick phone call with a perfectly friendly, cordial, sympathetic, but worthless customer service representative provided me with addtional detail. The Lizard would be happy to offer my wife and I as well as my daughter coverage if I remove our daughter from our policy. Then my wife and I would receive a "preferred" rate, and my daughter would be able to independently purchase coverage at the amazing low rate of just $1600 every six months.

Of course, I'll now start shopping for other coverage, but it's difficult to feel so trapped by a situation in which the government requires coverage, but does nothing to regulate the behavior of an industry whose powerful lobby demands that it never be held accountable for such unethical behavior. Like a whining, spoiled child, it insists on gambling with no risk of losing. And its parents always give it what it wants.

Wouldn't it be great if we, like today's insurance corporations, could walk into a casino, place bets using other people's money, then walk away with that money whether we win or lose? It staggers the mind.