Saturday, February 17, 2007

"What is there to stop them from taking yours?"

So ended our friend Dan at Searchlight Crusade, commenting on Mississippi's state government forbidding State Farm "from refusing to write new homeowners and commercial policies in the hurricane-battered state," if it continued to offer automobile policies.

I had read a few days ago that State Farm made the decision, and I should have known Big Government would step in to stop it. Dan put it so well:
State Farm is not a "robber baron." Nor is any other insurance company. At least here in California, they have to defend their rates to actuaries working for the state.

But when you make them pay for things which were explicitly not insured, don't you think they're entitled to second thoughts about whether to do business in that state? State Farm is not a charitable organization. They are entitled to charge enough to make a profit - otherwise there is no reason to be in business. If they decide they cannot do that within the environment in a given state, they are entitled to decide to leave. If they can't do it at all, the correct decision is to go out of business.
I add that it's a tragedy of liberty (not to be confused with Herbert Hoover's misuse) when State Farm, or any business for that matter, must "defend" itself to government bureaucrats. If potential customers don't like it, they don't have to buy it.

The state of Mississippi can certainly try to insure its citizens, and if it does, I will, here and now, predict the inevitable result. It's not hard, really, because I merely have to examine the success (rather, the lack thereof) of every other government program. The government will claim superiority over the free market as it offers nearly everyone lower rates than what private insurance would offer, ignoring and obfuscating the fact that the collected "premiums" are insufficient revenue to fund all the payouts -- just like Medicaid and every other pseudo-insurance program run by government. Taxes must therefore be used (and quite possibly raised), meaning the vast majority of recipients will dutifully pay a little while the top income earners virtually pay for everyone else. And once the top earners take their wealth to other state, everybody else will be that much poorer as they lose jobs and loan capital that were courtesy of "the rich."

What's to stop government from taking our property? Nothing but the force of arms. Storm's coming, people. That day approaches.

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