On November 23 2010 12:14 Kashll wrote: Insurance companies I believe are the only companies allowed to legally discriminate. And they do it based solely on statistics.
That's not true at all and I already posted examples. Discrimination simply isn't illegal. Kid's menus are discrimination. Senior Citizen discounts are discrimination. Affirmative actions is discrimination and clearly government sponsored. Curves for women is discrimination. Bars discriminate as well by not serving minors, and this again is government mandated. There's plenty of examples out there, just look for them.
But the law has mandated that sexism in certain situations is illegal, such as with respect to hiring, university admissions, housing and a slew of other situations. I / we are making the argument that the reasoning behind that mandate should mean that it should also apply to insurance companies, because insurance is required by law.
At least you understood my original premise. This is unjustified. Discriminating solely on the basis of sex is immoral and is protected in the United States of America, yet they get away with it due to statistics.
This obviously isn't the case. The lower rates are due to statistics, not "solely on the basis of sex."
I'm not going to get into whether it's right or wrong, but you are certainly misstating the position of insurers. The morality of the consumer or provider is independent of the data.
On November 23 2010 10:54 Fa1nT wrote: They do the same with age, problem? Statistically, male and females, young and old, have different rates of accidents, and thus should be charged separately.
I'm sure members of different ethnicities have higher rates of accidents too. They do not ask for your race when recieving a quote.
What's the difference? Seperate but equal is okay now?
On November 23 2010 10:55 NathanSC wrote: They base their rates entirely on risk assessment, which is just statistical analysis. I'm sorry, but it's not sexism.
Why do they refrain from requesting one's race then? Wouldn't it just be statistical analysis? You realize something is wrong, and you know it.
I don't it's fair to take an all or nothing approach. Let's be reasonable here, mate.
Sure they could take into account other factors like race if they wanted. But they are not obliged to merely because they take into account sex and age. The insurance companies have to draw a line at some point where they think they've individualised the risk analysis enough as a matter of business efficacy.
There is nothing hypocritical or wrong about taking into account sex but refraining from taking into account other data such as race. It's just stats, risk and business.
No, you can argue that there is nothing wrong about taking age into account (because we all age the same), but taking sex into account would be similar to taking race into account.
The reason other discrimination forms have been removed is because they were unfounded or even worse they were self fulfilling profecies.
The OP is a bit silly but this is garbage too. Probably more so Racism isn't bad because its statistically unfounded, and it wouldn't be any better if it was.
Only a naive romanticist could honestly believe that all racial genepools have identical strengths and gender dispositions have no effect. How they are weighted of course, and how severely, is anybodies guess.
That isn't the point of why Racism is bad. Racism is bad because individuals need to be treated as just that, individuals, without be shackled by there birth status. Even if, say, Black race is somehow genetically, statistically less intelligent then another race by 8 points (NOT saying that they are, just as an example), it wouldn't mean shit because there would still be tons of black geniuses and black men of extreme intellect, just due to the way of how genetic variation WORKS, and we need a society that can recognize them for there strengths. Even if women were inferior to men in athleticism, devoid of any social context (Once again, hypothetical example), that doesn't mean athletic racism would be ok because there would still be tons of women who would be extremely proficient athletically, and society shouldn't repress individuals to conform with the racial, ethnic, or gender/gender identity they were born with.
I swear in my area, females and males are charged the same due to the fact that females are now classified as high-risk drivers too - might have to do with their extra curricular driving activities (texting and make-up application, etc). Either that or they are making sure that there is 'equality' amongst genders.
You don't get more. You get the same piece of paper which guarantees you the same things: a certain maximal insurance payout and the stipulations for the situations that the company pays for. That's what the consumer buys: that men happen to use the insurance more often than women doesn't change that the product being bought is the same. And it costs more for men than women.
You don't "use the insurance more often," it's the insurance company that decides when to pay. And they pay men more than they pay women. That is by definition receiving more.
What do you mean by "they pay men more than they pay women." Do you mean that per claim filed men are paid more or that mend tend to make more claims per person per annum?
I believe it's both, but regardless, over the lifetime of a policy, men receive more money than women. Hence, the products are not the same and it would in fact be discriminatory to charge women and men the same amount, because women would end up receiving much less.
The whole point of insurance is to trade constant small payments in place of unpredictable large payments. Women have less unpredictable large payments. It would be like if because of uncontrollable factors, there was a men's lottery and women's lottery. The men's lottery pays more money with a higher probability of winning, and the women's lottery pays less money with a lower probability of winning. Charging them the same price would in fact be discriminatory, because women are getting something "inferior."
The point is how the product is used is not relevant from the consumers point of view. You buy the same piece of paper that gives you the same protections, man or women, but more expensive for a man. Yes, the man is statistically more likely to cost the insurance company more money (via that piece of paper), but from the consumer's point of view that is not part of the product.
its a fucking service not a god damn product. people in the service sector always use "product" to describe their service to catch dumb people not understanding what a service is. So please stop using product to describe the thing the insurance company gives you.
Fine. It's an agreement between the insurer and the insuree that provides the insuree with certain methods of making claims upon the insurer. Those claims have maximum payouts and certain stipulations for when they can be validly claimed ("the attributes of the agreement" hereafter). Policies with certain attributes cannot be obtained commercially at the same cost for men and women, based on statistical analysis of claim payouts expected. That constitutes sexism in that it is discrimination based on gender with respect to what can be purchased. The agreement itself and its stipulations (attributes) is what is being bought by the insuree ("consumer"): to him/her the statistical payout is not being bought, but rather the ability to make claims for certain amounts in certain situations ("attributes").
You don't get more. You get the same piece of paper which guarantees you the same things: a certain maximal insurance payout and the stipulations for the situations that the company pays for. That's what the consumer buys: that men happen to use the insurance more often than women doesn't change that the product being bought is the same. And it costs more for men than women.
You don't "use the insurance more often," it's the insurance company that decides when to pay. And they pay men more than they pay women. That is by definition receiving more.
What do you mean by "they pay men more than they pay women." Do you mean that per claim filed men are paid more or that mend tend to make more claims per person per annum?
I believe it's both, but regardless, over the lifetime of a policy, men receive more money than women. Hence, the products are not the same and it would in fact be discriminatory to charge women and men the same amount, because women would end up receiving much less.
The whole point of insurance is to trade constant small payments in place of unpredictable large payments. Women have less unpredictable large payments. It would be like if because of uncontrollable factors, there was a men's lottery and women's lottery. The men's lottery pays more money with a higher probability of winning, and the women's lottery pays less money with a lower probability of winning. Charging them the same price would in fact be discriminatory, because women are getting something "inferior."
The point is how the product is used is not relevant from the consumers point of view. You buy the same piece of paper that gives you the same protections, man or women, but more expensive for a man. Yes, the man is statistically more likely to cost the insurance company more money (via that piece of paper), but from the consumer's point of view that is not part of the product.
I definitely agree with this point. Insurance companies are not offering different products to men and women. They have the same coverage, deductibles etc. It is true that companies pay out more money to men than women, and receive more in payments from men. This does not men that mean get a better product. If one day every woman in the world had a brutal car accident and no man crashed, insurance companies would suddenly pay out a lot more to women. This does not mean that women had a better product that day.
If someone gave me and my sister a golf videogame for the Holidays, we both got the same product. My sister would play single player for 15 minutes and then never pick the game up again (even that's an exaggeration lol). I would play for 100 hours and use their free online servers a lot and whatnot. I am costing the company more money, I got a lot more out of it, etc. But, my sister and I were both offered the same product. Charging me more for the game because men are more likely to play golf online, and charging my sister less because women typically play for 15 minutes and then put the game down permanently is analogous to this insurance debate.
This has to be the WORST possible way to try to get lower insurance rates. They will probably print out the email and post it on the office bulletin board for the greater lulz. The OP would have been better off calling various insurance companies to try to get them to bid against each other.
This is applied sexism, but unequal rates is more fair than having equal rates.
You don't get more. You get the same piece of paper which guarantees you the same things: a certain maximal insurance payout and the stipulations for the situations that the company pays for. That's what the consumer buys: that men happen to use the insurance more often than women doesn't change that the product being bought is the same. And it costs more for men than women.
You don't "use the insurance more often," it's the insurance company that decides when to pay. And they pay men more than they pay women. That is by definition receiving more.
What do you mean by "they pay men more than they pay women." Do you mean that per claim filed men are paid more or that mend tend to make more claims per person per annum?
I believe it's both, but regardless, over the lifetime of a policy, men receive more money than women. Hence, the products are not the same and it would in fact be discriminatory to charge women and men the same amount, because women would end up receiving much less.
The whole point of insurance is to trade constant small payments in place of unpredictable large payments. Women have less unpredictable large payments. It would be like if because of uncontrollable factors, there was a men's lottery and women's lottery. The men's lottery pays more money with a higher probability of winning, and the women's lottery pays less money with a lower probability of winning. Charging them the same price would in fact be discriminatory, because women are getting something "inferior."
The point is how the product is used is not relevant from the consumers point of view. You buy the same piece of paper that gives you the same protections, man or women, but more expensive for a man. Yes, the man is statistically more likely to cost the insurance company more money (via that piece of paper), but from the consumer's point of view that is not part of the product.
its a fucking service not a god damn product. people in the service sector always use "product" to describe their service to catch dumb people not understanding what a service is. So please stop using product to describe the thing the insurance company gives you.
Fine. It's an agreement between the insurer and the insuree that provides the insuree with certain methods of making claims upon the insurer. Those claims have maximum payouts and certain stipulations for when they can be validly claimed ("the attributes of the agreement" hereafter). Policies with certain attributes cannot be obtained commercially at the same cost for men and women, based on statistical analysis of claim payouts expected. That constitutes sexism in that it is discrimination based on gender with respect to what can be purchased. The agreement itself and its stipulations (attributes) is what is being bought by the insuree ("consumer"): to him/her the statistical payout is not being bought, but rather the ability to make claims for certain amounts in certain situations ("attributes").
Clear?
i'm absolutly on a line with you about sexism for maximizing profits and how it sucks, I just hate it that services are called products when they're not.
You don't get more. You get the same piece of paper which guarantees you the same things: a certain maximal insurance payout and the stipulations for the situations that the company pays for. That's what the consumer buys: that men happen to use the insurance more often than women doesn't change that the product being bought is the same. And it costs more for men than women.
You don't "use the insurance more often," it's the insurance company that decides when to pay. And they pay men more than they pay women. That is by definition receiving more.
What do you mean by "they pay men more than they pay women." Do you mean that per claim filed men are paid more or that mend tend to make more claims per person per annum?
I believe it's both, but regardless, over the lifetime of a policy, men receive more money than women. Hence, the products are not the same and it would in fact be discriminatory to charge women and men the same amount, because women would end up receiving much less.
The whole point of insurance is to trade constant small payments in place of unpredictable large payments. Women have less unpredictable large payments. It would be like if because of uncontrollable factors, there was a men's lottery and women's lottery. The men's lottery pays more money with a higher probability of winning, and the women's lottery pays less money with a lower probability of winning. Charging them the same price would in fact be discriminatory, because women are getting something "inferior."
The point is how the product is used is not relevant from the consumers point of view. You buy the same piece of paper that gives you the same protections, man or women, but more expensive for a man. Yes, the man is statistically more likely to cost the insurance company more money (via that piece of paper), but from the consumer's point of view that is not part of the product.
its a fucking service not a god damn product. people in the service sector always use "product" to describe their service to catch dumb people not understanding what a service is. So please stop using product to describe the thing the insurance company gives you.
Fine. It's an agreement between the insurer and the insuree that provides the insuree with certain methods of making claims upon the insurer. Those claims have maximum payouts and certain stipulations for when they can be validly claimed ("the attributes of the agreement" hereafter). Policies with certain attributes cannot be obtained commercially at the same cost for men and women, based on statistical analysis of claim payouts expected. That constitutes sexism in that it is discrimination based on gender with respect to what can be purchased. The agreement itself and its stipulations (attributes) is what is being bought by the insuree ("consumer"): to him/her the statistical payout is not being bought, but rather the ability to make claims for certain amounts in certain situations ("attributes").
Clear?
i'm absolutly on a line with you about sexism for maximizing profits and how it sucks, I just hate it thats services are called products when they're not.
I don't even know if it's a service. Insurance is more of an agreement whereby the purchaser gains the legal right to make certain claims of the insurance company over a certain period in certain conditions with certain payouts based on various things. Whether an agreement constitutes a service, I don't know.
On November 23 2010 12:14 Kashll wrote: Insurance companies I believe are the only companies allowed to legally discriminate. And they do it based solely on statistics.
That's not true at all and I already posted examples. Discrimination simply isn't illegal. Kid's menus are discrimination. Senior Citizen discounts are discrimination. Affirmative actions is discrimination and clearly government sponsored. Curves for women is discrimination. Bars discriminate as well by not serving minors, and this again is government mandated. There's plenty of examples out there, just look for them.
But the law has mandated that sexism in certain situations is illegal, such as with respect to hiring, university admissions, housing and a slew of other situations. I / we are making the argument that the reasoning behind that mandate should mean that it should also apply to insurance companies, because insurance is required by law.
But insurance isn't required by law. It's only required if you want to drive. Driving isn't a right (Though I agree that in much of the country it is required in practice, if not by law). So I believe that's a false equivalence, though I'm by no means an expert on logic or logical phrases.
Is there evidence that the law in regards to the situations you mentioned above works counter to statistical evidence? For example is sexism illegal in regards to university admissions despite the fact that one gender is more likely to succeed in university?
1) Yes, your examples fit the definition of sexism. You'll see that those types of basic social situations are discussed as sexism often by third wave feminists, but with reference to women being on the receiving end ("why does my boss always give me cosmetics as a company gift when the men get taken out to a bar?")
Your example is different from my example, because in your example, you show disparate treatment. My examples, which fit within the literal confines of the definition you're using, do not require disparate treatment. My point is that sexism is entirely about disparate treatment, rather than treating me as a man without regard to my individual preferences, which happens all the fucking time, because it's simply impossible for most people to know my individual preferences that well.
(Is it sexist to have urinals in men's bathrooms in complete disregard to every individual's desire to use a urinal?)
3) Men get the same products, the same amount of coverage. Men pay higher rates for the same amount of coverage guaranteed by the insurer. That is the product that the person receives, and the price for it is disparate based on gender. Yes, the company will statistically pay more for males, but that's not the product that the consumer is receiving. They receive coverage that guarantees payment (of a certain amount) from an insurer in certain situations: it costs more for men than women.
It's a different product, because the end result is that you receive something tangibly different as a man: MORE MONEY. Again, would you say a woman buying a happy meal and being satisfied is buying the same product as a man who buys a big mac meal and being satisfied? Even though both of them are labeled as dinner and the end result is caloric satisfaction (e.g. peace of mind from coverage)? No you wouldn't.
You don't get more. You get the same piece of paper which guarantees you the same things: a certain maximal insurance payout and the stipulations for the situations that the company pays for. That's what the consumer buys: that men happen to use the insurance more often than women doesn't change that the product being bought is the same. And it costs more for men than women.
I understand that A) men are more likely to use their insurance plan and B) thus the insurance company pays more per insurance plan given to men, but that isn't the PRODUCT that is being bought.
Take two people: they both by insurance, the same plan, same thing in every way. Same guarantees, same payouts, etc. The plan is for one year. One person crashes his car and claims his insurance, the other doesn't and never "uses" it. They both bought the same product, though.
Your argument may make sense if you can view insurance as a product that you buy as a standard package. But really, an insurance policy is a contract between the policy holder and the insurer. The policy holder gives a certain premium in exchange for insurance by the insurer. The insurer determines the premium price based off what the insurer thinks the insurance is worth to the policy holder (ie based off the policy holder's risk of making a claim). Therefore, the 'product' is actually individual to each policy holder. It's not just a standard package, it's just the business demands that make it more streamlined. But never forget insurance is an individual contract between the insurer and policy holder --- and that's the only way it would get legally enforced anyway.
In any event, it is better described as the allocation of risk across society (or at least the policy holders). So looking at the bigger picture of allocating risk is probably the better way of examining insurance.
To be honest, I'm not entirely sure that the statistics necessarily reflect the reality. More men drive than women (think of the senior population... how many elderly couples are there where grandma doesn't drive at all?) and thus could probably have more absolute accidents, but not necessarily more when taking proportion into account.
If I look at my highschool graduating class, the proportion of women who had accidents is MUCH higher than that of men. I will admit that most of these accidents were minor (meaning more of them weren't reported to avoid the insurance claims altogether), but there were still some of them related to dangerous driving. Of course my highschool graduating class from 4 years ago is a small sample of people, but it's still a sample.
If I think in my family, I don't think any of the men, aside from my almost legally blind grandfather, have had accidents (at least not in the last 20 years). Again, grandma doesn't drive in this case so we can't really compare. I do however know for a fact that 2/5 aunts have had accidents in this same span of time.
I don't know. I guess I'm just a little upset with the fact that my girlfriend, while an excellent driver (no better or worse than myself) pays less than one third of what I pay for insurance. Quite literally, I'm paying 3600$/year, on a 2002 4-cyl Honda Accord, while she's paying about 1100$/year driving a 2002 V6 Chrysler Sebring (a way nicer car, with way bigger balls ) . Neither of us have been in any accidents. We're both 20 and have both completed driver training (which lowers insurance costs). Her insurance policy has been lowering her costs since she got her licence, while mine have actually been rising. What's up with that?
I get that insurance companies have to base their policies on overall tendencies to a certain extent... but I'd really like to pay insurance for my driving record and not the rest of the province's <.<
I have seen little justification of the statistics used to determine rates.
Someone posted a link showing men are in more fatal accidents. That is obviously incomplete in scope and missing normalizing factors such as how many men vs. women are drivers, and how many men are in more risky driving jobs (taxi, truck, etc).
Secondly, even if women, overall, were completely less likely to be involved in accidents, it is not a highly useful statistic. Gender is very simple and highly variable; there are much better statistics the companies could use to more accurately fulfill their risk-assessment purposes.
Lastly, this is not justified given that the companies do not follow this with race and age (for the younger side of the scale they do, but iirc they do not compensate for elderly drivers, though I may be wrong). It is not justifiable to only selectively apply such general metrics.
On November 23 2010 12:14 Kashll wrote: Insurance companies I believe are the only companies allowed to legally discriminate. And they do it based solely on statistics.
That's not true at all and I already posted examples. Discrimination simply isn't illegal. Kid's menus are discrimination. Senior Citizen discounts are discrimination. Affirmative actions is discrimination and clearly government sponsored. Curves for women is discrimination. Bars discriminate as well by not serving minors, and this again is government mandated. There's plenty of examples out there, just look for them.
But the law has mandated that sexism in certain situations is illegal, such as with respect to hiring, university admissions, housing and a slew of other situations. I / we are making the argument that the reasoning behind that mandate should mean that it should also apply to insurance companies, because insurance is required by law.
But insurance isn't required by law. It's only required if you want to drive. Driving isn't a right (Though I agree that in much of the country it is required in practice, if not by law). So I believe that's a false equivalence, though I'm by no means an expert on logic or logical phrases.
Is there evidence that the law in regards to the situations you mentioned above works counter to statistical evidence? For example is sexism illegal in regards to university admissions despite the fact that one gender is more likely to succeed in university?
Well, access to jobs and universities and housing isn't required by law, but sex (and religion and race, etc) are protected traits.
On November 23 2010 12:27 micronesia wrote: If someone gave me and my sister a golf videogame for the Holidays, we both got the same product. My sister would play single player for 15 minutes and then never pick the game up again (even that's an exaggeration lol). I would play for 100 hours and use their free online servers a lot and whatnot. I am costing the company more money, I got a lot more out of it, etc. But, my sister and I were both offered the same product. Charging me more for the game because men are more likely to play golf online, and charging my sister less because women typically play for 15 minutes and then put the game down permanently is analogous to this insurance debate.
Game charges not really an argument of "fairness" though.
Take the MMO example. they used to all be "pay-per-month" ish, so basically the hardcore players benefitted the most and the casuals kind of got a worse deal.
Now, a lot of MMOs are micro-transaction based. which means the hardcore players pay more (often because they'd be disadvantaged if they didn't) and the casuals pay close to nothing.
two different models, catering to different crowds. I wouldn't call either mode more "fair" than the other.
EPT
) . Neither of us have been in any accidents. We're both 20 and have both completed driver training (which lowers insurance costs). Her insurance policy has been lowering her costs since she got her licence, while mine have actually been rising. What's up with that?
