Proactive Life Insurance

I've been thinking. Companies that sell auto insurance are starting to get a little proactive, providing incentives for drivers that take steps to avoid accidents. Health insurance companies go further and actually pay for preventative care. I can see big benefits coming when life insurance companies do the same.

You see, it's easy to estimate the deaths from ordinary causes. The cost of insurance covers the predictable deaths from aging and disease. The more irregular deaths from natural disasters or terrorist attack are a little harder to estimate. As these are also the cases where the deceased are younger (and have made fewer payments) logically this is where prevention should take place.

The idea of a search and rescue or a private military run by the insurance companies isn't as scary as one might think. For one, most of their employees probably have life insurance policies at the same place. It wouldn't be fiscally sound to risk lives without a strong guarantee of saving others. Rather than questionable political motives or the power of demagogy, decisions would have to be based on saving the most lives (and insurance payouts).

Charities, governments, even the UN could be far more effective at preventing war under this system. Rather than useless protests and sanctions, you just need to buy insurance policies for the civilians in the affected area. And it's no loss for the companies. The extra profit (possibly the entire payment as many foreigners wouldn't renew the policy) from the insurance policies can be used on more accurate and isolated weaponry.

No wars unless more lives can be saved than lost. Military hardware is expensive too and unlike governments corperations can't make up another billion dollars. Even more reason to keep things short and to the point. There's even an inbuilt bias towards protecting children: they're going to by buying insurance for a lot longer.