I ran into a guy handing out Rapture pamplets today. I hadn’t actually met one in real life and felt I should somehow take advantage of the situation. I asked him some questions to see if he’d put his money where his mouth was (i.e. “have you donated your money to charity?”). His response was “oh well the world’s ending so it doesn’t matter what I do with my money so I’m not doing anything.
I left mildly disappointed. It occurred to me later I could have had said something along the lines of “hey, since you think handing out pamphlets is a good use of your time, and you don’t expect to need your money, why not hire a bunch of homeless people to help hand them out? It’ll give them some decent food for their last two days, and help get the word out.”
Granted, I’m not sure that any of that would have been moral or useful. But something along those lines appeals to me for some reason.
Let me put it this way: if you really want to satisfy the rapture believers’ goals in a non-exploitative way, why not just do the pet service insurance in exchange for a share of their estate in the event of he rapture?
Remember, folks, whenever you see yourself “tough-mindedly” agreeing to something that also happens to be self-serving, you’re obligated to follow these steps:
1) Look for a less problematic middle way. 2) When you find it, advocate that instead.
In the event of Rapture, the value of real estate would plummet as it’s suddenly vacated by all believers. And of course, so would the value of money. In a Christian majority country, those who remained would have all the real estate they could defend.
If the person who set this up has an actual network with maintenance costs, providing insurance in exchange for promises of real estate in the event of rapture would be an act of pure altruism, providing others with service at their own expense. While I’ll applaud altruistic behavior, I’m not going to condemn what seems to me to be a legitimate example of wealth producing capitalist behavior. The buyers value peace of mind more than the money, and the provider values the money more than the time and work they put into the services.
Maybe my standards have been lowered recently by dealing with industries whose externalities render them wealth negative, but this doesn’t look objectionable to me.
Misread that, but as I already noted, the value of money would also plummet, and society would probably at least temporarily devolve into anarchy, through which you probably wouldn’t be able to hold your claim on any part of their estate. So the correction doesn’t really bear on any of the comment’s points.
If you have to add an extremely critical, tenuous assumption about the fraction of people that the buyers of this insurance believe would disappear in rapture, yeah, it does bear on your comment’s points—all of them, as far as I can see.
Even if we suppose that a much smaller fraction, let’s say 10%, disappear in the Rapture, it would still be a grand scale economic catastrophe.
Assuming we assign a negligible probability to the Rapture ever happening at all, then as I already stated, that would mean that the person setting up the insurance policy is putting in time and work, ensuring others’ peace of mind, for no compensation at all. This is the most salient of the points I raised, and any specifics of what would occur in a hypothetical Rapture event are irrelevant to it.
Yes, an insurance company should be allowed to take, as payment, a portion of your estate when you die. One instance of this is known as a “reverse mortgage”.
But there’s not much point to buying insurance if they payout comes from your own assets.
I ran into a guy handing out Rapture pamplets today. I hadn’t actually met one in real life and felt I should somehow take advantage of the situation. I asked him some questions to see if he’d put his money where his mouth was (i.e. “have you donated your money to charity?”). His response was “oh well the world’s ending so it doesn’t matter what I do with my money so I’m not doing anything.
I left mildly disappointed. It occurred to me later I could have had said something along the lines of “hey, since you think handing out pamphlets is a good use of your time, and you don’t expect to need your money, why not hire a bunch of homeless people to help hand them out? It’ll give them some decent food for their last two days, and help get the word out.”
Granted, I’m not sure that any of that would have been moral or useful. But something along those lines appeals to me for some reason.
Let me put it this way: if you really want to satisfy the rapture believers’ goals in a non-exploitative way, why not just do the pet service insurance in exchange for a share of their estate in the event of he rapture?
Remember, folks, whenever you see yourself “tough-mindedly” agreeing to something that also happens to be self-serving, you’re obligated to follow these steps:
1) Look for a less problematic middle way.
2) When you find it, advocate that instead.
Easy steps, but rarely done.
In the event of Rapture, the value of real estate would plummet as it’s suddenly vacated by all believers. And of course, so would the value of money. In a Christian majority country, those who remained would have all the real estate they could defend.
If the person who set this up has an actual network with maintenance costs, providing insurance in exchange for promises of real estate in the event of rapture would be an act of pure altruism, providing others with service at their own expense. While I’ll applaud altruistic behavior, I’m not going to condemn what seems to me to be a legitimate example of wealth producing capitalist behavior. The buyers value peace of mind more than the money, and the provider values the money more than the time and work they put into the services.
Maybe my standards have been lowered recently by dealing with industries whose externalities render them wealth negative, but this doesn’t look objectionable to me.
A person’s estate =/= only real estate
Misread that, but as I already noted, the value of money would also plummet, and society would probably at least temporarily devolve into anarchy, through which you probably wouldn’t be able to hold your claim on any part of their estate. So the correction doesn’t really bear on any of the comment’s points.
If you have to add an extremely critical, tenuous assumption about the fraction of people that the buyers of this insurance believe would disappear in rapture, yeah, it does bear on your comment’s points—all of them, as far as I can see.
Even if we suppose that a much smaller fraction, let’s say 10%, disappear in the Rapture, it would still be a grand scale economic catastrophe.
Assuming we assign a negligible probability to the Rapture ever happening at all, then as I already stated, that would mean that the person setting up the insurance policy is putting in time and work, ensuring others’ peace of mind, for no compensation at all. This is the most salient of the points I raised, and any specifics of what would occur in a hypothetical Rapture event are irrelevant to it.
By this reasoning, shouldn’t a life insurance company be willing to sell you life insurance and defer the premium paid until you die?
Yes, an insurance company should be allowed to take, as payment, a portion of your estate when you die. One instance of this is known as a “reverse mortgage”.
But there’s not much point to buying insurance if they payout comes from your own assets.