The cost of car insurance is going up – by about 14 percent, on average – chiefly because we’re not allowed to say no to it.

What do you suppose would happen to the cost of a cup of coffee if the government decreed that everyone had to buy one? It is the being able to not buy the cup of coffee that keeps the cost of a cup of coffee affordable.

Not so car (and now health) insurance. You are allowed to “shop around,” of course. But this has nowhere near the power of having the right to say no.

So it’s not surprising that the cost of car (and health)  insurance is going up – for all of us. Including those of us who haven’t cost the insurance mafia a cent (but have been forced to pay it many thousands).

To be fair to the mafia – which it rarely is to those it “serves” – there are other reasons besides not being able to say no that are driving the cost of insurance upward. One of them is the cost of money. It takes more of it to pay for the same thing. This is called “inflation” – an insouciant term implying a natural unpleasantness that just has to be dealt with – rather than the deliberate result of financial machinations by the private banking mafia that owns and controls the money supply.

Anyhow, the point is that if it costs the mafia more in inflation-adjusted terms to pay claims then you will get to pay more for the coverage you’re forced to buy from them.

Another driver is the cost of cars, themselves, which is up by about $15,000 on average, if you go by what the average new car sold for last year vs. just a couple of years ago. $50,000 cars – and $70,000 trucks – are now common cars (and trucks) and even if you don’t own one yourself the fact that so many others own them is driving up the cost of the coverage you are forced to pay – because of the cost of repairing and replacing other people’s vehicles that cost so much to repair and replace.

Think of it as a “pre-existing condition.”

Someone else’s.

That you’re on the hook for.

In the relatively recent past, most people did not drive exotically priced cars, chiefly because most people could not afford to buy them. That’s still true today but a false impression of affordability has been created by making it possible for them to finance what they can’t afford – for six or seven years. Or rent – as via a lease. This has been made temporarily possible by very low interest rates on loans, but that is changing – and that will change what people think they can afford to make payments on for the next six or seven years.

But the point is that it costs twice as much to replace a totaled $50,000 vehicle as it does to replace a $25,000 vehicle and the $50,000 vehicle is also probably going to cost more to fix because it is likely to have more air bags or have a body made of aluminum and so on.

And if it is an electric car, it more likely to be replaced rather than repaired if it is involved in an accident because it is often necessary replace the battery, which may have been damaged in any accident, including minor ones. It’s not like a crumpled fender, which is obvious.

And doesn’t catch fire, either.

When an EV gets hit – or hits something – impact forces are telegraphed to the battery. It might have a hairline crack not easily found or seen. There might be damage to the inside matrix that cannot be seen.

Since lithium-ion EV batteries contain highly reactive chemicals and can (and do) sometimes spontaneously combust, this is a risk that’s too expensive to take. It is “cheaper” to total the EV and send the owner a check for a replacement.

Which you and everyone else who is forced to send the mafia money get to help pay for  – because what are you going to do when you’re not allowed to refuse?

The mafia’s pay-out costs are going up – and so are yours. It does not matter that you drive an older, paid-for car that did not cost $50,000 when it was new. It does not matter that you have never filed a claim or even received a “ticket” (the blase term used to describe being handed an extortion note by an armed government worker, usually justified by some trumped-up traffic “offense” that entails the violation of an arbitrary rule that caused no harm) that can be used to portray you as being a “risky” driver.

But what really matters to the mafia is that some other guy just totaled his $50,000 EV. Lots of other such guys, actually. The more of them there are in circulation, the more the rest of us will pay – so that the mafia does not. It’s a kind of rip-tide effect that imposes costs on those who try to save money by obliging them to spend money to cover the costs imposed by those who spend it.

Neat. Sweet. Petite.

And more. The mafia itself has said so. You can expect to pay more “until we get back to historical profit margins,” an Allstate capo recently told the Wall Street Journal.

Italics added.

Leftists love to hurl fascist! at everything – and everyone – Leftists dislike. But they have as much understanding of the term as they do of other words, such as liberal (which once-upon-a-time did not mean someone who is generous with other people’s money).

Insurance – as it exists, as it is enforced – is the very definition of fascism. Mussolini – its 20th century expositor – used the more accurate term corporatism. Which conveys the nature of the thing more directly. In any case, it is the merger of big government and big business – the latter using the power of the former to “get back to historic profit margins.”

A point will come, though, when the cost of these profit margins isn’t merely obnoxious but unpayable.

Will the parasite kill its host?

It is certainly killing driving – by rendering it increasingly unaffordable. And that may be just the point – though it begs the question: How will the mafia continue to extort “historic” profits when  people finally decide, in exasperation and desperation, to stop paying for them?

. . .

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Related posts:

1. Why You’re Paying Too Much For Car Insurance (And What You Can Do About It)
2. The Next Mandate You’ll Be Paying For: Brake Assist
3. Paying for Your New EV . . . Even if You Don’t Own One
4. Paying for Electric Cars… Twice
5. Paying People to Not Buy What Sells