Hi,
<br>My $.02 For what it's worth.
<br>I like Mark's plan; I fear a true insurance scheme. Here's why:
<br>"insurance" is about risk management - - where we all pay a little bit so if a surprise injury or "loss" happens to one or a few of us, it's covered by the insurance premiums we've all payed to the company. Note, we all, combined together, pay *more* than the insurance company pays out for covered expenses. We pay for the poor guy who suffers an accident, we pay for all the costs of managing the insurance company's efforts on our behalf, we pay for the insurance company's profit, overhead, ineficiencies etc.
<br>More important, we pay for something else - - Mark hinted at it - when people expect to be 'covered' they take correspondingly less care - - not all of us but enough of us to add to the bill we all pay together. Add in 'fraud' and abuse and that's quite a bill, but we're not done yet. When there's 'insurance money" around, people can afford to get into the market - - that's the whole purpose, right? So demand goes up - - what happens to price then?
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<br>More important than all of the above is this: insurance is for risk management - - unexpected events which surprise individuals, but which can be predicted in large groups. The whole group pays for the losses of a few. BUT SAIL WEAR ISN"T A SURPRISE! It's a predictable function of use and care, affecting the whole group. So the entire group of insured people would BY DEFINITION suffer loss, we'd EACH have to pay a premium that would BY NECESSITY be larger than our own expected cost to repair/replace our sails. Worse, the careless few would, as MM pointed out, be compensated by the frugal. OUCH!!!
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<br>Mark's plan, by comparison, is more a trade-in, easing a sailor's access to new or newer sails, by getting his old ones in the hands of sailors with progressively lower expectations. Let's you only pay for the part of the sail's life you use! So if you're a racer for whom perfection is important, you're gonna pay for the first year or less of a sail's life, and, sorry to say, probably the less demanding won't pay as much for the next 3 yrs as some racers will pay for the first year, meaining racers with a champagne taste in sails won't slake their Mylar thirst on a beer budget no matter how you slice it. But MM's plan eases access for all, so hey it sounds good for the sport. *SIGH* Another sport made more expensive by advertising. Eventualy, my fear is that only the proven successful racers will be able to get sponsorship enough to pay for top-end stuff, which will raise the bar high enough to exclude large numbers of 'gifted amateurs' from meaningfull, head-to-head competition, outside of the "Factory products only" classes.
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<br>Sounds like the exciting world of monoslug racing! Exceptions may apply. Your mileage may vary. Actual California Highway mileage will surely suck, since you'll be stuck in traffic anyway. Not to be taken internally. Always drink responsibly. Recent research by professor G. Carlin of the sanity institute has shown that saliva causes stomach cancer, but only when swallowed in small quantities over a period of years.
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<br>Regards,
<br>Ed<br><br>(To Email me, take the Ihatespam. out of the domain in my displayed email.