Gambling With Insurance

Let us ponder the concept of insurance.

The way I figure it, humans long ago figured out life isn’t fair. A guy spends a whole season cultivating his crop, and then it gets washed away by a flood just before harvest time. Lightning strikes a thatched roof and a family’s home burns to cinders — but the house across the lane, made of exactly the same stuff, is untouched.

After a few millennia of this kind of thing, somebody came up with an idea for easing the random cruelties of fate. Maybe this person addressed a council of tribal elders, or maybe he went door to door explaining his plan. “We don’t know where lightning will strike next,” he may have said, “but if everybody puts one guilder in this strongbox, we’ll have enough money to build a new house for the one who gets hit. Just think, it could be you! Wanta buy in?”