insurance

• reserves against risk of incapacity in light and life

55:3.64. One per cent was as­signed to the in­sur­ance re­serves against the risk of in­ca­pac­ity for la­bor re­sul­tant from ac­ci­dent, dis­ease, old age, or un­pre­ventable dis­as­ters.

• among primitives › civilization, laws were i. against violent death

68:1.2As­so­ci­a­tion early be­came the price of sur­vival. The lone man was help­less un­less he bore a tribal mark which tes­ti­fied that he be­longed to a group which would cer­tainly avenge any as­sault made upon him. Even in the days of Cain it was fa­tal to go abroad alone with­out some mark of group as­so­ci­a­tion. Civ­i­liza­tion has be­come man’s in­sur­ance against vi­o­lent death, while the pre­mi­ums are paid by sub­mis­sion to so­ci­ety’s nu­mer­ous law de­mands.

• society lessens risk in individuals’ living

68:2.2While the level of in­tel­li­gence has con­tributed con­sid­er­ably to the rate of cul­tural prog­ress, so­ci­ety is es­sen­tially de­signed to lessen the risk el­e­ment in the in­di­vid­ual’s mode of liv­ing, and it has pro­gressed just as fast as it has suc­ceeded in less­en­ing pain and in­creas­ing the plea­sure el­e­ment in life. Thus does the whole so­cial body push on slowly to­ward the goal of des­tiny—ex­tinc­tion or sur­vival—de­pend­ing on whether that goal is self-main­te­nance or self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion. Self-main­te­nance orig­i­nates so­ci­ety, while ex­ces­sive self-grat­i­fi­ca­tion de­stroys civ­i­liza­tion.

• among primitives › industry grew up as i. against famine

69:2.1Prim­i­tive in­dus­try slowly grew up as an in­sur­ance against the ter­rors of famine. Early in his ex­is­tence man be­gan to draw lessons from some of the an­i­mals that, dur­ing a har­vest of plenty, store up food against the days of scarcity.

• among primitives › food storage was i. against famine and disaster

69:5.41. Hunger—as­so­ci­ated with fore­sight. Food sav­ing and preser­va­tion meant power and com­fort for those who pos­sessed suf­fi­cient fore­sight thus to pro­vide for fu­ture needs. Food stor­age was ad­e­quate in­sur­ance against famine and dis­as­ter. And the en­tire body of prim­i­tive mores was re­ally de­signed to help man sub­or­di­nate the pres­ent to the fu­ture.

72:6.1This na­tion is mak­ing a de­ter­mined ef­fort to re­place the self-re­spect-de­stroy­ing type of char­ity by dig­ni­fied gov­ern­ment-in­sur­ance guar­an­tees of se­cu­rity in old age. This na­tion pro­vides ev­ery child an ed­u­ca­tion and ev­ery man a job; there­fore can it suc­cess­fully carry out such an in­sur­ance scheme for the pro­tec­tion of the in­firm and aged.

72:6.2Among this peo­ple all per­sons must re­tire from gain­ful pur­suit at sixty-five un­less they se­cure a per­mit from the state la­bor com­mis­sioner which will en­ti­tle them to re­main at work un­til the age of sev­enty. This age limit does not ap­ply to gov­ern­ment ser­vants or philoso­phers. The phys­i­cally dis­abled or per­ma­nently crip­pled can be placed on the re­tired list at any age by court or­der coun­ter­signed by the pen­sion com­mis­sioner of the re­gional gov­ern­ment.

72:6.3The funds for old-age pen­sions are de­rived from four sources:

72:6.41. One day’s earn­ings each month are req­ui­si­tioned by the fed­eral gov­ern­ment for this pur­pose, and in this coun­try ev­ery­body works.

72:6.52. Be­quests—many wealthy cit­i­zens leave funds for this pur­pose.

72:6.63. The earn­ings of com­pul­sory la­bor in the state mines. Af­ter the con­script work­ers sup­port them­selves and set aside their own re­tire­ment con­tri­bu­tions, all ex­cess prof­its on their la­bor are turned over to this pen­sion fund.

72:6.74. The in­come from nat­u­ral re­sources. All nat­u­ral wealth on the con­ti­nent is held as a so­cial trust by the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, and the in­come there­from is uti­lized for so­cial pur­poses, such as dis­ease pre­ven­tion, ed­u­ca­tion of ge­niuses, and ex­penses of es­pe­cially promis­ing in­di­vid­u­als in the states­man­ship schools. One half of the in­come from nat­u­ral re­sources goes to the old-age pen­sion fund.

72:6.8Al­though state and re­gional ac­tu­ar­ial foun­da­tions sup­ply many forms of pro­tec­tive in­sur­ance, old-age pen­sions are solely ad­min­is­tered by the fed­eral gov­ern­ment through the ten re­gional de­part­ments.

72:6.9These gov­ern­ment funds have long been hon­estly ad­min­is­tered. Next to trea­son and mur­der, the heav­i­est penal­ties meted out by the courts are at­tached to be­trayal of pub­lic trust. So­cial and po­lit­i­cal dis­loy­alty are now looked upon as be­ing the most heinous of all crimes.

• society lessens risk in individuals’ living

81:5.3But cul­tural so­ci­ety is no great and benef­i­cent club of in­her­ited priv­i­lege into which all men are born with free mem­ber­ship and en­tire equal­ity. Rather is it an ex­alted and ever-ad­vanc­ing guild of earth work­ers, ad­mit­ting to its ranks only the no­bil­ity of those toil­ers who strive to make the world a bet­ter place in which their chil­dren and their chil­dren’s chil­dren may live and ad­vance in sub­se­quent ages. And this guild of civ­i­liza­tion ex­acts costly ad­mis­sion fees, im­poses strict and rig­or­ous dis­ci­plines, vis­its heavy penal­ties on all dis­senters and non­con­formists, while it con­fers few per­sonal li­censes or priv­i­leges ex­cept those of en­hanced se­cu­rity against com­mon dan­gers and racial per­ils.

81:5.4So­cial as­so­ci­a­tion is a form of sur­vival in­sur­ance which hu­man be­ings have learned is prof­itable; there­fore are most in­di­vid­u­als will­ing to pay those pre­mi­ums of self-sac­ri­fice and per­sonal-lib­erty cur­tail­ment which so­ci­ety ex­acts from its mem­bers in re­turn for this en­hanced group pro­tec­tion. In short, the pres­ent-day so­cial mech­a­nism is a trial-and-er­ror in­sur­ance plan de­signed to af­ford some de­gree of as­sur­ance and pro­tec­tion against a re­turn to the ter­ri­ble and an­ti­so­cial con­di­tions which char­ac­ter­ized the early ex­pe­ri­ences of the hu­man race.

• among primitives › children were old-age i.

84:7.132. They were old-age in­sur­ance.

• among primitives › religion exacted burdensome premiums of fear, superstition, dread, and priest gifts

86:7.1The sav­age felt the need of in­sur­ance, and he there­fore will­ingly paid his bur­den­some pre­mi­ums of fear, su­per­sti­tion, dread, and priest gifts to­ward his pol­icy of magic in­sur­ance against ill luck. Prim­i­tive re­li­gion was sim­ply the pay­ment of pre­mi­ums on in­sur­ance against the per­ils of the forests; civ­i­lized man pays ma­te­rial pre­mi­ums against the ac­ci­dents of in­dus­try and the ex­i­gen­cies of mod­ern modes of liv­ing.

86:7.2Mod­ern so­ci­ety is re­mov­ing the busi­ness of in­sur­ance from the realm of priests and re­li­gion, plac­ing it in the do­main of eco­nomics. Re­li­gion is con­cern­ing it­self in­creas­ingly with the in­sur­ance of life be­yond the grave. Mod­ern men, at least those who think, no longer pay waste­ful pre­mi­ums to con­trol luck. Re­li­gion is slowly as­cend­ing to higher philo­sophic lev­els in con­trast with its for­mer func­tion as a scheme of in­sur­ance against bad luck.

• among primitives › ghost cult was i. against disaster

87:0.1The ghost cult evolved as an off­set to the haz­ards of bad luck; its prim­i­tive re­li­gious ob­ser­vances were the out­growth of anx­i­ety about bad luck and of the in­or­di­nate fear of the dead. None of these early re­li­gions had much to do with the rec­og­ni­tion of De­ity or with rev­er­ence for the super­hu­man; their rites were mostly neg­a­tive, de­signed to avoid, ex­pel, or co­erce ghosts. The ghost cult was noth­ing more nor less than in­sur­ance against dis­as­ter; it had noth­ing to do with in­vest­ment for higher and fu­ture re­turns.

• wise investment of earnings against future adversity

163:2.11Je­sus never taught that it was wrong to have wealth. He re­quired only the twelve and the sev­enty to ded­i­cate all of their worldly pos­ses­sions to the com­mon cause. Even then, he pro­vided for the prof­itable liq­ui­da­tion of their prop­erty, as in the case of the Apos­tle Mat­thew. Je­sus many times ad­vised his well-to-do dis­ci­ples as he taught the rich man of Rome. The Mas­ter re­garded the wise in­vest­ment of ex­cess earn­ings as a le­git­i­mate form of in­sur­ance against fu­ture and un­avoid­able ad­ver­sity. When the apos­tolic trea­sury was over­flow­ing, Ju­das put funds on de­posit to be used sub­se­quently when they might suf­fer greatly from a diminu­tion of in­come. This Ju­das did af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with An­drew. Je­sus never per­son­ally had any­thing to do with the apos­tolic fi­nances ex­cept in the dis­burse­ment of alms. But there was one eco­nomic abuse which he many times con­demned, and that was the un­fair ex­ploita­tion of the weak, un­learned, and less for­tu­nate of men by their strong, keen, and more in­tel­li­gent fel­lows. Je­sus de­clared that such in­hu­man treat­ment of men, women, and chil­dren was in­com­pat­i­ble with the ide­als of the broth­er­hood of the king­dom of heaven.