Not much to report on the job search front. At last count, I've put out 20 or 21 job applications and received 5 formal rejections. In addition, I am working with several recruiters and a couple of people in my extended business associate network. The brightest possibilities are a recruiter with an AVP position in Dallas and a business associate with a yet to be defined possibility in Fort Worth. The AVP position is with a company where I still know several people including one of the VPs. It's a good company, and I can see myself being happy in the role. I am reportedly one of three candidates currently under consideration, but it is a nationwide search and there is no indication of when they will be moving to interview stage.
The other deal, despite being somewhat nebulous and undefined at the moment, has some advantages as well. Hopefully, one or more dominoes will start falling soon.
In other news, The Queen and I were forced to file third degree felony theft charges against someone yesterday for the first time in our lives. I can't go into details yet, but the short of it is that we were the victims of a con artist. There are aspects of the situation that would make your blood boil were I to share. "Vengeance is mine sayeth the Lord"....but, let's just say I'd be happy to arrange a meeting.
Lots of lessons learned and relearned out of this experience. In this digital age, the information is out there. You just have to know where to look, how to look and take the time to be thorough. Don't do business with anyone you haven't thoroughly vetted. Big deals (if you can't afford to lose, it's a big deal) should include a background check especially if things don't pass the smell test.
As I told The Queen last night, it's easy to spot evil when it's walking down the street shooting people left and right. It's real hard to spot it when it sits down, siddles up next to you and smiles.
Abraham Lincoln said it even better: "You can fool all of the people some of the time...." This was our time.
We are resigned to the fact that we will likely never see our property again or the money that was promised (if we do, that's a bonus). Our goal is to simply insure that the thief can't do this again to anyone else. There are two other felony theft cases pending against him which we really wish we had found before we entered into an agreement with him (we would have found it if we had searched for Stephen instead of Steve). He's currently under a deferred adjudication order in another county for theft charges there. He's also being sued in civil court by someone else for circumstances nearly identical to ours (I'm in contact with that attorney trying to convince them to file criminal charges as well).
If you are in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and want to know who to avoid, send me an email. I'll be happy to share the name, court case references, etc.
Showing posts with label Middlemen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Middlemen. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 3, 2014
Thursday, August 7, 2014
Insider's Guide for Outsiders: Evil Insurance Companies
A co-worker forwarded the link to this news article. For those who can't be bothered to click a link, here's the short version:
76 year old man gets into an argument with his insurance agent over why his auto insurance was canceled. Man gets physically thrown out of agent's office. Man sues agent. Man wins judgment. Agent's representatives attempt to partially satisfy the judgment with 17 buckets of loose coins.
As my current boss commented, there's got to be more to this story.
Now, I will admit that I have been sorely tempted to do something like this more than once in my insurance career. The one thing stopping me has been that the hassle of getting that much coinage together and delivering same far outweighed any pleasure I might have received at making a difficult attorney's life more difficult. I'm sure others in my profession will agree.
I bring this up because of a (probable spam) comment I received on my relatively recent post on litigation. The commenter stated: "Great information! Insurance companies don't like to pay claims and some inspectors or adjusters are invented to deny claims. With this said, if you have a legitimate claim, you should expect to be treated fairly and expect the insurance company to honor the claim."
My response to the commenter was: "I'm not sure what you mean by "some inspectors or adjusters are invented to deny claims", but I will say that claims people tend to be a jaded and suspicious lot by nature (it comes from too many dealings with sleazy lawyers and angry claimants). Insurance companies are in business to make money like every other business. As such, saying they don't like to pay claims is almost akin to saying the Pope is Catholic. Having said that, some companies have a well deserved reputation for being difficult and reluctant to pay claims while others are less difficult. Perhaps my next articles in the series will be on insurance companies and adjusters."
I thought I would take a moment and give a brief overview of the insurance business from the company perspective.
First, let's get one thing perfectly clear from the start: with very few exceptions, insurance companies are in business to make money. Any insurance company failing to make money for very long does not tend to stay in business for very long.
The primary vehicle for measuring the profitability of an insurance company is the loss ratio. In its purest form, the loss ratio is the total of all written premium collected divided by claims paid including expenses. There are two types of expenses: allocated loss adjustment expenses (A.L.A.E. for short though I've heard some people pronounce it as a word: "A-lay") and unallocated loss adjustment expenses (ULAE). ALAE is any expense that can be allocated to a specific claim file. The legal bill that pays for the attorney defending a specific lawsuit is ALAE as is private investigator, inspector, expert witness and other expenses when they arise out of a specific claim investigation. Adjuster salaries, office rent, electricity, phones, etc. are ULAE.
A loss ratio of 1.0 is break even. Loss ratios of greater than 1.0 mean a company is hemmorrhaging money, and loss ratios of less than 1.0 mean that the company should be profitable. It is theoretically possible for a company to have a 1.1 loss ratio and still turn a profit, but that feat requires successful return on investment of premium dollars which I may or may not discuss further. In my experience, it is rare to see a reported loss ratio below 0.50. The most profitable companies typically run a loss ratio in the .55 to .75 range. The majority of okay but financially profitable companies run ratios between .75 and .95. Companies having issues typically run loss ratios very close to or above 1.0. A recent example would be Fireman's Fund's dismal performance the last two years running with combined ratios (a combined ratio is the pure loss ratio including investment performance) of 1.294 (2012) and 1.036 (2013).
That's all so very nice and esoteric, but what does it mean?
To be honest, lots of things and nothing at all.
Underwriter and actuaries control one half of the equation (written premium) while the claims department controls most of the other half (losses paid and ALAE). Premium rates are set based on a variety of factors that are well beyond my limited math education and experience. Actuaries perform all sorts of calculations and review statistics (and goat entrails I'm sure) and analyze navels until they come up with a set of rates they think represents the rates that a given category of risk should pay. That's why teenage boys pay the highest rates for car insurance. Underwriters then stick their thumb in that pie and develop a set of underwriting guidelines that define the "appetite" for risk that the company wants to pursue. For instance, the last company I worked for prior to the one I am with now had a solid personal lines (auto and homeowner's insurance) and "middle market" appetite. They were content to pursue small to medium sized companies in a variety of industries, but they would steer away from anything too big or unique. Unique in the underwriting world = risky and hard to price.
Another driver of insurance premium rates is policyholder retention (or whatever the term de jour is). Basically, there is a finite number of people and/or companies out there. Most of them already have policies which forces the insurance industry to compete on price and service. Service is almost exclusively (but not completely) owned by the claims department. Underwriting sells a promise. Claims delivers on the promise. That leaves price. A company losing market share might choose to lower rates or increase its underwriting appetite or both in order to bring in more premium dollars, at the risk of increasing the loss ratio. A company seeing its loss ratio rise might choose to do the opposite, at the risk of losing market share. It's a very delicate balancing act.
That brings us to the loss/claims side of the equation. As mentioned a moment ago, service belongs to claims. There is a distinction here that needs to be mentioned (one I've mentioned before). When you see an ad for an insurance company on TV talking about fast claims service, they are talking about first party claims. A first party claim is one in which you the policyholder are making a claim for benefits to be paid to you under your policy. An example would be making a comprehensive or collision claim on your auto policy. A liability claim where someone else makes a claim on your policy for benefits to be paid to them arising from an accident caused by your negligence is a third party claim.
What difference does it make? Most states, if not all states, have some form of statutory or regulatory guidelines for how first party claims can/should be handled under pain of fine or penalty for failure to comply. As a result, the claims process for first party claims is pretty streamlined and efficient. Some companies still have field adjusters who will come to you; and, in some cases, they will even cut a check for the damages on the spot. Additionally, there is usually no requirement on a first party claim to prove legal liability as is required by the insuring agreement on a liability policy since a first party claim arises from contractual language as opposed to tort negligence theory. Prove that the contract was in effect and that the damages incurred are covered by said contract (which is usually self evident), and the check is in the mail.
Most of the time, when someone is griping about an insurance company, they are griping about the handling of a third party claim. As mentioned in a prior post, the time frames on a third party liability claim can go on for years. Most people anymore lose their patience and tempers after a few seconds. So, you can imagine how much fun third party claimants are to deal with when you deny their claims.
Now, as for the prevailing thought that adjusters look for reasons to deny a claim or that insurance companies don't like to pay claims, the short answer is that it depends.
Most individual insurance adjusters are hard working people trying to earn a living and do a good job. They have neither the authority nor do they receive the level of reward necessary to incentivise denying valid claims for no reason. The average adjuster, in my experience, is handling between 75 and 175 claims at any given time depending on the complexity of the mix. Most adjusters have very limited personal authority requiring management approval for settlements/reserves above certain amounts, coverage issues, etc. Most adjusters also know that denying a claim does not mean it goes away. In this litigious society, they know that it just means a lawsuit will be coming in soon and that file will be around a lot longer. If anything, there is a human nature tendency to find ways to PAY claims because settled files very rarely reopen, and adjusters have better things to do with their time than reopen files. As such, a permanently closed file is a happy file. Yes, there are individual adjusters that are jerks who are difficult to deal with. Pick any industry...you will find your share of jerks there too. The bottom line is that adjusters are people too subject to the same pressures and feelings as anyone else.
At the company level, there is not an insurance company in business today that has an official "smoking gun" document from senior management that says "look for ways to deny claims" or something to that effect. No one I am aware of is that stupid given the lengths to which bad faith lawyers will go to find such information. Now, will middle management do or say something stupid like that? Yes. I had an assistant VP of claims at a large, international insurance company tell me personally "I don't care if it's right. I just want it done." I explained to him that I had no intention of doing what he told me as I had no intention of explaining why such an unethical thing was done when my deposition would be taken in the inevitable bad faith lawsuit. His boss agreed with me after the fact. I still left that company pretty quickly thereafter though.
Will a company institute policies or procedures that make the claims process more difficult for everyone involved (adjuster and claimant alike)? Yep. Been there. Done that. Google "allstate colossus" for one such example. I've never worked for Allstate, but I did work for one company that also used Colossus for certain types of claims. I can attest that it is just like every other computer program in existence: garbage in, garbage out.
One consequence of the whole loss ratio analysis discussed above is the cyclical nature of claims settlements. When the loss ratio is high, the claims department gets pressure to "lower the loss ratio" or "reduce expenses". This can take the form of taking more cases in litigation to trial (which is counter intuitive since it involves incurring more expense) or settling more cases (which is also counter intuitive for obvious reasons). Taking more cases to trial is problematic for a variety of reasons not the least of which is the almost Byzantine nature of our legal process. Most adjusters hate to lose cases at trial. As such, they tend to recommend very few cases for trial and then only those that have legitimate, unresolvable disputes or those that they believe are "slam dunk" cases. I have sat in more than a few roundtables where I've told upper management in no uncertain terms that trying a particular case would be an epic mistake. Usually, they are smart enough to listen and the case eventually settles.
It should be noted that insurance companies don't just take premium dollars and dump them in an interest bearing checking account hoping everything balances at the end of the month. There is a whole side of the business controlled by accounting and the CFO that takes the money, invests it and hopefully scores a boatload of return on investment earnings in the process. Sometimes, that can blow up in their faces. AIG most notably went to the brink of oblivion just after the housing bubble burst in 2008 through over reliance on mortgage backed derivative investments. Hartford got splashed by that same bubble bursting for the same reasons but fared much better through a more diverse investment portfolio.
This is a pretty big topic that I am only scratching the surface of here, but I need to get back to work. If you are really that interested, you can dig into the mechanics of reserving and prior year development charges to present earnings, etc. That's homework for you CPA types.
In closing, your attorney is no better or worse a person than the adjuster for the insurance company. Treat them with the Golden Rule, and things will usually work out the way they are supposed to.
76 year old man gets into an argument with his insurance agent over why his auto insurance was canceled. Man gets physically thrown out of agent's office. Man sues agent. Man wins judgment. Agent's representatives attempt to partially satisfy the judgment with 17 buckets of loose coins.
As my current boss commented, there's got to be more to this story.
Now, I will admit that I have been sorely tempted to do something like this more than once in my insurance career. The one thing stopping me has been that the hassle of getting that much coinage together and delivering same far outweighed any pleasure I might have received at making a difficult attorney's life more difficult. I'm sure others in my profession will agree.
I bring this up because of a (probable spam) comment I received on my relatively recent post on litigation. The commenter stated: "Great information! Insurance companies don't like to pay claims and some inspectors or adjusters are invented to deny claims. With this said, if you have a legitimate claim, you should expect to be treated fairly and expect the insurance company to honor the claim."
My response to the commenter was: "I'm not sure what you mean by "some inspectors or adjusters are invented to deny claims", but I will say that claims people tend to be a jaded and suspicious lot by nature (it comes from too many dealings with sleazy lawyers and angry claimants). Insurance companies are in business to make money like every other business. As such, saying they don't like to pay claims is almost akin to saying the Pope is Catholic. Having said that, some companies have a well deserved reputation for being difficult and reluctant to pay claims while others are less difficult. Perhaps my next articles in the series will be on insurance companies and adjusters."
I thought I would take a moment and give a brief overview of the insurance business from the company perspective.
First, let's get one thing perfectly clear from the start: with very few exceptions, insurance companies are in business to make money. Any insurance company failing to make money for very long does not tend to stay in business for very long.
The primary vehicle for measuring the profitability of an insurance company is the loss ratio. In its purest form, the loss ratio is the total of all written premium collected divided by claims paid including expenses. There are two types of expenses: allocated loss adjustment expenses (A.L.A.E. for short though I've heard some people pronounce it as a word: "A-lay") and unallocated loss adjustment expenses (ULAE). ALAE is any expense that can be allocated to a specific claim file. The legal bill that pays for the attorney defending a specific lawsuit is ALAE as is private investigator, inspector, expert witness and other expenses when they arise out of a specific claim investigation. Adjuster salaries, office rent, electricity, phones, etc. are ULAE.
A loss ratio of 1.0 is break even. Loss ratios of greater than 1.0 mean a company is hemmorrhaging money, and loss ratios of less than 1.0 mean that the company should be profitable. It is theoretically possible for a company to have a 1.1 loss ratio and still turn a profit, but that feat requires successful return on investment of premium dollars which I may or may not discuss further. In my experience, it is rare to see a reported loss ratio below 0.50. The most profitable companies typically run a loss ratio in the .55 to .75 range. The majority of okay but financially profitable companies run ratios between .75 and .95. Companies having issues typically run loss ratios very close to or above 1.0. A recent example would be Fireman's Fund's dismal performance the last two years running with combined ratios (a combined ratio is the pure loss ratio including investment performance) of 1.294 (2012) and 1.036 (2013).
That's all so very nice and esoteric, but what does it mean?
To be honest, lots of things and nothing at all.
Underwriter and actuaries control one half of the equation (written premium) while the claims department controls most of the other half (losses paid and ALAE). Premium rates are set based on a variety of factors that are well beyond my limited math education and experience. Actuaries perform all sorts of calculations and review statistics (and goat entrails I'm sure) and analyze navels until they come up with a set of rates they think represents the rates that a given category of risk should pay. That's why teenage boys pay the highest rates for car insurance. Underwriters then stick their thumb in that pie and develop a set of underwriting guidelines that define the "appetite" for risk that the company wants to pursue. For instance, the last company I worked for prior to the one I am with now had a solid personal lines (auto and homeowner's insurance) and "middle market" appetite. They were content to pursue small to medium sized companies in a variety of industries, but they would steer away from anything too big or unique. Unique in the underwriting world = risky and hard to price.
Another driver of insurance premium rates is policyholder retention (or whatever the term de jour is). Basically, there is a finite number of people and/or companies out there. Most of them already have policies which forces the insurance industry to compete on price and service. Service is almost exclusively (but not completely) owned by the claims department. Underwriting sells a promise. Claims delivers on the promise. That leaves price. A company losing market share might choose to lower rates or increase its underwriting appetite or both in order to bring in more premium dollars, at the risk of increasing the loss ratio. A company seeing its loss ratio rise might choose to do the opposite, at the risk of losing market share. It's a very delicate balancing act.
That brings us to the loss/claims side of the equation. As mentioned a moment ago, service belongs to claims. There is a distinction here that needs to be mentioned (one I've mentioned before). When you see an ad for an insurance company on TV talking about fast claims service, they are talking about first party claims. A first party claim is one in which you the policyholder are making a claim for benefits to be paid to you under your policy. An example would be making a comprehensive or collision claim on your auto policy. A liability claim where someone else makes a claim on your policy for benefits to be paid to them arising from an accident caused by your negligence is a third party claim.
What difference does it make? Most states, if not all states, have some form of statutory or regulatory guidelines for how first party claims can/should be handled under pain of fine or penalty for failure to comply. As a result, the claims process for first party claims is pretty streamlined and efficient. Some companies still have field adjusters who will come to you; and, in some cases, they will even cut a check for the damages on the spot. Additionally, there is usually no requirement on a first party claim to prove legal liability as is required by the insuring agreement on a liability policy since a first party claim arises from contractual language as opposed to tort negligence theory. Prove that the contract was in effect and that the damages incurred are covered by said contract (which is usually self evident), and the check is in the mail.
Most of the time, when someone is griping about an insurance company, they are griping about the handling of a third party claim. As mentioned in a prior post, the time frames on a third party liability claim can go on for years. Most people anymore lose their patience and tempers after a few seconds. So, you can imagine how much fun third party claimants are to deal with when you deny their claims.
Now, as for the prevailing thought that adjusters look for reasons to deny a claim or that insurance companies don't like to pay claims, the short answer is that it depends.
Most individual insurance adjusters are hard working people trying to earn a living and do a good job. They have neither the authority nor do they receive the level of reward necessary to incentivise denying valid claims for no reason. The average adjuster, in my experience, is handling between 75 and 175 claims at any given time depending on the complexity of the mix. Most adjusters have very limited personal authority requiring management approval for settlements/reserves above certain amounts, coverage issues, etc. Most adjusters also know that denying a claim does not mean it goes away. In this litigious society, they know that it just means a lawsuit will be coming in soon and that file will be around a lot longer. If anything, there is a human nature tendency to find ways to PAY claims because settled files very rarely reopen, and adjusters have better things to do with their time than reopen files. As such, a permanently closed file is a happy file. Yes, there are individual adjusters that are jerks who are difficult to deal with. Pick any industry...you will find your share of jerks there too. The bottom line is that adjusters are people too subject to the same pressures and feelings as anyone else.
At the company level, there is not an insurance company in business today that has an official "smoking gun" document from senior management that says "look for ways to deny claims" or something to that effect. No one I am aware of is that stupid given the lengths to which bad faith lawyers will go to find such information. Now, will middle management do or say something stupid like that? Yes. I had an assistant VP of claims at a large, international insurance company tell me personally "I don't care if it's right. I just want it done." I explained to him that I had no intention of doing what he told me as I had no intention of explaining why such an unethical thing was done when my deposition would be taken in the inevitable bad faith lawsuit. His boss agreed with me after the fact. I still left that company pretty quickly thereafter though.
Will a company institute policies or procedures that make the claims process more difficult for everyone involved (adjuster and claimant alike)? Yep. Been there. Done that. Google "allstate colossus" for one such example. I've never worked for Allstate, but I did work for one company that also used Colossus for certain types of claims. I can attest that it is just like every other computer program in existence: garbage in, garbage out.
One consequence of the whole loss ratio analysis discussed above is the cyclical nature of claims settlements. When the loss ratio is high, the claims department gets pressure to "lower the loss ratio" or "reduce expenses". This can take the form of taking more cases in litigation to trial (which is counter intuitive since it involves incurring more expense) or settling more cases (which is also counter intuitive for obvious reasons). Taking more cases to trial is problematic for a variety of reasons not the least of which is the almost Byzantine nature of our legal process. Most adjusters hate to lose cases at trial. As such, they tend to recommend very few cases for trial and then only those that have legitimate, unresolvable disputes or those that they believe are "slam dunk" cases. I have sat in more than a few roundtables where I've told upper management in no uncertain terms that trying a particular case would be an epic mistake. Usually, they are smart enough to listen and the case eventually settles.
It should be noted that insurance companies don't just take premium dollars and dump them in an interest bearing checking account hoping everything balances at the end of the month. There is a whole side of the business controlled by accounting and the CFO that takes the money, invests it and hopefully scores a boatload of return on investment earnings in the process. Sometimes, that can blow up in their faces. AIG most notably went to the brink of oblivion just after the housing bubble burst in 2008 through over reliance on mortgage backed derivative investments. Hartford got splashed by that same bubble bursting for the same reasons but fared much better through a more diverse investment portfolio.
This is a pretty big topic that I am only scratching the surface of here, but I need to get back to work. If you are really that interested, you can dig into the mechanics of reserving and prior year development charges to present earnings, etc. That's homework for you CPA types.
In closing, your attorney is no better or worse a person than the adjuster for the insurance company. Treat them with the Golden Rule, and things will usually work out the way they are supposed to.
Thursday, October 6, 2011
We're Not From The Government, But We Are Here To Help
This is one of my rare link back posts of something I think everyone needs to read. There's nothing I can add other than Reagan would be proud. This is the way it ought to be handled everywhere. Go. Read. Now.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
As If I Didn't Have Enough To Worry About...
It's the end of week 5, no change in status with respect to the law school application whatsoever, but there is a new wrinkle in last week's case of mistaken identity.
Apparently, I am now a fugitive from justice. You see, today, I received an undated letter from the Houston Police Department's Hit and Run Detail. The letter was postmarked on April 26, 2011, and requests, nay - COMMANDS, that I appear in Houston on Monday, May 2. That would be next Monday for the calendarly challenged among us.
The best bit is this:
Failure to comply with this notice may cause you future inconvenience from this office. Your vehicle may be listed as WANTED on the HPD computer, and if stopped, the driver in some cases may be arrested. [emphasis theirs]
It's times like these that I really wish I was smart enough to figure out how to cut and paste or insert a .pdf document into blogger for proof because, really, I just can't make this stuff up. I especially like the "future inconvenience" part. Like forcing someone whose registered address is four hours away to come to Houston at 8:00 in the morning isn't inconvenience enough. On the other hand, at the rate I drive anymore it could be decades before I get future inconvenience.
So, anyway, in an effort to avoid appearing on the most wanted list for Harris County or something equally stupid, I've sent off a fax to the investigating officer. The same officer who keeps office hours from 6:00 AM to 2:00 PM. I tried calling him first, but the mail man didn't get here until just after 3:00 PM today. So sorry. Try again tomorrow.
I thought I exhibited tremendous restraint when I sent the officer the following:
Please be advised that I received your undated letter regarding the subject case number today and attempted to call; however, I was informed you had already left for the day. Your letter was post marked April 26, 2011. The letter, copy following, alleges that I or my vehicle was involved in a traffic accident on April 20, 2011 in the 6800 block of Katy Freeway. The letter also demands that I appear in the offices of the Houston Police Department on Monday, May 2 at 8:00 AM.
First, I am unable to appear in Houston on Monday, May 2 at 8:00 AM as I live four hours away, and one business day does not give me sufficient time to make the necessary arrangements to take off work and drive to Houston and back.
Second, and more importantly, neither I nor my vehicle were even in Houston on April 20, 2011 much less involved in an accident. My vehicle is a white, 2000 Nissan Maxima with license plate number ###@G@. On April 21, 2011, I spoke with [the nice adjuster] at [decent company] Insurance (phone number 800-Car-Dent ext. Claim / claim number #########) who is the adjuster for the insurance company of one of the other driver's involved. Ms. [nice adjuster] confirmed that her driver had inadvertently written down the incorrect license plate number and the correct number should be ###@C@. It is my understanding that Ms. [nice adjuster] or someone from [decent company] will be sending a letter to the Houston Police Department confirming this information.
So, please go back and reread my advice on what to do in an accident. You might just save someone else, namely ME, some hassle.
Thank you for your consideration.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Why Do We Need Middlemen?
The Queen of All Things in the Realm of Domestic Tranquility and I are huge science fiction fans. We’re not huge fans in the “dress up as Klingons or Hans Solo/Princess Leia and go to conventions where other weirdoes gather” vein, but huge fans none the less. There are limits to how far one should go in your efforts to be a nerd. We draw the line at including favorite lines from movies and TV shows in our daily conversations. Actually, I swipe a foot through that line in the sand once in a while and actually read the books upon which our favorite movies and TV shows are based. Unfortunately, I’m a bit of a purist when it comes to book to screen conversions. I get really annoyed when Hollywood trashes a perfectly good story in favor of some sort of “artistic vision” that a director had in a moment of weakness, egomaniacal pretentiousness or alcoholic stupor. I still can’t watch Starship Troopers without cringing. Don’t get me started. Robert Heinlein must be spinning in his grave.
(Step away from the soapbox. It’ll be okay. You’ll always have the book. I promise.)
One thing I have discovered in my forays across the line in the sand is that I am really fascinated with the social insight of science fiction. I am also amazed by the fact that literary critics and English professors seem to be only recently catching on to this. I mean really. Good writing is like any other art form that stands the test of time. Art imitates life; and, sometimes, life imitates art. Can someone please explain to me why the works of Isaac Asimov or Robert Heinlein are any less relevant as social commentary than the works of Henry David Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson? I challenge you to pick up any science fiction novel, take a look at the copyright date and then read the book. Odds are good that understanding the times in which it was written will reveal a wealth of social context and commentary in the book. For instance, Joe Haldeman’s Forever War makes a lot more sense when you understand that it was written in the middle of the sexual revolution and the Vietnam War. Ditto for Heinlein’s Starship Troopers written in the era of McCarthyism, the Korean War, etc.
One of my favorite sci-fi TV shows was a little, short lived thing called Firefly. I believe it ran as a summer replacement series on Fox a few years ago. I enjoyed the show immensely, and was very disappointed that it didn't get a longer run. Fortunately, they were able to do a feature length movie called Serenity to wrap up some of the loose ends. In one of the episodes, there is a little exchange between characters about why they were going through middlemen to sell stolen goods instead of selling the items themselves to maximize profit. One of the characters replied with a line something along the lines of: "One third of the universe is middlemen, and they don't take too kindly to being cut out of the middle."
When you start thinking about it, one third of the population really is a middleman. You buy your cars from a dealership instead of direct from the manufacturer. You buy your houses through an agent instead of directly from the seller or builder. You get your groceries from a store instead of direct from the farmer. You get insured through an agent or a broker (although some companies have started direct writing programs).
What started me thinking about this was a discussion I had with a mediator not too long ago. For those that aren’t familiar with the tragic comedy that is the litigation world, a mediator is a (supposedly) impartial third party (Hey, look! A middleman.) who aids opposing parties in a lawsuit in resolving their case. The Texas Legislature calls it “Alternative Dispute Resolution”. Mediators are usually former attorneys who got sick and tired of the rat race that is personal injury litigation and decided to become intermediaries for others still stuck in the rat race.
Anyway, back to our story. I have spent the last 18 years working in the insurance industry the last 14 of which I’ve spent as a claims adjuster handling complex, high exposure and litigated injury claims. So, I go to mediation at least a couple of times a month. Sometimes I go a couple of times a week. On this particular occasion, I was at a mediation trying to settle a case as a favor to a co-worker when this mediator was asking me why people in the claims business (and me in particular), needed mediators (and her in particular) in the first place.
First, I found it interesting that a middleman would ask one of their customers why they needed a middleman. To me, that’s sort of like a grocery store manager asking their customers why they don’t milk their own cows or brew their own beer. After some thought and setting aside my natural tendency to issue snarky replies, I answered that I thought it was because we have developed a culture of distrust. Nobody seems to be able to trust anyone anymore. Given all the scandals reported in the news, it’s not surprising. This minister is going to be “called home to Jesus unless you send me all your money.” That politician got caught with $90,000 in cold hard cash in their freezer. Some Nigerian wants to send me millions of dollars and all he needs is the routing numbers for my bank account and a small earnest fee to show my good faith. In small bills, of course.
Take buying a house for instance. My great grandfather bought a house in Austin, TX back in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s with nothing more formal than a handshake. A sweaty palmed handshake I’m sure, but a handshake none the less. I’m not even sure they checked to see if the fingers of his other hand were crossed. Compare that with the inch and a half worth of paperwork involved when I refinanced my house a year ago. The Queen and I had to sign a piece of paper affirming that our signatures confirmed that we were the people our identification verification forms said we were not to mention the form that we had to sign swearing under oath that we were not members of a terrorist organization or that the home would be used for nefarious purposes. Apparently, you can lie about your income and the fact you actually do have a job that earns enough income to pay for this tremendously expensive asset that you cannot afford, but they are going to make certain that you’ve certified on pain of death that you are who your driver’s license says you are. Next time I buy a house, I may just sign all the documents “P.T. Barnum” to see if anyone notices.
Seriously, though, does anyone else see the absurdity of what we’ve come to as a society? We’ve gotten to the point where we don’t even trust ourselves anymore much less our friends, family and neighbors. So, what do we do? We go get middlemen. We abdicate our own common sense, experience and personal responsibility to someone else do in the hope that they will do what’s right for us. For a nominal fee. In small bills, of course.
(Step away from the soapbox. It’ll be okay. You’ll always have the book. I promise.)
One thing I have discovered in my forays across the line in the sand is that I am really fascinated with the social insight of science fiction. I am also amazed by the fact that literary critics and English professors seem to be only recently catching on to this. I mean really. Good writing is like any other art form that stands the test of time. Art imitates life; and, sometimes, life imitates art. Can someone please explain to me why the works of Isaac Asimov or Robert Heinlein are any less relevant as social commentary than the works of Henry David Thoreau or Ralph Waldo Emerson? I challenge you to pick up any science fiction novel, take a look at the copyright date and then read the book. Odds are good that understanding the times in which it was written will reveal a wealth of social context and commentary in the book. For instance, Joe Haldeman’s Forever War makes a lot more sense when you understand that it was written in the middle of the sexual revolution and the Vietnam War. Ditto for Heinlein’s Starship Troopers written in the era of McCarthyism, the Korean War, etc.
One of my favorite sci-fi TV shows was a little, short lived thing called Firefly. I believe it ran as a summer replacement series on Fox a few years ago. I enjoyed the show immensely, and was very disappointed that it didn't get a longer run. Fortunately, they were able to do a feature length movie called Serenity to wrap up some of the loose ends. In one of the episodes, there is a little exchange between characters about why they were going through middlemen to sell stolen goods instead of selling the items themselves to maximize profit. One of the characters replied with a line something along the lines of: "One third of the universe is middlemen, and they don't take too kindly to being cut out of the middle."
When you start thinking about it, one third of the population really is a middleman. You buy your cars from a dealership instead of direct from the manufacturer. You buy your houses through an agent instead of directly from the seller or builder. You get your groceries from a store instead of direct from the farmer. You get insured through an agent or a broker (although some companies have started direct writing programs).
What started me thinking about this was a discussion I had with a mediator not too long ago. For those that aren’t familiar with the tragic comedy that is the litigation world, a mediator is a (supposedly) impartial third party (Hey, look! A middleman.) who aids opposing parties in a lawsuit in resolving their case. The Texas Legislature calls it “Alternative Dispute Resolution”. Mediators are usually former attorneys who got sick and tired of the rat race that is personal injury litigation and decided to become intermediaries for others still stuck in the rat race.
Anyway, back to our story. I have spent the last 18 years working in the insurance industry the last 14 of which I’ve spent as a claims adjuster handling complex, high exposure and litigated injury claims. So, I go to mediation at least a couple of times a month. Sometimes I go a couple of times a week. On this particular occasion, I was at a mediation trying to settle a case as a favor to a co-worker when this mediator was asking me why people in the claims business (and me in particular), needed mediators (and her in particular) in the first place.
First, I found it interesting that a middleman would ask one of their customers why they needed a middleman. To me, that’s sort of like a grocery store manager asking their customers why they don’t milk their own cows or brew their own beer. After some thought and setting aside my natural tendency to issue snarky replies, I answered that I thought it was because we have developed a culture of distrust. Nobody seems to be able to trust anyone anymore. Given all the scandals reported in the news, it’s not surprising. This minister is going to be “called home to Jesus unless you send me all your money.” That politician got caught with $90,000 in cold hard cash in their freezer. Some Nigerian wants to send me millions of dollars and all he needs is the routing numbers for my bank account and a small earnest fee to show my good faith. In small bills, of course.
Take buying a house for instance. My great grandfather bought a house in Austin, TX back in the late 1960’s or early 1970’s with nothing more formal than a handshake. A sweaty palmed handshake I’m sure, but a handshake none the less. I’m not even sure they checked to see if the fingers of his other hand were crossed. Compare that with the inch and a half worth of paperwork involved when I refinanced my house a year ago. The Queen and I had to sign a piece of paper affirming that our signatures confirmed that we were the people our identification verification forms said we were not to mention the form that we had to sign swearing under oath that we were not members of a terrorist organization or that the home would be used for nefarious purposes. Apparently, you can lie about your income and the fact you actually do have a job that earns enough income to pay for this tremendously expensive asset that you cannot afford, but they are going to make certain that you’ve certified on pain of death that you are who your driver’s license says you are. Next time I buy a house, I may just sign all the documents “P.T. Barnum” to see if anyone notices.
Seriously, though, does anyone else see the absurdity of what we’ve come to as a society? We’ve gotten to the point where we don’t even trust ourselves anymore much less our friends, family and neighbors. So, what do we do? We go get middlemen. We abdicate our own common sense, experience and personal responsibility to someone else do in the hope that they will do what’s right for us. For a nominal fee. In small bills, of course.
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