[bumby]

>private people) can decide to lower their risk exposure

I think the complexities of modern societies make it too difficult to measure this risk adequately. We just don’t have the bandwidth to think about the second-and-third order effects for every social/financial interaction we encounter. And people are generally very poor at estimating high-consequence/low-probability events. This means people will often take very outsized risks without realizing it; when bad things happen it creates an unstable society. I don’t think we’ve evolved to personally manage all the c risks in a large complex society and farming those risks out to institutions seems to be the current way most societies have decided to mitigate those risks.

[xorcist]

It also doesn't strike me as very fair. If you smoke, should you not receive cancer care because you took unnecessary risk?

I can see how you could arrive at similar conclusions from a risk management perspective, but it's not a morally just system. Within the system risk taking must be accepted.

[bumby]

Depending on your definition of “fair” this presupposes people are good at estimating risk. The above premise was is based on the fact that they are not. I think there’s a lot of behavioral research that backs that up.

[Zach_the_Lizard]

>...farming those risks out to institutions seems to be the current way most societies have decided to mitigate those risks

Unfortunately, those institutions --be they governments, insurance companies, UL Labs, banks, venture capitalists, etc.--also need to be vetted.

Even when staffed with impeccably well credentialed and otherwise highly capable people, their conclusions may be drawn using a different risk framework than your own.

The risk that they mitigate may even be the risk that you won't vote for them, give them money, etc.

There is also the risk of having too little risk, a catastrophe no worse than too much risk. The balloon may not pop, but it may never be filled.

[bumby]

I don’t think anyone reasonable is advocating believing institutions on blind faith (possibly with the exception of religious institutions). They need to be transparent and also strive to reflect the values (risk and otherwise) of their constituents.