[V8] insuring old cars

[Roger M. Woodbury]

This subject appears and reappears on every site that I have ever monitored.
A lot of people mistakenly think that the only thing that insurance is for
is to protect their car from damage by someone else, or that they are
entitled to a complete return of the insurance premiums that they pay out.
And if they don't make a claim that recovers ALL of the premiums ever paid
in damage repair, then the insurance companies have ripped them off.

Recently there has been a thread on one of the Mercedes lists that I am on
that ran itself into the ground about homeowners insurance rates in areas
that have had a high incidence of catastrophic loss.  A lot of members on
that list are older, and live in Florida, the gulf coast states and in
California.  Many have complained about their homeowner's rates now ten
times what they were before Katrina, for instance.  The thought from some
has been that EVERYONE should pay more for homeowners insurance because
there was a catastrophe loss in south Florida.  The "my misery should be
your misery" approach to individual responsibility, I suppose.

Rambling around eventually to my point here, which is that people need to
insure their own responsibility for owning property and in the case of cars,
for operating them in the public way.  That new R8 needs insurance because
you just might put it through the tailgate of Mrs Soccer Mom while she is
carrying her five kids to Mickey D's, and since you have borrowed money to
buy the R8, you need to protect the loan shark's money, too.  And the
insurance document is a form of rent:  you are using someone else's money to
protect something that you might eventually pay for.  

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