Comment by AdieuToLogic
5 months ago
>> Do some insurance companies charge less when provided access to policy owner driving patterns which the companies infer reduce their risk? Sure.
>> But that is a different question.
> In what way? A discount for allowing surveillance is identical to an extra charge for disallowing it.
In this case, the discount is "opt-in."
> $5 for lemonade, $3 off if you skip the lemon == $2 for sugar water, $3 extra to add lemon.
I believe a better analogy is:
The drink costs $5. If you don't want lemon in it,
we'll knock off $3. Those are your options.
That "better" analogy is a restatement of "$5 for lemonade, $3 off if you skip the lemon."
> In this case, the discount is "opt-in."
The base price is not a force of nature. $5 with the option to opt-in to a $3 discount sounds great, until you realize that just a month ago the price was $2 by default. They raised the default by $3, but allowed you to opt-out of that increase. Whether you label that "opt-in" [to the discount] or "opt-out" [from the increase], you end up in exactly the same place.