Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Assorted thoughts

- It came up again yesterday; why do people believe that insurance for household appliances is uniformly a bad idea? People don't seem to argue much if you end up having an item replaced or fixed, thus saving you money on net, but it could be economically rational ex post even if you never claim one cent on it. It's economics, not accounting-- peace of mind has value, yes? If you avoid sleepless nights (should you be wired as such) worrying about your appliance possibly breaking, this is a good thing. I'm shocked at how much resistance to this I get.

- I just finished The Birth of a Transfer Society, it's a historical look at the evolution of the United States public sector into a transfer machine through the eyes of Supreme Court rulings. It's short-- about 90 pages of non-Atlas Shrugged font-- and paints an interesting picture. I recommend.

- I haven't seen either of the NBA Finals games (though am surprised at the 2-0 lead for Boston), but heard last night that a partially blocked 3-pointer helped seal one of the victories. This, of course, led to a discussion of the best blocked 3-pointers that we could remember. My friend went with Olajuwon's block in the 1994 playoffs; I, with my severely limited mental database on basketball, went with Hakim Warrick's block against Kansas near the end of the 2003 NCAA title game. Feel free to leave your favorite.

2 comments:

danarch said...

You hear that for cars too. We actually did get the five year warranty on our car and it did save us money in the long run even though the upfront cost was high (maybe, I don't really remember). We did the same thing for our first fridge we had to buy and there is value in not having to worry about repair costs for cars or fridges or any other high ticket item.

We have the protection plan on our cell phones too. So when my old one finally fell that one too many times I got a brand new one for basically $100 (the cost I paid for the plan).

Hey, Matt! How's it going?

dana

Justin M Ross said...

I agree on the protection plans. Just as in the investment literature there appear to be "alphas," people who systematically beat the market, so too are there people (like me) who systematically draw the runt of the product line.