nanfeng oranges

David Dollar, the World Bank’s country director for China and Mongolia, outlined a few programs supported by the World Bank aimed at making life for Mongolian herders a little less vulnerable. The most interesting program, I thought, was livestock insurance.

What’s interesting is that the payout is based on the average loss for a district, not on a per cow basis. That encourages herders not to get lazy and let their animals die when bad weather comes in. It also saves the insurer the trouble of going in and checking up on individual claims.

What’s the difference between cow insurance and car insurance? Perhaps a more apt comparison is a comparison between livestock insurance and flood insurance.

First, I guess it’s easier to check up on claims in Louisiana than it is in Mongolia. According to the article, the only guarantee about cell phone coverage is that one is never more than half an hour away from a hot zone.

Another difference between livestock insurance and flood insurance is that it may well be within the means of the insured to protect his assets in the case of the herder protecting his animals than in the case of the homeowner protecting his house.

Why isn’t all insurance like this? I guess one problem would be if one can’t expect that losses will be evenly distributed through the community. If a wildfire burns down half the houses on a hillside, this sort of compensation scheme wouldn’t be equitable. But if severe weather rolls over the Mongolian steppe it may be within a resourceful herder’s means to save a few animals.

Even if you did adopt this strategy for insurance, you’d still need to make sure that no one tries to game the system. I guess it wouldn’t make sense for someone to kill off his own herd, since he’d be losing all his animals and not be receiving adequate compenstaion. But, what’s to prevent whoever’s keeping track of the numbers from inflating the figures a little bit.

The final question that remains unanswered is, what’s the deductible?

Felt vindicated by this piece I heard on NPR earlier today. The driving instructor makes two things clear: first, accelerating slowly is the easiest way to improve gas mileage and, second, accelerating quickly doesn’t get you to your destination any faster.

Driving in Chicago, this scenario has become a daily scenario. I keep a comfortable buffer between myself and the car in front of me so, when (s)he inevitably brakes to prevent running into the car in front, I can just take my foot off the accelerator without unnecessary braking on my part. The car behind me notices the comfortable cushion ahead and figures (s)he can take it. (S)he switches lanes, passes me, and then swtiches back into my lane. Finally, we all get stuck at a traffic light.

The piece on NPR made the point that with a hybrid, an uninstructed driver got around 50 miles to the gallon. In perfect conditions, the hybrid could get greater than 100 miles to a gallon. And, a driver exercising proper judgment could get around 90 miles to the gallon.

And then I realized…I thought I was doing good getting more than 30 miles to the gallon. That’s nothing. When my car finally needs to be replaced, it will almost certainly be with a hybrid. Not because I’m an eco-nut; because that’s just the way it’s gonna be.

Footage like this is available for those with the good sense to look for it. This particular piece is available for licensing from travelfilmarchive.com.