Re:Insurance Policies on Slaves: New York Life’s Complicated...
by mzw_mzw on Monday December 19, 2016 @08:10PM
(#13216499)
It would be nice if we could have a correct understanding of the relevance and proportion of these questions, though. So a corporation made some sliver of its annual income selling insurance policies to slaveowners over a hundred and fifty years ago (the "dark history" you are referring to.) How, precisely, is that relevant to policy in the modern day, as opposed to an element of historical trivia?
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Re:Insurance Policies on Slaves: New York Life’s Complicated...
by tzs on Monday December 19, 2016 @10:38PM
(#13217268)
Why are you assuming that when mzw_mzw said that these policies only accounted for "some sliver of its annual income", he was referring to this from the article:
> But by 1847, insurance policies on slaves accounted for a third of the policies in a firm that would become one of the nation’s Fortune 100 companies
rather than the part of the article that actually mentioned income, namely this:
> Its foray into the slave insurance business did not prove to be lucrative: The company ended up paying out nearly as much in death claims — about $232,000 in today’s dollars — as it received in annual payments
?
One lesson, we inherit complex worlds -- we work at corporations with dark histories, attend institutions built by slaves, use devices and wear clothes made by people who live their lives in horrid conditions.
Maybe we can't change that, but maybe we owe ourselves the human responsibility to grapple with those questions.