By Eric Peters
For NMA
Drivers in Virginia will soon be paying more for car insurance – because they no longer have the option to pay the state less, instead. Naturally, that means they’ll be paying more – to the mafia.
Or so the mafia intends.
But the mafia may have just succeeded in pushing its “customers” too far. The latter word is bracketed in air fingers quote marks to ridicule the misuse of the word. When you are under duress to buy something by the seller of that thing, you are not a customer. You are a victim. In their better moments, some mafiosi admit the fact. They do not hide from the nature of their work; of themselves. But the insurance mafia is less self-aware; it likes to think of itself as just another business providing a needed service. It likes to pretend there is no duress.
And that makes it worse than the mafia portrayed in movies like The Godfather and Goodfellas. Don Corleone, in a very real sense, was a more honest man than Flo.
So what has the mafia – the one that uses the government rather than Luca Brasi to make people offers it can’t refuse – done to Virginia drivers? It has used its muscle (that is to say, its money power, largely derived from the proxy power it has to mulct drivers for “coverage”) to get the politicians its keeps in its pockets (per the Don) like so many nickels and dimes to rescind what had been the only legal way to avoid being mulcted by the mafia.
In Virginia, a driver could pay the state a $500 Uninsured Motorist Fee instead. For many drivers, paying $500 to the state each year was better than paying the mafia twice or three times as much per year. But it meant the mafia was being paid less – and not just directly. The UMF provided a kind of competition and that is the last thing any mafia wants – or will abide.
More finely, the UMF enabled people who couldn’t afford to pay the mafia a way to pay less – and that did more than just allow them to pay less. It effectively forced the mafia to charge less – because its “customers” were aware that they could pay the state less instead. The UMF, in other words, acted as a check-and-balance on the mafia’s depredations.
The UMF did not provide any “coverage,” though. You just paid the state to be legally allowed to not pay the mafia. And that fact is what the mafia used to do to the UMF what was done to Luca Brasi in The Godfather. As of this month, the UMF sleeps with the fishes. Drivers in the state no longer have the option to pay the state rather than mafia. They must pay the mafia, else the state says they’re not allowed to drive.
In fact, even if they don’t drive. The law – that is, the state – says that every registered vehicle must be “covered.” Even if it is not driven. Which is interesting, given the putative justification for the requirement to buy “coverage,” i.e., that not buying it means others are put at risk by the “uninsured” driver. But how can a driver who doesn’t drive put anyone else at risk? And – going deeper – how does merely not being “covered” cause any harm to anyone else?
Put another way, driving without “coverage” does not mean the “uninsured” driver will wreck. And – going deeper – laws requiring drivers to pay the mafia do not assure they will.
Especially when they can’t.
Because it’s become more than just stupid to play by the rules of a rigged game. It has become suicidal. When the choice is reduced to paying the mafia for “coverage” or paying the mortgage – or to get food to keep one’s family fed – the decision to not pay the mafia is an easy one.
And its threats become less threatening the prospect of living under a bridge – and watching one’s family go hungry.
We are at – or very close to – this point already. The average cost of “coverage” in this country is currently nearly twice as much as Virginia’s sleeps-with-fishes UMF, or nearly $1,000 annually. That’s for “coverage” that doesn’t provide any, by the way. It merely “covers” hypothetical damage you haven’t actually caused to someone else. The cost of “coverage” for yourself averages more than $2,600 annually.
How may can afford to pay that when what it costs to pay for food is now 30 percent (or more) what people used to have to pay for it not even four years ago? More finely, how many fewer will be able to pay more than that – for “coverage” – now that the mafia has succeeded in getting rid of the one way they could legally avoid paying the mafia for it?
“It’s going to be more expensive, possibly than the $500 fine that people were paying previously,” says a soldier for one of the mafias named Derek Wiley. He likes to not think of himself as a mafiosi, of course – because excepting sociopaths, most people are uncomfortable thinking of themselves as thugs. It is why mafiosi wear suits and ties. Like businessmen.
Except their business is force – which makes them thugs. Whether they want to admit it to themselves or not.
“Now going forward, everybody would be on a level playing field because everyone will be mandated to carry auto insurance,” says the soldier who likes to think of himself as an “agent.”
And in a way, he’s right about that “level playing field,” which is the same one you get to play on when they send you to prison. At least there, people are aware they are in a prison.
But he may also be wrong.
Just as – even in prison – there isn’t a level playing field the same will be true in the prison we’re in. The “undocumented” will not be buying “coverage” because they’re not stupid – and so why would they? And those of us who have a right to be here – who were born here – are beginning to understand that it’s stupid to obey laws for me but not for thee – and to be mulcted for harms we haven’t caused because some ninny fears we might.
Eric Peters lives in Virginia and enjoys driving cars and motorcycles. In the past, Eric worked as a car journalist for many prominent mainstream media outlets. Currently, he focuses his time writing auto history books, reviewing cars, and blogging about cars+ for his website EricPetersAutos.com.
Editor’s Note: The thoughts and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views or positions of the National Motorists Association.
