THE ETHICS OF INSURANCE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 26 July 1929, Page 2

THE ETHICS OF INSURANCE

IS IT GAMBLING? The proposition that insurance is in essence a form of gambling was vigorously challenged recently in the Manchester “Guardian” by Canon Fetor Green. He contended that it is not legally a gamble, since no insurance company could defend refusal to pay on a policy by claiming that it was a gambling transaction barred by the Gaming Acts. Nor was it economically gambling, since a banker will make an advance on the security of a life insurance policy which has a surrender value, but no banker would allow a customer any overdraft on the strength of annual payments to bookmakers. As to the social point of view, Canon Green asks whether anyone has been ruined by indulgence in insurance, as many have ruined their whole prospects in life by gambling. “If a man hears that the young fellow to whom his daughter has just got engaged is a heavy gambler, are his feelings the same as they would he if lie heard that .the young mail iiad celebrated his engagement by largely increasing his life' insurance? If a man promised his mother on her death bed to give up gambling, would be I'eeL bound to drop the insurance on iiis ofiice or on his own life? There is a certain formal and internal resemblance between the two things, just as there is this amount of resemblance between a cow and a table —that both have four legs. But men do not call a table a quadruped, nor maintain that a cow is an article of office furniture. And there is no reason why any human being endowed with any elements of reasoning power should stultify himself by describing insurance as a form of gambling.”