If you've turned on the tube these last few weeks, you've probably been a collateral casualty of the biggest televisual war of attrition in recent memory. No, I'm not talking about the scripted skirmishes between cable channels, nor am I referring to the Battle of Zombie Talking Points that ate most of our brains during the election. I'm talking about the now never-ending throwdown between two of the most in-your-face salespeople our mediascape has ever manufactured: Geico's unnamed gecko and Progressive Insurance's chipper saleswoman, Flo.
No doubt, you know them both -- the green lizard's smile and cockney accent feign earnestness while the aproned Flo goes for the same effect through the saccharine enthusiasm of an "Office Space" character. It's mildly cute, but don't be fooled: As the best-known avatars of the insurance industry, these two are aggressively competing for our cash through re-education-camp levels of repetition, hoping to harass us into buying their product.
Certainly, there's nothing new about hard sells from TV charlatans. But these two represent something different, something apocalyptic -- and I say that not merely because their maddening ubiquity has driven me to the brink of insanity. I say it because they are peddling the kind of commodity that offers little tangible worth, waging a fight that promises no valuable innovation, and representing a larger insurance and finance sector that's hollowing out our economy.
To find out what I'm talking about, read my whole syndicated newspaper column here.
Follow David Sirota on Twitter: www.twitter.com/davidsirota
The Insurers as peddlers of fear, masters of profiteering, monopolistic autocrats and THE collection agency of the legal profession; do their "work" as worthless paper pushers.
The life blood of an economy of innovation and value by tangible product creation is being destroyed by these Overlords of America's Professional Criminal Class(PCC).
Required reading and thoughtful reasoning mandatory!!
Required reading and thoughtful reasoning mandatory!!
The Insurers as peddlers of fear, masters of profiteering, monopolistic autocrats and THE collection agency of the legal profession; do their "work" as worthless paper pushers.
The life blood of an economy of innovation and value by tangible product creation is being destroyed by these Overlords of America's Professional Criminal Class(PCC).
Insurance is the system by which individuals protect their wealth by spreading the risk among a large pool of policy holders. The insurance company collects the premiums, invests the proceeds and assumes the risk. For this they earn a profit, both from the underwriting and from the return on the invested premiums. Nothing evil here!
I don't expect them to engage in ethical or moral or even legal behavior on their own. That is why we need someone or something to keep them in line. Unfortunately, the
government seems reluctant to fulfill that role and as long as our leaders pray upon the altar of the "savvy businessmen", it will undoubtedly get worse.
Wait and see: Other industries will line up to get the government to coerce the public into buying their products, on the grounds that not doing so carries to much risk for everyone. It's all part of the hyper-capitalism that is ruining the quality of life in the Western World while our various nations slide steadily toward economic ruin. The culprits, of course, are those "smartest guys in the room" types on Wall Street who are busy strangling the golden goose and wiring its eggs to offshore accounts.
I don't expect them to engage in ethical or moral or even legal behavior on their own. That is why we need someone or something to keep them in line. Unfortunately, the government seems reluctant to fulfill that role and as long as our leaders pray upon the altar of the "savvy businessmen", it will undoubtedly get worse.
You know, I often find myself wondering how cheap my car insurance would be if I weren't paying for all those commercials that are polluting the mental environment.
Insurance is the only business in the US besides baseball with an anti-trust exemption. Nobody really knows what the costs or profits of these businesses are, I mean apart from what the industry volunteers to inform us regarding same. But look at every middling size city in the country, and there'll most often you'll find that the largest building therein is an insurance company HQ...