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Comment by cheez | Hacker News Reader

It's so easy to stay out of this. Keep up your health and don't take on debt. Gives you a lot of freedom.

Yes, lucky people have more flexibility. The problem is that very few people avoid getting sick or hurt[1], having kids, needing loans, getting laid off, etc. and a healthy society should work for more than 10% of the population.

1. “Keep your health” up is obviously naive to start with but also ask how many people are, say, hurt in car crashes or on the job every year and how cruel your advice would sound to them.

Do 80% of people get into car crashes or hurt on the job every year?

No? Then my advice can apply to 80% of the people.

Try repeating this assertion after getting into a car crash yourself

I've been in one, had a finger chopped off and been in a coma :-)

To be clear, it sucked for a bit but I came back just fine.

The only thing you lost was your humanity?

A very high percentage choose to buy a house or car, or have children as part of their life planning when things look fairly stable. When you grow up and have adult responsibilities, the youthful feeling of invulnerability starts to fade.

Your advice would be good if there were a way of knowing upfront whether you were in the 80%.

Assuming that you are lucky is an extremely poor planning strategy that, yes, much of the time will result in better outcomes than not.

That said, it will also result in some highly negative outcomes in other situations.

Insurance has value.

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