The ultimate reason people pay electricians is liability. Unlicensed work is an easy way to invalidate your homeowner's insurance, lose everything, and get sued for any damage to your neighbors' property (by their insurance company, no less).
Nobody's interests are less aligned with your own than an insurance company's. There are lots of legitimate reasons to hire an electrician, but making decisions solely based on what someone who wants you to perpetually give them money whole finding reasons to never give it back is never good practice.
In this situation, I am paying someone else to assume risk for me. That is, I suppose, a type of insurance, in a very broad sense.
However, I am not in any way relying on my interests and the other person's to be aligned, except in the sense of performing the work they are legally contracted to perform. All I am doing is asking this person to assume some risk for me, in exchange for which I provide them a fee.
Short of "take on all the risk yourself", which, even if perhaps desirable (I'm not sure …), is often not feasible, what is a better approach here?
Its specifically the "do it this way because insurance wont cover you otherwise" that I'm reacting too, because I think that had caused a lot of damage to society. Effectively nobody is taking on risk under the model insurance companies push - insurance won't let you do anything risky, and won't pay if you do. That's why I say it's a losing proposition to have your behavior dictated by an insurer. (Probably a prisoner's dilemma really, because inevitably some group gives in, then makes to worse for everyone)
If your company gets banned by visa/mastercard for dealing with porn, you’ll steer away for anything porn related.
You know banks won’t give you a loan for growing legal weed, if your goal is actually to make money you’ll grow other fancy aromatic plants instead, etc.
You still can push through, but getting nudged is not new, will never stop, and most of the time reflects your societies values anyway.
This is the part that is outright fraud. A legitimate insurance policy is literally a cheque; if something happens, you deposit it in the bank and get you money, and it's the insurance company's responsibility to prove that your claim is not covered by the policy written on the cheque. The insurance company does not make a decision about whether to pay.
I am aware of that; I'm pointing out that their being able to say no (rather than the cheque being valid by default and claim being paid out without the insurer's involvement, and the insurance company having to go to court to recover the money after the fact) is fraud, precisely because it enables them to "say no to as much as they can".
Investigating a case is expensive, let alone litigating one against someone with their life's assets on the line, so it's in their best interest to prevent the event they're insuring against from occurring. They have the most accurate up to date data on real world outcomes so especially in professional circumstances, it usually pays to follow their advice.
Yup. They know having an electrician do all the work minimizes the risk of you needing to get payed out, so they want it so.
But the insurance doesn't care about your additional cost, since it's your cost, not theirs.
They don't go "cost of professional < additional risk * potential damages", they go "additional risk * potential damages > 0".
Then again, electrical work can be life threatening, so the potential damage is rather high.
As a DIYer, I was shocked to find what the previously hired professional electrician left for me: a secondary panel for the whole structure that controls exactly one outlet. The sub panel was apparently not fed from the main panel, but rather from a panel in a different building, so simply switching the main breaker of the breaker panel to off did not turn off that one specific outlet, you know the one I was trying to replace. Why that one outlet (GCFI in the bathroom) required it’s own sub panel was not clear at all but my left hand was numb for a few hours. Thankfully it didn’t go further than that (maybe a few copies of me in the multiverse died but not this one).
The EM coming off AC mains makes a non contact detector hard to fool and it's such a simple device that even cheap knockoffs are reliable.
This is why you always test an outlet with a lightbulb before doing electrical work.
Honestly it didn’t actually do much beyond just small muscle twitches in my hand. I only realized what happened after I let go of it and my hand still felt a little funny. Definitely do not recommend but at least it was a 240V outlet or anything like that.
On insurance, as you say their interests are opposite, and you need to be defensive about how to deal with them. Not having insurance on a house is not an option, so making sure you have a standing ground when shit hits the fan is pretty reasonable in my opinion.
Home electric is one of those things that many people claim to know and understand. The reality is that most people are clueless, and can and do make mistakes. If you ever bought an old house, you get this — there’s always some dangerous cob job hiding somewhere.
The evil insurance company doesn’t want to pay when you are seriously injured in a fire. You probably don’t want to get injured. In the end, interests are aligned.