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Go left or right, but don't just sit there

By Howard Troxler, Times Columnist
In print: Tuesday, July 22, 2008

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I dreamed I had a beer with Karl Marx, father of communism, and Adam Smith, the famous free-market thinker.

"You," they told me in unison, "are an idiot." Then they laughed and raised their glasses to each other.

"Why am I an idiot?" I asked, a little peeved. "I mean, at least I've read your books."

"No, if you people in Florida had read our books," Smith said, wagging a finger, "you wouldn't have this mess over hurricane insurance."

Smith put down his mug and looked to Marx to ask permission. "After you," Marx said, waving genially.

"Very well," Smith began, standing to lecture. "Here is your problem. You won't let the free market work."

"The free market?" I cried. "The free market is State Farm asking for a 47 percent rate hike. The free market is Allstate and others dumping customers without conscience.

"Your free market," I continued, "is sticking the taxpayers of Florida with all the worst risk, through the last-resort state pool."

Smith looked at me with pity. "You have proved you are an idiot," he said. "You don't have a free market in Florida. You regulate insurance companies to death.

"Let them charge whatever the free market allows them to charge," Smith concluded, "and you won't have an insurance problem. You'll have wide-open competition, and the market would find the level of fair rates."

Satisfied, Smith bowed to Marx, sat down and lit a cigar.

Marx cleared his throat. "You," he began, "are an idiot."

"I get that idea," I said.

"You have the worst of all possible worlds in Florida," Marx said. "The private sector is keeping the least risk for itself, while jacking up rates, and the public sector is stuck with the worst risk.

"It's obvious that dealing with hurricane risk is an essential government role, just like flood insurance."

"Isn't that … kind of communist?" I asked.

Marx handed me a card with 18th-century printing: www.floridareinsurance.com.

"These folks are no commies, and I should know," Marx said. "They're smart private-sector types who have figured out a proposal for state windstorm insurance.

"Instead of letting the private sector siphon off the public's dough, the public would build up its own pot. In a decade or so, you might never need to worry about hurricane insurance again."

"You can't both be right," I told Marx and Smith.

"But we ARE both right," Marx assured me. "Your answers are either a wide-open market, or a smart takeover of the risk through a state windstorm pool.

"Instead, you sit there in the worst possible place," Smith added, "with not enough dough in the bank, and lousy options for borrowing if you get hit.

Then you're going to sock everybody in the state with an assessment to pay it back, and Florida is going to be one miserable place."

Marx drained his glass and muttered something about the "means of production." Smith seemed startled to see his own glass empty and blamed "the invisible hand."

So they ordered another round. I don't remember much else, except that they stuck me with the check.

• • •

Now, how can you resist joining the weekly live chat from noon to 1 p.m. today on TroxBlog? Go to blogs.tampabay.com/troxler.