h a l f b a k e r yWhat was the question again?
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Insurance mostly covers risks of a size that the customer can't
afford to swallow. For risks where the worst-case loss is ... what?
... $50? ... it's more efficient for the customer to self-insure. |
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I suppose this might work if it were conceived not so much as
insurance but as a kind of demand aggregation. Perhaps your
business could bundle up the small gripes of 10 000 western
consumers into something big enough to sue a Chinese supplier
for, and your business model would include having friends in the
Chinese Communist Party. |
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After you'd deducted your costs, your customers would only get a
penny each of compo, so the model would depend on the
emotional satisfaction to them of not letting the bastards get
away with it. |
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It sounds like a hard and possibly dangerous way to make a
living. |
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I think the aggregation model might work. Ultimately, the company then just acts as a bulk carrier, bundling many small expensive shipments into one large and relatively cheap one. Things would need to be bundled at this end (into returns for multiple Chinese suppliers) and then unbundled (into returns for each supplier) at the other end. |
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I do sometimes wonder how Chinese companies do their shipping. I can buy things on eBay for £1.99 from China and get free delivery within a week or two. The cheapest I can send a small, light package from the UK to China is £3.55. |
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//I do sometimes wonder how Chinese companies do their
shipping. I can buy things on eBay for £1.99 from China and
get free delivery// |
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I think it's something to do with the concentration gradient
of £1.99 objects. |
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Yes but, according to my hazy understanding of diffusion, a 100 gram object should take (very approximately) for ever to diffuse from China to Cambridge. |
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// how Chinese companies do their shipping. // |
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Packages for transport to an area are packed very tightly into a standard shipping container, along with a bicycle and a very small Chinese person with a supply of rice, water, and plastic bags for ... hygiene purposes. |
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On arrival, the container is opened by those who are part of the scheme. The small Chinese person grabs packages and delivers them using the bicycle as transport. |
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When all the packages are delivered, they are given the bicycle, fake documents, and contact details for a gangmaster organizing cockle-picking teams. |
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Most of them subsequently drown, since they refuse to relinquish their grasp on their only worldly posession, and bicycles are not particularly buoyant. |
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And thus the ecological balance is maintained. |
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