Insurance and speculation share a structure of betting on contingent futures.

Evidence

Levy traces the beginning of inscribing insurance (in the form of social security) into the fabric of the American nation after World War II: “a new vision of what it meant to be a free and secure economic actor—­ premised upon the state providing baseline economic security to its citizens” (314). Importantly, just as in the risk-­taking aspect of speculation, insurance, too, trades on promises of an uncertain future: “One party pays cash premiums in return for the promise of the other party to pay a cash sum on the occurrence of a contingent future” (Vogel and Hayes 1998, 151). As Zelizer’s (1979) important work has shown, insurance relies fundamentally on the imagination, precisely because we cannot know whether its promise will ever be fulfilled. But although it builds on the instrument of the promise, insurance also anticipates that promise’s failure. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 416

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Speculation has always fused an insurance function with gambling on volatility. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 52; The derivative is a single instrument fusing insurance motives with betting motives. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 90; Conspiracy thinking parallels speculation by providing narrative insurance and wagers on destabilizing events. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 510 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Speculation has always fused an insurance function with gambling on volatility. #corroborates (0.95) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 52