About Uninsurable: An autopsy of modern optimization culture.
Yesterday, I watched a 400-page actuarial risk assessment spool out of a heavy-duty office printer. The paper was still warm to the touch when I picked it up, carrying the faint, metallic scent of ozone that industrial toner leaves behind, detailing exactly what percentage of a coastal zip code was mathematically acceptable for a firm to abandon.
Uninsurable is a newsletter about technology, risk, and the unintended consequences of optimization—following the incentives beneath today’s headlines to understand who the system benefits, and who it deems uninsurable. The systems we built to optimize our lives are deciding whose lives are worth optimizing.
Uninsurable is a newsletter about technology, risk, and the unintended consequences of optimization—following the incentives beneath today’s headlines to understand who the system benefits, and who it deems uninsurable.
My name is Aimé Halden. I spend my time analyzing the intersection of algorithms, corporate governance, and insurance markets.
I have always found the strict adherence to rational choice theory—specifically Gary Becker’s foundational models of human capital—to be elegant in a vacuum but structurally blind to compounding exclusion. When you optimize a market strictly for aggregate efficiency, you do not eliminate risk. You merely concentrate it onto those least capable of absorbing the downside.
I used to believe that better, more granular data would naturally correct these market failures. I am no longer certain that is true. Following the current trajectory of automated underwriting and algorithmic pricing, it is entirely possible that perfect information simply makes the sorting process more ruthless.
Modern suffering is rarely caused by villains. It is caused by spreadsheets.
Each week, this publication maps the invisible fault lines created by our most rational tools. We will look at why record corporate profits predictably coincide with mass layoffs, or how automated models mechanically strip medical coverage from chronic patients in the name of cost-efficiency. Systems do not have intentions, but they do have rules and incentives.
My objective here is to explain the rules.
I will not offer you a call to arms. I will only offer you the math, the causal chains, and the uncomfortable outcomes that emerge when efficiency is placed above empathy.
Welcome to Uninsurable.
-Aimé
