ABSTRACT
This chapter considers benefits of insurance in terms of community, and, then the down side of community, problems of exclusion, which in this context means inability to buy insurance, either because the buyer or the risk is excluded. As Jacob Hacker has argued, the "private" activity of insurance companies should be understood as central to the American provision of security against various risks. The usual explanations hold that the hostility to life insurance has roots in concern with commodification of human life, that it reflects a lack of trust, a betting against God. The security is seen as illusion and the community as either non-existent or involving definitions of the group that defeat true solidarity. Some aspects of the insurance enterprise can be viewed as dystopian. Insurance and an economic analysis can substitute one view of reality for another.
