Insurance and Prevention

Insurance and Prevention are two processes that have much in common and that influence each other in intimate and important ways. They both have to do with the same thing, misfortune, but their primary objects are quite distinct. Prevention undertakes to avoid misfortune itself while insurance undertakes to avoid or ameliorate the evil effects of misfortune. Anything that avoids misfortune is prevention but anything that avoids the evil effects of misfortune is not necessarily insurance; that is, insurance is only one of a number of ways of accomplishing the same thing. Philanthropy and good neighborliness for instance are methods of alleviating misfortune that accomplish the same results as insurance.