A Strike on Insurance

November 16, 2007 on 10:32 am | In Insider View, Musings, Rants by Josh Jones | 42 Comments

A Stike on Heads!

In keeping with my writing bretheren, I am continuing my strike. Not my strike on writing however; just my strike on good writing.

So, remember how I got an iPhone? Well, I gave that one away. But then later, I actually got another iPhone, even though I still love that T-mobile HotSpot @ Home thing. I can ’splain! (That’s short for a’splain.)

It was the day they (not they Apple, they Hackers) announced the software-only unlocking process, and I wanted to give it a shot. We were also planning on getting an iPhone for my sister-in-law for Christmas (don’t read this, Sheireen), and I figured then was a good time to get one since they still had 4GB ones available for $299. Which was a 40% price drop compared to a 33% price drop for the 8GB ones.

I figured I’d buy a 4GB one, mod it, try it out a little, and then wrap it back up and save it for her for xmas.

So that’s what I did. After jailbreaking it, I tried out a bunch of the underground 3rd-party applications, and my absolute favorite was iBlackJack.

I don’t even get to see what he had! WHO CARES, I WIN!!

Favorite for it being the worst blackjack game I’d ever played!

Some of the faults:

  • Visually, it looked nice.. except the upside-down card was a bright apple logo, which just for some reason always looked confusingly like a right-side-up card.
  • The INSTANT the game was over, a pop-up appeared telling you if you’d won or lost. And by INSTANT, I mean INSTANT: you couldn’t even see what the dealer’s hole card turned out to be, it was covered by the pop-up!
  • Finally, and this was hard to notice because of the other problems, the dealer actually always drew exactly one card. It didn’t matter if they were already over 16 or were still under 16 after drawing, they always drew one card, no more, no less!

    • This iBlackJack was so awful it would always be the first thing I’d show to people who wanted to checkout my iPhone, just so I could sit back and watch the transition from excitement to confusion to utter disgust as it swept across the face of my victim.

    This game served as a textbook example for Steve Jobs’ argument about why he claimed they wanted to lock out third parties from developing iPhone apps: playing it made me really hate Steve Jobs, personally.

    But Then

    Sadly, this could not last forever. Updates of iBlackJack kept coming out, and within just a few weeks, all the glaring usability and logic errors were squashed. Now it’s a decent little app, and serves as a strong counter-example against a locked iPhone.

    Yes, the game was a boiling pot of dog turd at first, but now my iPhone (oh yes, it’s MINE now) has a full-featured blackjack game in it; one with such features as how many decks in the shoe, when to re-shuffle, when the dealer hits, and even if it should bother asking if you want insurance.

    We charge good drivers less == we charge bad drivers more.

    Oh Yeah, Insurance

    That’s what I was going to talk about!

    Everybody knows you should NEVER TAKE INSURANCE in blackjack. It’s yet another way gambling mimics real life.

    In real life, as in iBlackJack on your iPhone, you should NEVER TAKE INSURANCE.

    There are only two exceptions to this rule.

    One, if it’s required by law. Goddamn it, I guess you gotta get it.. but still, only get the minimum amount.

    Two, if you absolutely, positively would be ruined should the insured against event occur.. and the event has more than about a one in a million chance of occuring.

    Let me ’splain.

    The only way to build real wealth in real life is to take risks where the total expected return is greater than the total actual cost. “Total expected return” simply being the summation of each possible return times its chance of occuring. “Total actual cost” simply being the money/time/personal cost of this risk, plus the “opportunity cost” of what other risk you could be taking.

    Cheap clip art to the rescue!

    Makes sense, no?

    Here’s an example… the “total expected return” of any casino gambling transaction is always less than the dollar cost of making it. Of course, that doesn’t make it totally irrational to gamble.. if your return still beats the total expected cost. Perhaps you derive entertainment from betting, or perhaps you would have just blown the money on strippers and blow… but it does mean it’s never a good move from a purely financial standpoint.

    On the other hand, if somebody says, “If you loan me $50 today, I’ll pay you back $80 tomorrow,” and you figure there’s about a 70% chance they’ll pay up, you should probably loan them the money. Unless of course you’ve got a less risky way to get the same expected 12% return on $50 in one day.

    Shamefully, it really does seems to be a fact of life that the higher the risk, the higher the reward. If you can accept a 90% chance of losing everything, you can find tons of investments that offer very high total expected returns… that’s even after taking the 90% chance of losing it all into account! It’s why there are venture capitalists.

    Besides taking more risk, there’s only one other way to get higher expected returns: have more money.

    “It takes money to make money”… true dat, double true! “Mo money, mo problems”… HA!

    I don’t see Puff Daddy complaining.

    Nevertheless, you should not be risking your entire net worth in any venture with a 90% chance of losing it all, no matter how high the expected return. Doing so is not the highway to riches, it is the trail to crazy town in a van down by the river.

    So, unfortunately, you need to have a lot of money already for the world of higher total expected return investments to become available to you. When they do become available, your wealth will then be able to grow at a faster and faster and faster rate.. creating the positive feedback loop of more money => more chances for higher returns => ever more money => less problems!

    (Except in a few cases.)

    So how do you start?

    Therein rubs the lie. If you can only really make money by already having it, you’re pretty much screwed if you don’t already have it, right?

    Yep that’s pretty much true. It’s why the rich get richer and why one laptop per child and girls don’t like boys girls like cars and money. Fortunately, there is one other way to make money, but it’s much, much, harder than all this risky investment stuff.

    Saving it! When broke, the only option to build wealth obviously is to spend less money than you earn from your j.o.b. Easier said than done.. but then you can start investing in relatively safe things: buying a house, cds, bonds, etc.

    As your nest egg builds, and you can afford to possibly lose some of it, you can start investing in riskier things with higher expected returns: S+P mutual funds, your friend’s small business, maybe even some individual stocks.

    Some of those risky investments are not going to pan out.. that’s the risk, remember? But some of them will… and since they offer higher total expected returns you’re going to end up with even more money.. and then newer and ever more lucrative opportunities will keep presenting themselves: hedge funds with $5 Million minimums, angel / VC investing, emerging market real estate, heroin import… and the cycle continues!

    It would have been better without the word "over".

    Back To Insurance?

    Oh yeah… BORING! So, the thing is, insurance is weird because it’s a reverse investment. Rather than risking money you have in the hope of getting a payoff in the future, you’re guaranteeing a loss now in the hope of not having a loss in the future.

    Now, there’s nothing wrong with that, IF the value of the loss you’re guaranteeing now is smaller than the total expected loss you’re insuring against. It’s a perfectly valid way to get a return on your money, just like using cash to pay off an existing debt is compared to starting a new investment.

    The problem is, with insurance the total expected loss is always less than the loss you’re guaranteeing yourself by paying your insurance premium every month. It’s how insurance companies make money! In fact, insurance (along with gambling) is one of the few “investments” where you know 100% the “total expected return” … and you know it’s negative!

    After all, the insurance actuaries went to a lot of trouble to figure it out for you.

    On top of that, the “total expected cost” of insurance is always higher than it seems. It’s not like you can just call up your insurance company and say “Hey, I need $35,000 to redo my floors, they got messed up” and the money is wired into your Caymen Islands bank account.

    Noooooooooo…… file any sort of insurance claim and be ready for weeks, if not months of paperwork, calls, visits, faxes, more paperwork, more calls, and finally, higher rates in the future.

    So, since all insurance is a very bad investment, you will be wealthier long-term if you never buy insurance! Of course, you’d also be better off long-term if you skipped the whole “saving, bonds, and cds” stage and went straight to “leveraged buyouts and social networking startups.”

    Like Magic Juan did!

    But you can’t do that. You don’t have the funding yet. It’s a long shot that you’re going to strike it rich on a social networking startup, so you’d better have some money saved up first. It’s a long shot that you’re going to lose your house in a fire, but you’d be ruined if it did, so you’d better get insurance first.

    However, as you progress up the ladder of more and more risky investments, one of the very first you should consider is the risky investment of “self-insurance.”

    If you’ve got enough saved so that some particular event you were insuring against would no longer absolutely ruin you, it’s a pretty good investment to drop your insurance for that and go it alone. Now you are making the profit that Allstate used to get, and you’re still “okay” in the face of a disaster because of the money you’ve saved up.

    Other Benefits

    In fact, you will most likely make more profit than your insurance company used to.

    For one, they have all kinds of overhead in dealing with claims that you’re not going to have.

    For two, people aren’t the most rational consumers when they’re not spending their own money… sure you might get your whole car replaced if insurance is paying for it. But is it actually worth $2,000 of your money just so you don’t have some ugly dents in your passenger door?

    For three, “your rate” won’t go up every time you “make a claim.”

    Send those fortune cookies back!

    Practice, Preacher, Practice

    I’ve never bought more than the minimum car insurance legally required (liability) .. the key is just not owning a car you care about at all! I never get extended waranties or travel/rental car insurance, and although I do have home insurance (it’d suck to lose that in a wildfire/earthquake/mudslide/riot), I’m about to drop all coverage for everything inside.

    I even just got a $14,000 claim for some water damage, and honestly.. it still isn’t worth it. I don’t have life or disability insurance because I think my wife would be fine with the money we already have, should I bite it or become really stupid. And I’d be fine with just paying for medical bills out of pocket if I didn’t have it through DreamHost… although I want to switch that to be self-insured too!

    Over the last ten years, I estimate DreamHost has probably spent close to $2,000,000 more on health insurance than the cost off all benefits that our employees have ever claimed.

    For a company filled with 20-somethings, (and, ahem, the newly-30) there just isn’t a lot of expensive health issues going on. If we had self-insured from the beginning, we probably could have cut out a ton of paperwork, offered even greater benefits, been more flexible with our policies, and probably had an extra $3,000,000 (with interest) tucked away for future medical expenses.

    I’m not even sure why we haven’t started self-insuring still.

    German babies are the richest.

    The ABCs of Getting Rich

    Wow, that was sum’ lonnnnng ’splainin’!

    Here’s the executive summary:

    A. Don’t buy anything (that includes investments, expensive cars, fancy home electronics) that would ruin you if you lost it: that way you don’t need to buy insurance for it. If it’s a very good investment (like your house), only then should you buy insurance: so that it wouldn’t ruin you if you lost it.

    B. As your build your wealth, less and less things will then be able to ruin you, and higher and higher “total expected return” investments will become available to you.. take advantage!

    C. Save more money by spending more time reading free, long, blog posts.

    42 Responses to “A Strike on Insurance”

    1. BUGabundo Says:
      November 16th, 2007 at 11:25 am

      and I was thinking that u add a new offer for us. maybe some new backup system…. noooo just a lame post.

      Ok, now are u going to save money how?

    2. Pete Says:
      November 16th, 2007 at 11:57 am

      Apparently your post triggered several Splog sites. We really need some sort of protection against that.

    3. Ben Says:
      November 16th, 2007 at 12:36 pm

      A nitpick: although it is true the vast majority of the time for obvious reasons, it is not technically *always* true that every transaction with a casino is a losing bet. Big casinos will often run limited-time promotions and such that lose them money in the short-term in order to draw in more customers for the long-term. Someone with good self control, an eye for stats, and good math and game skills (where applicable) can actually find plenty of positive expected value action. I have a friend who regularly makes money doing this, and his net profit has nothing to do with actually enjoying gambling.

      I expect the chances of finding a net positive expected value deal from insurance companies are even slimmer, though.

    4. Annie Niemoose Says:
      November 16th, 2007 at 12:57 pm

      You missed one:

      you should buy your insurance if you know something that you’re insurance company doesn’t know (e.g., impending earthquake).

      Another one:

      you might want to consider insurance if it’s subsidized (e.g., by your employer) to the point where the expected return is higher than the expected cost.

    5. Mike Says:
      November 16th, 2007 at 3:42 pm

      C. Save more money by spending more time reading free, long, blog posts.

      I just tried it. I think my net worth went down $3 while reading this post, but since it was already in the negative numbers anyway, I won’t get too upset about it.

      I’m still holding out for the big score. Yep, when Brett sends me my free Dreamhost keychain, I’ll eBay it and retire. :P

    6. Mark Rose Says:
      November 16th, 2007 at 5:13 pm

      It’s nice to see someone giving sound financial advice. Most financial advisers don’t have a clue: they’re still working a job, after all.

    7. Byran Says:
      November 17th, 2007 at 12:55 pm

      I hope Dreamhost doesn’t increase wealth by not investing in solutions to backup *customer* data if ever lost.

    8. Patrick McCarron Says:
      November 17th, 2007 at 3:52 pm

      Glad you like the game more now Josh. I too admit to my earlier alpha releases were not the best, but not sure if I’d go as far as saying “boiling pot of dog turd.” It’s now much close to being done, but not quite out of alpha because I want to add more features first! I hope to have the golden “1.0″ release out around the new year, all feature complete “for now”

      So you are telling me I shouldn’t insure my iPhone incase I’m a clutz and drop it or lose it? Costs me about $50 a year, but it seemed more important at the $600 price mark.

      Patrick McCarron
      Dreamhost Customer
      iBlackjack Developer

    9. Peter Says:
      November 17th, 2007 at 5:27 pm

      Not to be overly critical or anything, but my God are those bolds and italics atrocious!

      Reading this is like stabbing myself in the eye with a blunt fork – every second word it seems – but retains none of the immediate interest.

      All the same, I look forward to joining the merry ranks of DreamHost customers in a week or two. :)

    10. Mike Says:
      November 17th, 2007 at 9:01 pm

      I hope Dreamhost doesn’t increase wealth by not investing in solutions to backup *customer* data if ever lost.

      Your data’s not important. If it was, you would be keeping your own up-to-date offsite backups, so that in the event of a catastrophe, you’d be too busy getting back online to blame someone else for a problem.

      Having said that, ever heard of the .snapshot directory? They already do keep backups.

    11. Anthony DiSante Says:
      November 18th, 2007 at 12:00 am

      [QUOTE]
      [QUOTE]I hope Dreamhost doesn’t increase wealth by not investing in solutions to backup *customer* data if ever lost.[/QUOTE]

      Your data’s not important. If it was, you would be keeping your own up-to-date offsite backups, so that in the event of a catastrophe, you’d be too busy getting back online to blame someone else for a problem.
      [/QUOTE]

      Right on. As the saying goes: a file does not exist until it exists in 2 places.

      If your data is important, then back it up frequently. Keep the backup drive inside a fire safe. And do offsite backups regularly, too. If that all sounds like too much work, that’s OK; it just means that your data isn’t really very important to you.

    12. Anthony DiSante Says:
      November 18th, 2007 at 12:02 am

      Egads, that was hideous.

    13. Michael Says:
      November 18th, 2007 at 9:41 am

      Do you realize that your company is hosting this web site?

      http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/African_American

    14. Mike Says:
      November 18th, 2007 at 11:05 am

      Gotta love how losers like Michael are the ones that search for that stuff, then complain when they find it. Then, when they find it, they spam it all over the place so it gets more traffic.

      If you weren’t stupid (you are) and you really had a problem with that site (you don’t), you would have gone through the appropriate abuse channels instead of promoting their site here.

      If it’s not illegal, there’s no reason for Dreamhost to have a problem with it. That’s their policy. Luckily, unlike you, they don’t hate freedom of speech.

      You should click on the “Offended” link on that page and follow the directions there. Then, consider disconnecting from the internet, since you don’t have the brainpower required to end up at sites that don’t offend you.

    15. Michael Says:
      November 18th, 2007 at 8:24 pm

      Hi Mike,

      I haven’t looked at the site completely (some of it is completely disgusting), but it’s probably all legal. In a legal sense, “freedom of speech” is not absolute, but here you certainly have a right to publish this kind of site.

      As you must know, freedom of speech also means that people can express their disagreement, which clearly disturbs you, but I have a right to express my views on your open blog. I previously sent a note to your appropriate abuse channels as you suggested.

      I will next contact businesses who use your services and ask them if they wish to be associate with you (I will quote your message above) and refer them to the site you host. That is freedom of speech as well.

      Best,

      Mike

    16. Josh Jones Says:
      November 18th, 2007 at 10:21 pm

      Hey Patrick!

      Yeah, “boiling pot of dog turd” is a little rough, eh! It wasn’t THAT bad, and it is very GOOD now!

      But yeah, definitely you SHOULDN’T buy the $50/year insurance on your iPhone.. in fact, that’s pretty much THE perfect, shining example!

      Now, something like medical or home insurance you should get. It’s not like the average person could afford all their medical bills should a not-THAT-unlikely bad thing come along. At a certain point, a COMPANY or BILLIONAIRE may be able to self-insure for big things like medical care or homes, but in the meantime, individuals should stick to self-insuring small stuff like their items while traveling, their home electronics, their car, etc… and just try and minimize the things you buy that you can’t afford to self-insure!

      A corollary I just realized… as a rule of thumb, you should never “save up” to buy anything (other than an investment). Just “save up” .. not FOR anything, and only buy things that aren’t 100% necessary or an investment when they’re so cheap relative to how much you have saved up that you don’t NEED to save up to buy them, you just buy them without a second thought.

      You’ll find your savings just keep getting bigger and bigger and soon more and more expensive things will fall into that category of “so cheap I don’t even have to think about it.” Whereas if you’re always just saving up to buy something, your savings will constantly be “reset” (not to mention you’ll be tempted to get insurance on them too!) and you’ll _forever_ be unable to just buy the things you want without fear!

    17. Mike Says:
      November 19th, 2007 at 12:45 am

      I haven’t looked at the site completely (some of it is completely disgusting), but it’s probably all legal.

      So, you knew you were wrong, and instead of just wiping the tears from your eyes and getting on with life, you came here to give them free advertising in a whiny off-topic post. Brilliant.

      I guess you complain to the television manufacturers every time a program airs that you don’t like? Since working a web browser is almost as hard as a TV remote, that would probably strike you as the right thing to do.

      As you must know, freedom of speech also means that people can express their disagreement, which clearly disturbs you, but I have a right to express my views on your open blog.

      Not my blog. Dreamhost’s blog.

      The only thing expressing your views here accomplished was showing that you can’t do something as simple as stick to a topic, go to websites that you don’t find offensive, or resist the urge to whine about something that isn’t even a problem.

      The fact that you spammed that link here shows that you approve of the content, so quit lying and pretending that you don’t get off on it.

      Also, that person’s right to host it, doesn’t make it appropriate for you to link to it from just anywhere. Common sense, if present, would have kept you from doing it. So, until you can tell the difference between wrong and right yourself, maybe you should leave the preaching to someone else.

      I previously sent a note to your appropriate abuse channels as you suggested.

      Not my abuse department. Dreamhost’s abuse department.

      And if they didn’t do anything, it’s because it doesn’t violate they’re TOS. Did they at least give you a pacifier to help with the crying?

      I will next contact businesses who use your services and ask them if they wish to be associate with you (I will quote your message above) and refer them to the site you host.

      I take it you already told your mommy on Dreamhost, right? Did that help?

      You can’t really be this stupid. You are going to ask businesses that ALREADY CHOSE to associate with Dreamhost if they want to associate with Dreamhost? That would be like me asking you if you want to post a bunch of stupid nonsense.

      But, yeah, go ahead and quote me–as if the businesses you plan to harass won’t already be annoyed enough. If quoting one of thousands of Dreamhost customers doesn’t get them to change their business, nothing will.

      By the way, in case you still didn’t figure it out, the people replying here aren’t Dreamhost employees. Using your unbelievably flawed logic, that would make you an employee, so don’t you feel stupid now for making threats against the company you work for?

      Contacting businesses will be more annoying to them than your whining is here. Your time definitely isn’t important, but theirs might be, so I’m sure they’ll appreciate when you waste it. I hope they all take a few minutes to complain to your ISP for spammed moral lectures.

      And unlike you, they probably have the sense to realize that every host has sites that not everyone likes. Are you going to harass every host in the world, or are you already running out of steam?

      That is freedom of speech as well.

      No one takes those corny threats from idiots like you seriously. You’re kidding yourself if you think otherwise. You’re barely a notch above the idiots that would have included a legal threat somewhere in their post.

      If you want to keep using your freedom of speech to be a whining idiot, knock yourself out. It’s about all you can do.
      But if you want to be a whiny idiot and not get called out for it, you’ll need to do it on your own site.

    18. Jeff @ DreamHost Says:
      November 19th, 2007 at 12:21 pm

      What’s really amusing about this is that we don’t even host the site in question:

      —
      lenny: 12:05 PM# host encyclopediadramatica.com
      encyclopediadramatica.com A 72.249.60.240
      lenny: 12:18 PM# whois 72.249.60.240
      Colo4Dallas LP COLO4-BLK2 (NET-72-249-0-0-1)
      72.249.0.0 – 72.249.191.255
      Thornton Industries COLO4-THORNTON-020707 (NET-72-249-60-224-1)
      72.249.60.224 – 72.249.60.255

      # ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2007-11-18 19:10
      # Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN’s WHOIS database.
      —

      We are the domain’s registrar and do provide DNS service – which is what trips people up, no matter how many times we tell them – but the actual web host for the site is located in Texas.

      In any case, it’s a bit of a moot point as we do not censor or assert editorial control over the content of sites that we do host (aside from that which is illegal, of course).

      - Jeff @ DreamHost

    19. VOO Says:
      November 19th, 2007 at 1:15 pm

      we do not censor or assert editorial control over the content of sites that we do host (aside from that which is illegal, of course)

      And despite the fact that I do not personally have any sites that would be considered controversial or whatever, and generally do not “hang out” at any, I am very grateful to Dreamhost for its free speech stance. It is one of the many reasons I do indeed choose to “associate”… that and just plain awesome hosting. Thank you Dreamhost… thank you very much for being what you are.

      Voice Of One

    20. VOO Says:
      November 19th, 2007 at 1:19 pm

      Well dang… the quote tags didn’t work out for me. For the benefit of anyone who may be a little slow, the above in my post should have been in a quote.

      “we do not censor or assert editorial control over the content of sites that we do host (aside from that which is illegal, of course)”

    21. Michael Says:
      November 19th, 2007 at 1:40 pm

      This is good to know. I will be contacting them. Thanks, Jeff.

      Freedom of speech is a great thing, of course. As a business, you can choose whether to let the Klan or other hate groups have meetings in your buildings, assemble on your front lawn, advertise in your periodicals, provide (DNS) services for them, &c. All in the name of free speech. But the other “of course” is that such decisions have consequences, be they very small or very large, for your business, or for others.

      For instance, hate crime is up. We all have some culpability in this.

      http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/law/11/19/hate.crimes.ap/index.html

      The free speech excuse remind me of lawyers who protect horrendous criminals and figure out a way to pat themselves on the back for doing so.

      You can have some courage, stand up against racism where you see it, and be a decent person. Or not.

      Sincerely,

      Mike

    22. Nobody Says:
      November 19th, 2007 at 3:45 pm

      “we do not censor or assert editorial control over the content of sites that we do host (aside from that which is illegal, of course)”

      Customer agrees to not have any content on their site that *advocates*, sells or in any way makes available tools or methods to send unsolicited e-mail or usenet postings (spam), or to use DreamHost Web Hosting’s Servers for relaying … Any complaint we receive about a violation of this … will result in immediate account cancellation without a refund.

      Is it illegal to *advocate* spam? I like spam. Spam is good advertising. Is this comment illegal?

    23. Mike Says:
      November 19th, 2007 at 4:03 pm

      So, in other words, you like freedom of speech when you use it to come here to promote that trash, make an ass out of yourself and threaten to harass businesses in hopes of costing them money… but you hate it when it’s used to express anything that you have a problem with.

      You’re in the wrong country.

      Now you’re going to say they’re not “decent” based on something as little as DNS service? I’m sure that weak attempt at reverse psychology will have Dreamhost shoving bibles down their customers’ throats in no time. You outsmarted them!

      Seriously, are you really too stupid to realize that every host on the planet hosts sites that would make someone like you cry?

    24. anonymous Says:
      November 20th, 2007 at 3:10 pm

      I hope you have saved up enough money to protect yourself from the class action lawsuit you are currnetly enduring due to violations of California Labor laws, failure to pay overtime wages, depriving workers of paid lunch and rest breaks….

      Overtime wages are 1.5 times the employee’s regular rate of pay in the state of California. Failure to provide breaks and/or pay overtime wages due, can result in stiff penalties, including but not limited to double damages and one hour of pay at the employees’ regular rate for each day that the employer failed to provide a lunch break or a meal break, plus attorneys’ fees and costs.

      Moreover, under the applicable laws, even a single employee can bring a class action or collective action lawsuit on behalf of all “similarly situated” plaintiffs working in the company violating the wage and hour laws.

      Overtime class actions in California usually arise in two scenarios. First, many companies “misclassify” workers as managers or assistant managers. In California, unlike the rest of the country, a manager or assistant manager must earn two times the minimum wage (approximately $28,000 per year) to qualify for an exemption from overtime pay.

      In addition, managers or assistant managers can lose their exempt status if, as a practical matter, more than 50% of the work they perform on a daily basis is work performed by non-exempt workers. For example, an assistant manager in a retail store who spends more than 50% of his or her time doing sales or answering phone calls — the same work performed by salespeople — would be entitled to receive overtime pay for all hours greater than 8 in any workday and all hours in excess of 40 per week.

      Second, many companies simply do not pay 1.5 times an employee’s regular rate of pay for overtime work in clear violation of state and federa law. We work with law firms handling both “misclassification” and regular failure to pay overtime class action suits. Typically, these firms work on a pure contingency fee basis.

    25. Kelly@DreamHost Says:
      November 20th, 2007 at 4:09 pm

      So you are telling me I shouldn’t insure my iPhone incase I’m a clutz and drop it or lose it? Costs me about $50 a year, but it seemed more important at the $600 price mark.

      I agree with Josh on this one, and my, uh, financial opportunities are much smaller than his currently! I never insure my phone. How often do you drop, and break, your cell phone? How often do you replace your phone with the new hot thing?

      You also don’t need the liability waiver on the rental car unless you actually plan on destroying the thing. If you needed it on your rental, you most certainly shouldn’t be driving in the first place.

    26. Mike Says:
      November 20th, 2007 at 6:59 pm

      Not that spamming retard again…

      You know, your made up lawsuit stories might carry more weight… if the page you’re linking to wasn’t about Registerfly’s lawsuit.

      If you’re going to post here about Registerfly lawsuits, maybe you should do it by thanking Dreamhost for giving out free hosting to Registerfly victims.

      I especially like the “no breaks” claim. Just about every picture I’ve ever seen of Dreamhost employees makes it look like they have more fun at work than many people have in their off-time.

    27. Mike Says:
      November 20th, 2007 at 7:05 pm

      I agree with Josh on this one, and my, uh, financial opportunities are much smaller than his currently!

      Really? You must be poor then, since Josh is barely worth $3 Billion. Hell, he’s probably the only guy in the hosting business that only has 3 private jets. :P

    28. Kelly@Dreamhost Says:
      November 20th, 2007 at 8:58 pm

      Sadly, I only have a timeshare on the one the admin team bought. It’s last year’s model, too!

    29. Binks Says:
      January 15th, 2008 at 2:25 pm

      Hmmm…

      I’d be concerned about not having decent auto insurance; especially with you being in the US.

      I’m not sure about state and federal laws in the US; but I believe here in Ontario $200,000 is the minimum level of third party liability.

      It’s not so common in Canada (”pain and suffering” has a hard limit in court cases) but especially in the US there are some giant settlements in the case of disability due to an auto accident.

      The odds are low, but you just might end up paying someone else’s medical bills and lost wages for the rest of your life if you only have minimum coverage.

      Settlements, as I understand it in the US, are practically limitless in these cases. With a potential cost of infinity, does that mean that you should ALWAYS max up the auto insurance (at least for third party liability – obviously if your car is totaled it’s not such a big deal).

      I know in Ontario, most people have $1 million – but some people are recommending even higher coverage nowadays.

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