I actually bought furniture the other day. New furniture. New furniture other than an office chair. I’ve basically never done this in my life. Emily and I bought a new bed when we lived in Berkeley, mostly at her insistence. She kept that one. Other than that, I’ve never bought anything more impressive than an office chair new. And suddenly I have a new plush microfiber overstuffed couch, armchair, and ottoman. It’s pretty surreal. For the last half-week, my living room has smelled like a furniture store and I keep walking by doing Krameresque starts every time I see the chocolate brown comfort that has invaded my quarters.

A funny thing happened on the way to exchanging meaningless electronic representations of meaningless green pieces of paper for fabric-covered stuffing, though. I was having a nice conversation with a pretty competent salesman who seemed genuinely interested in debate (either he was really good or really interested) and then, right after he’d quizzed me about all the ways he could improve his own public speaking (and thus, presumably, sales), he offered to make a side-bet with me. He offered to bet me money about the longevity of the furniture he was selling me.

To be fair, he offered to bet the furniture store’s money with me about this. On behalf of the store. Yes, folks, he offered me an insurance plan. An extended warranty. A fee for replacing the furniture, whatever happens to it. And I had been enjoying the interaction, so I did my best not to get angry.

Insurance has become a common, accepted, and even well-liked thing in our society. There’s a lot of rhetoric, some of it well-lampooned in this recent mac-n-cheese commercial campaign (I think it was in front of a movie or a YouTube clip at some point, because I don’t know how I otherwise would’ve seen it) about “security”, “peace of mind”, and “safety” associated with insurance. And since our government has decided to guarantee us almost none of these things in the US, it’s not terribly surprising that we go looking for it from corporations. The problem is that corporations are sleek, well-evolved, profit-making machines that have no regard for anything else. Kind of like sharks without the remorse.

So insurance is nothing of the kind. It’s a wager that I’m invited to make against myself. It’s saying that I bet I will cost myself more than the bet on the table through my own stupidity or contact with danger or, in this case, likelihood of ruining furniture. It’s saying that I want something bad to happen to me so I don’t look like a dummy for making this bet in the first place. Or at least lowering the possibility of my best-case outcome to losing that bet. And increasingly, corporations are offering them at every turn. Warranties and insurance on almost every item (maybe not quite macaroni – yet), deals and offers that sound so good. For just a little extra, you can make sure that you don’t have to be careful in that rental car or with that chair or on that hotel visit. Almost nothing that costs more than $100 these days is sold without the offer of a tack-on fee for replacing it.

The problem, of course, besides the philosophical issues with betting against oneself, is that these profit-seeking missiles know the bet is rigged in their favor. They have armies of staff evaluating and bean-counting and figuring out how to maximize profit and have it outstrip any potential liability from people signing up for insurance. The odds have been critically determined, proven, and reproven, to be against you any time you take that bet. Because otherwise, they would have no incentive whatsoever to offer you the bet in the first place. And trust me, the furniture store knows more about furniture costs and longevity than you do. The car company knows more about cars, the macaroni company… you get it. So they know that they’re going to make money on that bet, regardless of what happens. Maybe you’ll take it and get lucky and need a replacement, upgrading your stolen insurance money to a lottery ticket. But since when were lottery tickets sold at furniture outlets?

So when my otherwise friendly salesman looks me in the eye and offers me a $129 bet that I’m going to want to take the scissors into my chair at some point in the next 5 years and get a brand-new one for free, I say no thanks. Granted, there’s also a small moral compunction here that makes me recognize that, were I ruthless capitalist, I would throw the furniture off the roof about 4.5 years into my 5-year term and then say “oops, look what I did – I guess I need new stuff now” and that there would be this Friedmanesque voice in the back of my head telling me I was a fool if I didn’t do that if I made the $129 bet. Of course, there’s also the other issue that the new stuff would presumably come with a new bet, maybe $159 now since I’d proven I was risky, for that furniture. And if I was the kind of guy who took the bet in the first place, I should surely take it again. And that’s how these things guarantee that they make money no matter what, because the odds of you calling in that bet sequentially are pretty low, and by that time you’ve basically paid for the full price of the replacement furniture.

There’s a reason that gift cards are everywhere now, vast quantities of them hanging tantalizingly on racks at every grocery store and convenience shop. There’s a reason everyone wants to tack on a warranty and tries harder to sell you that than the initial item itself. There’s a reason three cents of soda sells for a couple bucks at most places and five or seven at movies and plane stations. And you really have the audacity to tell me that this is efficiency? Really?