This sort of thinking leads to financial crises

The European Court of Justice is about to decide whether British insurance firms will be allowed to offer policies with lower premiums to young women or whether it can be said to infringe that magical concept, equality. This is what happens when business is controlled by people who do not have the faintest concept of basic economics and have never had to deal with any kind of financial issues.

There is a reason why young women get car insurance at more advantageous terms than young men: they are less likely to have major accidents, being more careful and less harum-scarum drivers. D'uh!

While equality is something we must all espouse when it comes to, for example, equality before the law (a concept that seems to be under pressure, as I hope to show in another blog), there is no equality as far as financial or actuarial risk is concerned. None. Insurance companies calculate quite carefully (though, undoubtedly, they sometimes get it wrong) what any individual's risk value is. It is not something that can be decided by notions of gender equality.

Then again, how different is this from our politicians demanding that banks lend money to small businesses regardless of whether they are a good risk or not? Or same politicians planning to set up a bank, using seized property and taxpayer backing in order to lend money to politically approved businesses regardless of their fiscal worth? Or, infamously, mortgage lenders being forced not to "discriminate" against certain applicants for mortgages on the grounds of them never being able to pay back what they borrow?