Planet Insurance: The fable of the wood people

One upon a time there was a land of wood and bricks. The capital had two cities. One was built entirely of bricks. Inside the brick buildings lived the king and all who worked for him.

The other city was built of wood and, apart from wooden homes, it had huge warehouses to store large amounts of wood. Everyone in the wooden city worked on counting the pieces of wood, which was the currency for the brick and the wood people.

It was essential for them to pay their bills and heat their homes.
Now, there was a law that a king introduced many years ago. Its origin was lost in the mists of time.

No one could even remember who the king was. The law forced everyone who was working to save up wood, and this was kept by the warehouse wood people. When they retired, people in the brick houses received plenty of wood each month until they died, but most people in the wooden houses had barely enough wood to survive.

The exceptions were the owners of the wood warehouses. They had lots of wood, because every time people took wood from them they took some of it for themselves.

Also, they knew everything about it. They did not share this knowledge and kept it in special decision trees. If anyone wanted to get the opinion of the decision tree they had to pay the warehouse wood people some wood. So these wood people became even richer.

One day, a new king came to power. He was not stuck in the old ways and liked to make bold, popular decisions. He especially wanted to be loved by the all of the people so he would be remembered in history, unlike the old king whose name was lost in the mists of time. So he decided to change the old law.

Now people could have as much of the wood that they had put in the warehouses as they wanted when they retired. They could either continue to take little bits, or they could take much more and use it as they desired. Everyone rejoiced, except for the warehouse wood people.

This made the new king even happier because he hated them. He also guessed that a lot of people would take a lot of wood when they retired so he could take some of it through a tax. The old king had a massive wood tax so that people wouldn’t break the old law. The new king reduced the tax, which was a very popular decision.

Everything went well until the people asked him: how can we decide whether to get our wood and what should we do with it if we do? Only the decision trees knew the answer. The king had to talk to warehouse wood people who said: “We have the decision trees and we must be paid in wood to use them!”

The king came up with a plan. The warehouse wood people would pay some of the brick people and they would use that money to grow their own decision trees. It would be free for the people retiring because the warehouse wood people were paying for the trees.

However, there was no happy ending because the brick people’s decision trees didn’t work, and they had to go to the warehouse wood people after.

The moral of the tale is: ill-thought-out policy decisions lead to equally ill-thought-out decisions.