Damn.... this makes my “problems” look completely trivial
I’m curious if you have an opinion on how much principal–agent conflict there would be, if you or your mother had tried to outsource this work (assuming competency of the specialists).
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Replying to @KevinSimler @context_ing
Right, I nearly added a tweet about principal-agent when originally replying to you! There are lots of categories of things that offer pieces of the service one would want, but most of them are fatally compromised by principal-agent conflicts.
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To take the original example, there are insurance advisors and insurance agents (different things), but they are mainly or entirely compensated by the insurance companies, acting as outsourced/freelanced sales people, so their “advice” is unreliable.
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And, they don’t do the main thing you actually want, which is not selecting an insurance company, but dealing with their paperwork and screw-ups and (likely-fraudulent gray-area) coverage denials.
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[One minor current hassle: my mother’s dental insurance says she’s too old to get any dentistry so they won’t pay for emergency dental work done in November. If this were true, which it clearly isn’t, you should have terminated her policy when she got too old, I think?
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The cost of the dental work is ~$1k and it’s probably not worth my time to try to fight this, but presumably a single call from a Dangerous Professional would get them in line, and they could charge me $100 for that, and everyone would be happy except insurance co.]
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Also, of course, insurance is just one of 89 major aspects of adulting in America, and you don’t want to have to deal with 89 adulting-as-a-service providers; ideally only one, but at most a handful.
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So for this to work, the service absolutely has to be compensated only by the customer, with rigorous and transparent policies against accepting commissions or other kick-backs from providers. That means it will seem shockingly expensive, to middle-class people, initially.
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(Throughout the current economy, everyone is used to getting what seems like something-for-nothing that actually isn’t, because the webs of compensation are opaque. This radically distorts incentives. Broader theme re rent-seeking, probably obvious, let’s set aside for now)
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There is a business category that initially claims to do what one would want, called “personal concierge.” They market themselves to the very rich and claim to be able to do essentially anything for you. The most successful one is: https://www.quintessentially.com/services
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Although they *say* they can deal with routine stuff, virtually all their marketing is about being a high-end travel agent, plus they can do ridiculous things like get a live trained elephant to your child’s birthday party.
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(That’s re the category in general, not just Quintessentially specifically.) Afaict they are not going to deal with insurance bills for you, or get the dishwasher fixed, or sort out Mom’s house title snafu, or fill in her 239 change-of-address forms.
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Closer to the mark is personal-assistant and personal accountancy services. These are often individuals, or at most very small companies, that market more to an upper-middle-class demographic. They can handle some fraction of this sort of bullshit.
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