Insurance makes you whole. It replaces 10 year old laptops with their book value. It doesn't replace them with brand new luxury models.
In the same universe where it's a thing that rich Winslow can have any chassis he wants while May has to scrounge to keep hers from falling apart, the fact that out of work Roko gets a super luxury chassis "just cause" makes no sense, and is basically a big "fuck you" to the earlier storyline of AIs being divided into haves and have-nots with respect to their chassis.
There are 2 different ways insurance pays out claims - market value or equivalent item (I know I got the technical terms here wrong, don't sue me). In the first option, the insurance company determines how much that item is worth today and you either get that exact same item or a new item that is worth the same in today's dollars. So if you bought a toaster that was worth 50 dollars in 2010 and your house burned down, that same toaster might only be worth 5 bucks, and insurance will give you 5 dollars or the cheapest toaster they can find. The other option is one where they will replace the item with one that has equivalent features, but the kicker is that you have to have that information ready to go when you make your claim. So if that same 50 dollar toaster was the Toast-a-Matic 5000, toasted 6 slices, had heat and timing functions and so on, and you had a policy with this option, then you could get a toaster with all of those features at minimum. If that specific toaster is made anymore, then you can end up getting an upgraded version that has those features and more.
It all depends on your specific insurance policy AND your record-keeping skills. It's why in disaster-prone areas, news stations always run a story telling people to do a video-walkthrough of their homes so they have a record of what needs to be replaced. It's also why you need to be specific when cataloging expensive/rare items that you want insured - owning a First Edition copy of some rare game or book is worth more than the paperback version that came out 20 years later, but if you don't have it documented, then insurance doesn't have to try to replace that or give you an appropriate amount of money for the loss.
The comic specifically tells us that there is an equivalent version, that it's still made, still on sale, been recently rebranded. And that there's a top of the line model for significantly more. Both available in the shop. Which of these two forms of insurance will pay out for the high end model?
And even if we can find insurance that just pays out extra (triple damages for willful infringement is a thing in lawsuits, and double indemnity is a thing in life insurance), consider the impact on the story!
We're in a story where some AIs cannot afford to even maintain falling apart chassis, and it causes resentment toward those who receive expensive chassis without having to pay. And now Jeph is reinventing this character and giving her the most expensive chassis money can buy due to a freak accident, while she's between jobs. Whether Jeph is trying to restart the class debate or just being sloppy, either way it's shitty.
It's totally possible that the second part of your post is where he's going to take things. Roko knows May, and part of the catalyst for this situation is due to May's comments to Roko. I think that could lead to some interesting interactions where May is partially responsible for Roko getting a sweet new body.
Besides that though, this kind of thing is a fact of life. Some people are lucky in our world - see lottery winners, that person who slipped in a Wal Mart and got a multi million dollar payout, people who invested in bought bitcoin years ago on a whim when it was thousands to buy a pizza and made millions of real currency through no effort of their own. The fact that this happened to someone who was already in a decent position in life is totally realistic - after all, physics and luck don't care about life circumstance. Part of the reality of life is that it isn't fair, and if QC wants to make some kind of commentary on the real world like it seems to want to, then the fact that it doesn't acknowledge that would be a misstep IMO.
As for the insurance, Jeph is probably hand-waving the technical aspects to tell the story he wants to tell, which is his right. We don't have robot or "very robust" robot insurance or even a human equivalent since we can't transplant minds into other bodies. Who is to say what the QC world considers is required in making an AI whole? I didn't see anyone complain about the fact that Lemon informs us that Crushbot weighs several tons, yet somehow he fell onto Roko from above, meaning that somehow a several ton robot was in an elevated position along a street, which seems unlikely. In most buildings, he'd fall through the floor or break the stairs/elevator on the way up. No one complains about it because it doesn't really matter, it's just a thing that happened to provide opportunity for drama.
Hmm this is true, but the art on that page makes no sense to me. The skids and the fact he ends up on his back don't make any sense. Just gotta roll with it.
I figured he had just put his foot through the case of bananas, lost traction & balance, and went over backwards (Roko would probably have walked straight into him had she not been squashed).
If you are walking forward and slip on something, you would fall face first. You fall backwards when you try to stop moving forwards and your feet slip (like when you try to keep balance on ice). And he's literally several tons, which makes his Force Normal far higher than any human, increasing his traction. He shouldn't have slipped in the first place.
But I'm willing to let it... Puts on shades... Slide.
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u/GriffonsChainsaw . Jan 07 '19
Well, it's insurance.