[JoeF]

This thread invites a focus on a long-term scenario of having a US Hawks org without third-party insurance.
Looking over hang gliding text broadly one sees a deep acceptance of going the third-party insurance route.
Assume the different world and vision and see what might be seen:: What would be possible in hang gliding in the USA without third-party insurance? How might individual members conduct themselves? What are the alternative ways of making agreements with property owners? Distinguish "organized events" from "individual hang gliding actions" while mulling these matters; let "organized events" consider their own insurance challenges. Distinguish personal medical insurance from the topic of third-party insurance. Consider recreational laws where permissions without owner liability ensues and trespass conditions. Lawyers might chime in. Consider ratings via Internet voting when one publishes his or her progress ---peer review and recognition blogging. Membership in a non-third-party-insurance org could still carry out many services of value to those who hang glide; identifying and evaluating just what those services could be may form part this thread. A lawyer might chime in to show ways the members would not be liable for flight actions of members.

Some teasers:
1. So far, I do not recall seeing anything about Otto Lilienthal and his brother Gustav having third-party insurance. Similarly for Richard Miller. I wonder about Volmer Jensen, Horten Brothers, Wright Brothers, etc.
2. So far, I do not recall seeing any evidence of the Bereck Beach hang gliders for first decade of 1900s having third-party insurance.
3. I have performed hang gliding flights during 42 years; only two of those years had third-party insurance coverage; those two covered years did not include any injury to third parties; buying into the system of coverage included buying into a culture that teased traffic, flight parks, equipment constraints, and a urge not to be "sketchy" in behavior.
4. How much hang gliding could be done safely without third-party insurance coverage?
5. Where could hang gliding be done without third-party insurance coverage?
6. Public parks do not force third-party insurance coverage over park patrons that walk, run, play ball, fly kites (!), whistle, roll, tumble, climb trees, hike, run with blankets, etc. ...thousands of activities. People have been wing running in parks without third-party insurance for ages.
7. How much person-to-person sharing of commentary in text and in voice at field could occur without having third-party insurance; share the knowledge among pilots (day-one-dreamer pilot to master pilot)?
8. To use the USA airspace for gliding does not require third-party insurance and does not require fiduciary membership in any corporation.
9. People run with various amounts of gliding when both feet are off the ground; high jumpers, hurdlers, pole vaulters, skippers, long jumpers ... and running horses also do gliding during their activity.
10. Gliding is done by human runners, though in a tiny manner. Human runners can fall on the public and on the property of others; and when they do fall on such third parties and on the property of others to an injurious extent, then the runner might be found to be liable for damages and injuries, in which in some cases the runner might have wished he or she had third-party insurance. Run in a manner where your running does not hurt people or property (whether or not insured)!
11. Insurance companies do not want to pay the third parties, unless forced to do so.
12. Insurance companies do not want to loose profit. Payers of third-party insurance, I am guessing, as a body, members of USHPA pay out more funds than go to benefits payouts (so profit and administration costs are paid in the insurance company). Why not just pay the benefits and forget the profit and administration? Fellow pooling upon need; would the community of hang gliders pool help?
13. I expect to be gliding for the next 30 years without having third-party insurance coverage; this blocks me from using some organized flight parks. There is estimated by me to be easily a million sites outside of organized flight parks that I will tease myself to consider as a flying site; but I will not have time to fly all of them, for sure.
14. Some pilots will live a large part of their flight lives within organized flight events and organized flight parks; the insurance coverage will be in place for those happenings.
15. How many billions of people in the world already do some gliding (when running)? Almost all of them do not carry third-party insurance for their gliding. As soon as Lloyd Licher brought in the move to insurance, I said to myself: "That is the beginning of the end of free personal self-soaring flight in that strand of activity." Constraints and oversight continued to grow and grow and grow; complexity of participation grew; insurance companies press for a style and culture; the policyholder cows and bends and morphs to fit a style and culture. Is there an alternative path? Citizen playing in the park?