IE:
1. insurance spreads a hurt across a society, using money as an instrument.
2. If insurance doesn't work anymore then the hurt is too large for society!
This linking of 1 and 2 may not be entirely true due to insurance not necessarily being a perfectly efficient "spreader" across society. But I think in practical terms it is close enough.
Canary in the coal mine:
It would be fair say a good portion of the population don't understand the maths of a weather event just how astronomically expensive a sudden flood is.
In our small town in the last 5 years, we've had 2-3 different "1 in 100 year" floods within 30km of each other (highly localised dramatic flooding and slips). To the point "1 in 100 year" is now a standing joke.
I know you guys have also had it bad over there.
I expect the insurance companies will start removing flood cover soon. Which then becomes a bit of a shit show with mortgages. Or will raise the premiums so high that they're effectively uninsurable.
A friend went to visit NZ and 100km/hr winds was just another day...
As a side note there is another insurance disaster in the making - shadow fleet carrying millions of barrels of oil in old ships with opaque ownership and even murkier maintenance history...they don't do the whole insurance thing. Only a matter of time before the world faces a very awkward "who's picking up the bill" discussion. Small one already happened in the Black sea.
From what I've seen, this isn't always the case. My parents' insurer stopped offering fire coverage in their area with no option to buy at a higher price.
https://www.foxbusiness.com/lifestyle/california-insurance-c...
They just calculate the premium realise nobody is going to go for it and don’t offer it. Not because they can’t but because there is no point
Same outcome but the reason isn’t “uninsurable”.
"bro I am not yolo'ing 10K into 1DTEs, I am pOoLiNg mY rIsK and DivErsIfYing"
Second, governments and private companies should be looking at (socializing) mitigations that will keep risk within tolerable levels (without caring whether some legacy insurer continues to be able to gouge cusotmers). If there's a clear and identifiable threat, we can build dikes or sea walls or spillways or whatever it is that can alleviate the issue. "Think of the insurance implications" is a silly distraction.
I've noticed it's done wonders for your healthcare system
The name might be similar, but the products actually function very differently. Health insurance in many countries covers routine, predictable "losses" like primary care for strep throat as well as long-term "losses" like prescription medication.
A lot of this is because a traditional insurance model isn't palatable when it comes to healthcare. You can't really employ price or service discrimination against high-risk people with preexisting conditions, like you can with auto insuring a Ferrari, or home insuring a coastal house in a hurricane zone.
Not to mention life insurance! You can't just look assume things work the same way because they have similar names.
What many don’t know: if you don’t like your insurance cost, it’s because of state legislation and cost in YOUR state - not federal govt.
I think this is the primary driver. However, we can't ignore how insurance company behavior also influences the pricing. The feds play a bigger role in this than you might think with things like Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement rates and residency funding leading to provider scarcity.
The moral hazard is killer here. I fear that in practice what this means is that the rest of the US will end up bailing out the gormless Floridians who refuse to stop building McMansions on the coast. Insert the gif of Bugs Bunny cutting off Florida and letting it drift off into the Caribbean.
[1] https://prospect.org/environment/2025-06-05-texas-legislatur...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-04-24/home-insu... | https://archive.today/g8Ic5
[3] https://www.lw.com/en/insights/one-big-beautiful-bill-new-la...
This could've been a collective action problem at the nation state level; it no longer is due to political choices by people who believe a global climate phenomenon is a hoax. So those who can afford it must go it alone for the foreseeable future.
SALT limits have been bumped to $40k from $10k: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/salt-tax-deduction
Lots of ways to make this work with policy.
Florida is a tourist state. Everyone loves Disney and the beach, but any money from tourism is just brought in from somewhere else. Florida's tourism industry is also extractive, and tourist travel also causes untold climate damage.
But California? We have agriculture. We have software. We have logistics -- everything in your house probably came through Long Beach and on our highways. We even have our own Disney so we don't have to fly to yours. California's industries aren't extractive. They're productive. And we're careful to minimize or eliminate the externalities of our industries while we work to create the things you use every day. In many ways, California is America. Without us, the country would shrink and shrivel day by day until you've extracted all the good and left everyone else nothing.
So high carbon as well. Texas, and Flordia especially also have ag. CA has a lot of tourism too. Claiming that CA is the only source of "good" is a bit over the top.
Exactly as much as my state, as it so happens.
* Don't build in the WUI. Enforce/enact building codes that take into account NFPA's Firewise USA.
* Don't build on the coast. Enforce/enact building codes that take into account IBHS FORTIFIED techniques.
* Don't allow building / residency permits in floodplains.
The key is to make it very easy to rebuild whatever you want within the constraint of new codes that ensure your building can handle its environment. If we let a california happen and hold everything up in development hell so almost nothing is being rebuilt six months to a year after the destruction is the real economy killer that is relevant here.
Home insurance is definitely skyrocketing, I live in Minnesota and my premium tripled in 2024.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_Property_Insurance_...
The problem is preference. There are more survivable structures and construction methods, but many people don't want to do them because they don't look as good. This isn't just a sea leave thing that might be better handled at the government level. We can look at stuff like the recent LA fires. If the stare was serious about fire prevention, they would apply the wildlands fire code to new construction in the city. Some people can't even be bothered about stuff like keeping dry brush away from their houses. As the country continues to build bigger and more expensive houses, we will continue to see prices rise.
Exactly what makes insurance a "racket"?
Now, at a societal and governmental level, that is absolutely telling you that you should be looking at what mitigations are possible.
Otherwise they can increase the price to match the risk. Even if the risk is unpredictable they could increase the price until they were comfortable with the risk, or themselves get insurances to cover the risk of providing insurance.
You can’t insure against catastrophes that are basically guaranteed to happen.
It’s too late to restructure to prevent catastrophic climate change. Seems like all we can do is restructure to survive and take care of one another for as long as we can.
Maybe the people with the most money? I have hopes society will have done something to reduce wealth inequality by then - but right now they are distant hopes.
whatwrongwyou•6mo ago
anoxor•6mo ago
Way past anything scientific. Spend 2 minutes googling “anthrophemoric co2 percentage”
oezi•6mo ago
Certainly the rise in Co2 from 280 ppm to 420 ppm since the onset of industrialization is rather very likely due to human actions.