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Is the world becoming uninsurable?

charleshughsmith.substack.com

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Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#551

American, living in area prone to natural disasters: "Is the WHOLE WORLD becoming uninsurable?" The answer is obviously "no" since there are other parts of the world that don't live on a hurricane highway nor build houses made from firewood in an area prone to wildfires.

It’s possible that solve the hurricane problems with proper building regulations and lower the risk of huge wildfires with controlled burning. But the US as always prefers to pretend that there’s nothing to be done when other parts of the world has figured it out. We have cyclones here similar to the hurricanes in the US and usually it just blows over some trees maybe causes a power outage. The absolute worst I have…

Hurricanes are mostly just flood damage in the US, and some wind/debris damage exactly like the blown over trees you mention.

Houses generally aren't destroyed by hurricanes in the sense of "the storm literally ripped them up", they're made uninhabitable by storm surges (flood).

The scary ones are tornados.

And tornados do genuinely fuck shit up. Even in those "enlightened" parts of the world you think have proper building regulations. If you're interested, go look at the recaps of tornado damage where they hit Europe here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_tornadoes_and...

Note the number of homes destroyed and people killed - plenty of both, even in those countries that prefer brick/concrete homes.

Hurricanes throw branches. Tornados throw cars.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government banned insurance companies from raising prices. They used tax payer money to subsidize this for a while which increase home prices. Eventually insurance companies stopped offering insurance. When state actors even dabble in socialism disasters happen people die.

> The government banned insurance companies from raising prices. They used tax payer money to subsidize this for a while which increase home prices. Eventually insurance companies stopped offering insurance. Obviously. Such a move by the government is just plain stupid. > When state actors even dabble in socialism disasters happen people die. No need to overgeneralize. Not every stupid move is immediately "socialism"…

> It's obvious to every socialist that this move was stupid

Is it? Or is this post hoc rationalization? I really dislike playing the “both sides” card, even for a moment, but it’s hard to deny that there are questionable takes on both ends.

I agree with you that not every regulation equates to socialism, and it’s ridiculous to claim it is. However, the narrative of “insurance companies bad” is incredibly prevalent among left-leaning perspectives, and any regulation around insurance premiums tends to be automatically celebrated as a clear victory.

Ironically (because it's a free market argument), it’s a not-uncommon argument that if insurance companies can’t provide their services for no more than some arbitrarily-decided amount annually, they’re being inefficient or greedy and should go bankrupt and let a new competitor take the market.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why bother building a better home when it's cheaper to buy insurance and rebuild later? This is why prices are important - sometimes it's sensible to build cheaper houses without these safeties if the risk isn't there, but if the risk does exist then it needs to be priced right to provide that incentive.

How about the cost of your life ? If the house resists the earthquake and you are inside it, you don't die.

We were speaking in the context of fires previously - in which case it's usually more about preserving the neighbourhood and land than anything else, you have to evacuate regardless.

Earthquakes are different and you'd need a house that stood anyway (though I'd guess most houses don't have a problem with earthquakes insofar as not collapsing on inhabitants, though they'd probably be damaged)

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#554
I'm no insurance expert, but I know that insurance usually doesn't cover what's called force majeure — ie. "great forces" such as natural disasters. That's because insurance doesn't work if all insurees (or a large proportion) need to be compensated at the same time.

So my question is: is it even possible to insure against these events — e.g. hurricanes, forest fires, earthquakes — given that all insurance takers may need to collect compensation at once (in which case the price of a house insurance would need to be at least the same as the price of a new house).

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately these discussions almost never go well, because it seems that most people have at best a surface level understanding of what insurance is and how it works, and everyone is convinced that it's a full scam and insurance companies are fabricating everything I have the exact same experience when discussing anything insurance related: People have wild assumptions about how much profit insurance companies a…

When you point out that, for example, health insurance profits are low single digit percentage of overall healthcare costs they just don’t believe it. Or they see that as a cute bit of misdirection. Profits are capped as a percentage of healthcare costs, sure. Healthcare costs are not capped. Drive up the cost of care, drive up the profits. You ever think it's curious that for-profit insurance companies pay out 2–3x…

> Or they see that as a cute bit of misdirection. Profits are capped as a percentage of healthcare costs, sure. [...]

You know what else is "a cute bit of misdirection"? Mentioning that profits are capped without mentioning why it's that way in the first place.

>You ever think it's curious that for-profit insurance companies pay out 2–3x what Medicare does for the same procedures?

...because the government low-balls healthcare providers?

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#556
post #529
post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan is probably not a good comparison for home insurance because houses in Japan typically only have a 20 to 30 year lifespan. After that they are usually torn down and a new house is built.

Why would anyone tear down a 20 year old house? Where I live the houses are 80-100 years old and they’re better built and nicer to live in than most newer homes.

The traditional materials used in Japanese construction of everyday homes aren't really in the "built to last" category: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1DP5xpM3Y8 . In some cases, trying to make a house that was resistant to floods, fires and earthquakes at the same time would have been prohibitively expensive. I'm sure that led to forming habits that have continued into more modern eras of building styles where it's less required.

They're also smaller, which makes construction costs cheaper which means people are more likely to make dramatic changes when fashion changes. And then there's more of a culture of prefab house building rather than extensions etc. Planning is also a lot more liberal which allows the rebuilt house to be more different and also reduces the cost of the process.

I think even in Europe some of the older houses are houses of theseus though. The exterior shell is the same, but there's plenty of buildings in the local city centre that were tenements, then small business offices, then apartments, with significant remodeling that occurred. Or the house I used to live in was built in the 1880s, extended in the 1950s and significantly modernised in the 2000s. Each time there would have involved largely gutting the interior and rebuilding.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#557

American, living in area prone to natural disasters: "Is the WHOLE WORLD becoming uninsurable?" The answer is obviously "no" since there are other parts of the world that don't live on a hurricane highway nor build houses made from firewood in an area prone to wildfires.

Honest question. Why when people describe wood framed homes do they always phrase it like houses made from "firewood", "sticks", "twigs" etc? It at least for me always detracts from the argument at hand. You could just as easily build a wood framed home with an exterior shell that is fire resistant using modern materials or brick.

Well, we are commenting on an article specifically about the spread of fire in urban areas, as we've seen in LA this week.

Here in the seismically stable UK, we had problems with fire spreading in urban areas [1] in 1666. So we banned wood exteriors on buildings. It works pretty well if you don't need to worry about earthquakes or hurricanes; brick doesn't burn.

This lesson is taught in history classes to 10 year olds, and they don't tend to go into other countries' construction traditions, or reasons not to use bricks.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_London

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume the foundations are concrete, and the rest is wood, cardboard and any combination of the two, so I could see that the foundation would survive a fire

Get out of here, who is building a home out of cardboard?

Drywall is two sheets of paper/cardboard cladding (increasingly) low density gypsum.

Soundproofing material is also often made of cardboard (though we do have alternatives for that, unlike drywall).

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#559
post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

was that understanding formed by Fox News, perhaps?

Didn't know that fox news was in charge of forestry in LA.

Nope. Last time I checked, they were in the business of spewing hate and misinformation (sorry: Alternative facts), undermining any sensible discussion.

Accusing thousands of people of being incompetent is more telling of you than them.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unfortunately these discussions almost never go well, because it seems that most people have at best a surface level understanding of what insurance is and how it works, and everyone is convinced that it's a full scam and insurance companies are fabricating everything I have the exact same experience when discussing anything insurance related: People have wild assumptions about how much profit insurance companies a…

Health Insurance IS a huge racket. Insurance profits are only a small slice. Executive compensation isn't part of profits. The profits of the required sole source medical supplies company isn't part of insurance profits. The contracts, salaries, benefit packages, overpayments, and waste of healthcare systems and pharmaceutical companies aren't reflected in insurance profits. Just looking at the raw profit percentages…

>Health Insurance IS a huge racket. Insurance profits are only a small slice. Executive compensation isn't part of profits.

"Executive compensation" is even a "smaller slice" than profits, orders of magnitude smaller.

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