Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Is the world becoming uninsurable?

charleshughsmith.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

891–900 of 1001 posts

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#891

Post by to11mtm »

petsfed wrote: post #880
daveguy wrote: post #879

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, the list of tornadoes the GP refers to in Europe are mostly F0-F2 severity. These don't often cause high fatalities and injuries in the US either (on par with what's reported there). The problem is that tornadoes in the US Midwest and Southeast are often in the F3-F5 range, which are much deadlier. An F3 tornado includes winds to 165 mph, which is considered a category 5 in the hurricane scale. They don't last…

There's also that, but I didn't go to the effort of investigating the rate of various strengths. I'll bet their data explorer shows that aspect of the phenomenon too. I suspect that a major factor is that the great plains of North America are at a lower latitude than e.g. the Eurasian steppes, so 1) there are fewer people living there and 2) the confluence of meteorological circumstances needed to generate a lot of t…

> 2) the confluence of meteorological circumstances needed to generate a lot of tornadoes (and therefore a larger population of very destructive tornadoes) just aren't present anywhere else in the world.

This is in fact a huge part of our tornado risk in the US. The long north-south region of mountainous/high elevation (i.e. the rockies) going into a large low elevation flat region, helps create the 'layering' of different air temperatures that cause tornadoes once the current changes enough for the top/bottom layer to turn into a column.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#892

Post by bgnn »

Panzer04 wrote: post #259
_tariky wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Yugoslavia, in 1969, one of the biggest earthquakes occurred, destroying several cities. After that, the country’s leaders decided to change building codes. Even today, although Yugoslavia no longer exists, the countries that adopted those codes have homes capable of withstanding earthquakes up to 7.5 on the Richter scale. My main point is that if we face major natural disasters, we need to take action to mitigate…

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.

in case of earthquakes: to not to die.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#893

Post by bgnn »

Panzer04 wrote: post #553
Almondsetat wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Not true. In the 2023 earthquake in Turkey 10s of thousands of apartment buildings collapsed. Official death toll is 60k or so but it's widely known that the actual number is at least twice that.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Turkey%E2%80%93Syria_ea...

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#894

Post by bgnn »

404mm wrote: post #846
surajrmal wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you own higher end vehicles or possibly an EV? Or you're seeing those sorts of rates with something like a Honda Accord?

1yo and 3yo “technically” luxury brands. But the car values combined is under $100k

wow 100k for 2 cars. that's expensive.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#895

Post by wrfrmers »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #781
wrfrmers wrote: post #635

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public insurance. For housing, healthcare, maybe even cars (since the coprorate political complex insists that we HAVE to drive everywhere). At some point, we have to accept that the middlemen are siphoning value, not providing any. Vanguard it and let elected admins set the codes.

> Public insurance. For housing This is California’s FAIR plan [1]. It’s a wealth transfer from non-homeowners to homeowners, homeowners in low-risk areas to high-risk homeowners, and from low-value homeowners to rich ones. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_FAIR_Plan

That was one (corrupt) option. Another would have been to draw funds by taxing homeowners, specifically, and limiting payouts by fire risk, capping at a mean replacement cost, not per-house. That that's not what happened is an issue with the implementation, not the base concept.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#896

Post by hintymad »

dlcarrier wrote: post #888
hintymad wrote: post #882

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Residents who no longer have any insurers available can buy insurance from the state, but its far more expensive than the plans it rejected from private insurers Sounds like a state-run racketeering business

No, it's likely running at a loss.

Holy shit!

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#897

Post by ryao »

0u89e wrote: post #751
ryao wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall reading somewhere that the Indians had done controlled burns before Europeans settled in the parts of the U.S. where fires are now a problem. European settlers who displaced them did not continue the controlled burns and then fires became a problem. Apparently, if you do regular controlled burns, the severity of fires is reduced and healthy trees survive it. When you do not, when fires do occur, all trees di…

I recall reading the same thing, however I do recall that they were East coast native Indians, that cleared oak tree forests as a hunting grounds, so completelly unrelated to the problem in California. The story was about native land rights and if such looking after their hunting grounds can be seen as claims on property rights, which Indians did not knew as a concept, so it is a moot point anyway. The issues that pl…

I thought that the idea that they did not understand property rights was a misconception. The different tribes had their own territories, and they clearly had an idea of the territory belonging to one or another. This is also why people negotiating with them for land would use underhanded negotiating tactics such as getting their leaders drunk for the negotiations so that they would agree to absurd deals. If they did not understand property rights, there would have been no point to doing that.

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#898

Post by [deleted] »

onlypassingthru wrote: post #780
0u89e wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recall reading the same thing, however I do recall that they were East coast native Indians, that cleared oak tree forests as a hunting grounds, so completelly unrelated to the problem in California. The story was about native land rights and if such looking after their hunting grounds can be seen as claims on property rights, which Indians did not knew as a concept, so it is a moot point anyway. The issues that pl…

Yosemite NP, especially the iconic valley, looked vastly different when the Europeans first arrived in the nineteenth century. It was sparsely forested and had lots of meadows. After a 150 years of no controlled burns, it's a dense forest down there. It turns out the native peoples were managing the forest, after all.

[deleted]

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#899

Post by lezojeda »

tobyhinloopen wrote: post #283

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.

[dead]

Re: Is the world becoming uninsurable?

#900

Post by Melatonic »

smileysteve wrote: post #681
sandworm101 wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wildfires are not the problem. They happen all the time without causing billion-dollar insurance claims. Insurance is always assets x risk. The issue is expensive flamable housing (assets) in a wildfire area (risk). We ask for trouble when we create million-dollar wooden houses surrounded by manicured gardens in desert enviroments. And build on a slope facing pervailing winds. The answer is concrete/brick houses with…

A forward looking (part of a) solution for Malibu would be the county acquiring and maintaining beach paths every few houses. Prescribed 10' wide fire breaks. This solves the fire problem AND the limited access to a public resource that is common in Malibu. Ideally a permeable surface without any growth, cleared at least 2x a year.

That would only account for the small amount of homes right on the beach itself - the majority of Malibu is in the hills above
Post reply on HN