this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2025
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[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 72 points 5 days ago (6 children)

wow, its almost as if we should cut off the heads of insurance CEOs and nationalize them all into one low cost government plan thats paid for with pennies on the dollar in taxes.

lol, who am I kidding. Idiot Americans will always prefer paying 3000 dollars for bad coverage, rather than pay 100 in taxes for great coverage.

[–] derf82@lemmy.world 34 points 5 days ago (7 children)

With climate change, there is no option for “low cost” plan, government or no.

You can’t constantly have massive losses like these fires in a single area all paying out claims and expect to pay them off with low premiums.

[–] Sanctus@lemmy.world 23 points 5 days ago

I haven't seen it in the comments yet but this is just the death spiral of climate change. Everything will just get worse from here on out as long as society operates the way it does. To everyone's "surprise" I'm sure.

[–] solstice@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago

Yeah, I really do wonder when the government and rest of the people start to seriously consider if it is worth it dropping $50 billion on places like SoCal and South Florida every few years or so. At some point you need to do the math and ask hard questions about whether it is worth it, and the answer damn well may be no.

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[–] Yawweee877h444@lemmy.world 21 points 5 days ago (2 children)

You had me at cutting off the heads of CEOs.

Guillotines go brrrrrrrrr

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[–] caboose2006@lemm.ee 11 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Or, you know, tackle climate change. But both are equally unlikely.

[–] kent_eh@lemmy.ca 7 points 5 days ago (8 children)

You'd think that insurance companies would be on the forefront of pushing climate change mitigation and prevention specifically because the impacts of worsening climate change will have a massive impact on their bottom line.

Maybe they can counter some of the petro company propaganda with their own marketing.

[–] TehWorld@lemmy.world 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

They’re in the business of making money, not fixing problems. It’s easier to just pull out of an unprofitable area than fix the Republican party’s head-in-their-ass ideas about climate change.

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[–] beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 5 days ago

BUT MUH TAXESS

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[–] Omgboom@lemmy.zip 51 points 5 days ago (1 children)
[–] Bacano@lemmy.world 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Someone should adjust the silhouette to look like Mario bros Luigi

[–] gabereal@sopuli.xyz 16 points 5 days ago (1 children)

The exposure isn't quite right and there are artifacts, but I am not a graphic designer so 🤷

[–] Bacano@lemmy.world 7 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

It's beautiful lol, your skills are apt. I meant the Batman on the building silhouette but this is equally cool

[–] gabereal@sopuli.xyz 5 points 5 days ago

I meant the Batman on the building silhouette

Aww dammit 😅

[–] Bronzebeard@lemm.ee 18 points 5 days ago (3 children)

Insurance, both property and health, is completing it's morph into a parasitic value extraction tool with zero actual use. They are committing straight fraud at this point, daring people to sue them for contract breach, knowing many won't

[–] nutsack@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

I agree with the first sentence, but I don't think there's a lawsuit here as the contracts that you sign with them have a limited term and they are simply not renewing

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[–] Jayjader@jlai.lu 51 points 6 days ago (16 children)

The issue isn't just local. "This is predicted to cascade into plunging property values in communities where insurance becomes impossible to find or prohibitively expensive - a collapse in property values with the potential to trigger a full-scale financial crisis similar to what occurred in 2008," the report stressed.

I know this isn't the main point of this threadpost, but I think this is another way in which allowing housing to be a store of value and an investment instead of a basic right (i.e. decommodifying it) sets us up for failure as a society. Not only does it incentivize hoarding and gentrification while the number of homeless continues to grow, it completely tanks our ability to relocate - which is a crucial component to our ability to adapt to the changing physical world around us.

Think of all the expensive L.A. houses that just burned. All that value wasted, "up in smoke". How much of those homes' value is because of demand/supply, and how much is from their owners deciding to invest in their resale value? How much money, how much human time and effort could have been invested elsewhere over the years? Notably into the parts of a community that can more reliably survive displacement, like tools and skills. I don't want to argue that "surviving displacement" should become an everyday focus, rather the opposite: decommodifying housing could relax the existing investment incentives towards house market value. When your ability to live in a home goes from "mostly only guaranteed by how much you can sell your current home" to "basically guaranteed (according to society's current capabilities)", people will more often decide to invest their money, time, and effort into literally anything else than increasing their houses' resale value. In my opinion, this would mechanically lead to a society that loses less to forest fires and many other climate "disasters".

I have heard that Japan almost has a culture of disposable-yet-non-fungible homes: a house is built to last its' builders'/owners' lifetime at most, and when the plot of land is sold the new owner will tear down the existing house to build their own. I don't know enough to say how - or if - this ties into the archipelago's relative overabundance of tsunamis, earthquakes, and other natural disasters, but from the outside it seems like many parts of the USA could benefit from moving closer to this Japanese relationship with homes.

[–] pacology@lemmy.world 9 points 6 days ago

As far as the value of the home, you need to consider rebuilding costs. New construction costs in the LA area are on average $440 and higher for custom work.

At those prices, a new house, without the land, will cost at least $500000 to build (also note that a 1130 sq ft house isn’t really what most people want to buy, as the average new house size is around 2000 sq ft, putting the cost of a basic house at $880000, again without the land).

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[–] Unpigged@lemmy.dbzer0.com 24 points 5 days ago (4 children)

I think the curious aspect of this is that business is absolutely aware, and acknowledges existence of the climate change.

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[–] Draegur@lemm.ee 68 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (22 children)

When your insurance drops your coverage, that's your cue to GET THE FUCK OUT BEFORE YOU HAVE YET LOST EVERYTHING.

Those actuarial tables are designed from the ground up and refined over literally decades (up to around a century in some cases) to predict risk and while they're not always perfectly accurate they are clearly ENOUGH so that they have made it possible for insurers to remain profitable.

IF THEY KNOW ANYTHING THAT YOU DON'T, THEY ARE DEFINITELY ACTING ON IT.

I know you can't literally just drop everything, or fit absolutely everything that matters to you in your car in a pinch, but you WILL be better off if you've packed up and prepped for transport as many as possible of the things that would hurt you and/or inconvenience you the most to leave behind.

So for those of you who haven't already experienced total loss, learn from this. Prepare yourselves. The people displaced by this will strain many other extant failure points in our society. Shit is about to get MUCH, MUCH WORSE.

[–] olympicyes@lemmy.world 34 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Likewise there’s a reason all the billionaires are building bunkers in Hawaii and New Zealand and investing in yachts, that Greenland and northern Canada have new geopolitical and economic importance, and that the Panama Canal is at risk of not being able to get enough traffic across. I’m tired of getting gaslit by climate naysayers.

[–] nomous@lemmy.world 10 points 6 days ago

"Everything is fine!" they say as they stockpile supplies and build secret locations to hide.

[–] krashmo@lemmy.world 22 points 6 days ago (2 children)

The warning bell rang decades ago and we're still ignoring it. There is no escaping or planning around what is to come. It doesn't matter if you move somewhere less impacted by climate change. Those places can't support anywhere close to the amount of people that will need to live there. We'll ruin those places fighting over what scraps remain until there's nowhere left to go.

[–] SoJB@lemmy.ml 19 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The entire world basically just tried to ignore COVID and kept burying the bodies hoping everyone would stop caring. (BTW, excess death statistics are still horrifically higher than pre-2019 levels across the world)

Long COVID is a literal debilitating lifelong mental and physical disability but everyone has it now so we just don’t care.

It’s simple. The bourgeois must be eliminated or humanity dies.

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[–] UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml 9 points 5 days ago

Did the CEO's house burns down in the wild fire as well?

[–] Skyrmir@lemmy.world 26 points 6 days ago

Meanwhile the insurance companies are throwing parties right now for pulling out ahead of the disaster. Probably tweaking their models to make sure they're not at risk anywhere else.

Don't worry though, the incoming administration will be working with local governments to prepare for future challenges... Or ignoring them and dismantling any and all efforts to mitigate climate disasters. One or the other.

[–] OceanSoap@lemmy.ml 22 points 6 days ago (5 children)

I'm sorry, are we just skipping over the regulations that caused these companies to pull out? Most of these homes would still be covered. They'd be paying a higher price, but they'd be covered.

When you put a legal cap on costs, the company will pull out.

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[–] Zementid@feddit.nl 20 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Funny how the rich argue with climate change when it benefits them. For decades they denied it fiercely and now it's time to pay... even if we take all from them (which we should) it's not enough repair the damages their behavior caused.

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[–] Gammelfisch@lemmy.world 9 points 5 days ago (2 children)

The insurance companies gotta keep their shareholders happy. That is the number 1 priority and fuck the customer.

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