The world is physically changing. Weather patterns are shifting. Hot is getting hotter. Wet is getting wetter. Wildfires are becoming larger, more prevalent and more destructive. Sea levels are rising. Ocean temperatures are rising.
Parts of the world are becoming inhospitable for human life. We can try as we might to terraform and engineer against it but Mother Nature will win.
At some point as an insurance company or even whole industry needs to look at the data and assess whether the juice is worth the squeeze. These companies - despite marketing materials - don’t care about fixing your home. They are only interested in risk versus reward. When the operating environment becomes too risky you either raise prices astronomically (this is happening) or you pull out entirely because your customer base simply can’t afford it (this is also happening).
Regarding the stance that we are smart enough to outsmart these problems - I agree but also disagree. What do you do when all signs are pointing to no and the cost of potential solutions far outweighs any benefits? You cut your losses and move.
All the facts you state about the environment are true. But it makes zero sense IMO to make this an individual decision governed by the whims of the market and replicated anew across every single person. That is a purely reactive stance and, being humans, we can do better than that.
We are smart enough to be proactive about these sorts of things, and considering we already have such an apparatus called "the state" to use to our benefit, we can provide assistance to people to reinforce their homes or move when necessary (in a rote economic sense, to keep them net-positive productive, in the utilitarian sense; in a humanistically compassionate sense, to keep them dignified) instead of trying to guide systemic patterns of behavior by punishing individuals for making impossibly complex choices regarding where they chose to and already do live.
If enough insurance companies decide to stop doing business in Florida, Florida is welcome to create a state-run insurance company to serve its residents.
That's literally the apparatus of the state (in both senses of the word) used to the benefit of the residents. That may just have the effect of moving the problem from "my insurance premiums are too high" to "my taxes are too high", because at the end of the day, someone has to be paid to fade the risks inherent in insuring the property against perils.
In Florida Citizens is the largest homeowners insurance company and it competes vigorously with the private market.
The issue with Citizens is that it does create a lot of financial risk for the state, especially since it doesn't buy as much reinsurance as a private company would.
as opposed to the whims of a few unelected bureaucrats? influenced by the whims of the politicians trying to buy votes?
> We are smart enough to be proactive about these sorts of things,
no, "we" are not. Let's suppose you are, for the sake of argument. What reason is there to think that the sort of people who get appointed to regulatory bodies are equally smart? As opposed to just "well-connected."
Parts of the world are becoming inhospitable for human life. We can try as we might to terraform and engineer against it but Mother Nature will win.
At some point as an insurance company or even whole industry needs to look at the data and assess whether the juice is worth the squeeze. These companies - despite marketing materials - don’t care about fixing your home. They are only interested in risk versus reward. When the operating environment becomes too risky you either raise prices astronomically (this is happening) or you pull out entirely because your customer base simply can’t afford it (this is also happening).
Regarding the stance that we are smart enough to outsmart these problems - I agree but also disagree. What do you do when all signs are pointing to no and the cost of potential solutions far outweighs any benefits? You cut your losses and move.