That's not at all how insurance companies price risk.
Unknown risk is more risk, and more risk is more expensive.
Therefore, unknown hurricane data is more risky and thus more expensive.
If you know your car's engine is going to need replaced after exactly 100,000 miles, you know to save up for a new engine or a new car - and you know how long you have to save, so you can precisely set aside an appropriate figure every month.
If you know your car's engine will die sometime within the next 15,000 miles, you know you need to start saving up immediately, but b/c you don't know when in the next 15,000 miles you have to rush your saving.
If you have no idea when your car's engine is going to die, you are likely to end up dead engine and little to no savings.
Hurricane risk has been grossly exaggerated for years. Every year people say it will be the end of Florida as we know it. But those promised hurricanes never come. The worst is some flooding and damage at coastal areas, but it’s always anti-climactic.
The real reason insurance is high is because of fraudulent claim risk. Hurricanes themselves are more or less a solved problem in Florida. That data is useless.
> Hurricane risk has been grossly exaggerated for years
Year-over-year, economic impacts and disruptions due to tropical cyclones are dramatically rising. Most of this is an exposure issue. But long-tail events - like Andrew's utter devastation of Homestead in 1992 or Katrina's unique confluence of storm surge in urban/suburban parishes in LA - can and do happen.
One day, there will be another Galveston or Homestead.
Since Katrina, the next 10 costliest hurricanes are all after.
We don't dwell on the Ikes, Idas, and Helenes because they often happen to smaller communities and they've become common enough that we've gotten a little fatigued.
There won’t be another Andrew because the building codes were changed so that all new construction must withstand category 5 storm force, which when Andrew came around was not a requirement. Over time, there is a natural selection that occurs where destroyed buildings are replaced with stronger buildings with stricter codes.
> There won’t be another Andrew because the building codes were changed so that all new construction must withstand category 5 storm force
I sincerely hope you're right, but there is plenty of evidence suggesting that this will not be the case, owing to a multitude of factors:
- not all housing stock is <30 years old and has been properly retrofitted to meet state specs
- the climates around the Gulf, which tend to be more humid, can lead to premature degradation of things like strengthened anchor bolts and roof attachments
- there continue to be immense factors related to cost and time-to-build which provide significant negative pressure towards cutting corners and minimum-compliance which may mitigate some of the attendant benefits of strengthened building codes
An event like Andrew _is the selection event_ that you're referring to.
I'm from Florida - born and raised. I've never once heard anyone call any hurricane "the end of Florida as we know it". What I have heard, and seen, is extreme damages caused to homes and cars even hundreds of miles away from the eye of the storm.
In 2022, Hurricane Ian caused extreme flooding in the Orlando-region, including in areas that have never suffered from hurricane flooding before. For me personally, all 3 cars parked at my house were total losses b/c of the flood damage.
The extreme and extensive damages in the Appalachian region last fall is another great example of hurricane risk not being "grossly exaggerated".
> Hurricanes themselves are more or less a solved problem in Florida.
I'm going to go with less, though I suppose you could call "experience widespread destruction, get bailed out by the federal government, rebuild in the same spot" to be a permanent solution.
>The worst is some flooding and damage at coastal areas, but it’s always anti-climactic.
The residents of what used to be Ft. Meyers Beach would probably disagree with you.
>Hurricanes themselves are more or less a solved problem in Florida.
I have been in Florida for nearly a decade now. I'd say that the above statement is at best, disingenuous. It's just not true. MAYBE Cat1 hurricanes are a solved problem, but nothing above that. The busiest economic center in Florida (Miami's Brickell area) is 6 feet above sea level. Any major storm locks that part of town down for days. My own building's parking lot is 5 feet above sea level, and yes, it's flooded every time we have a storm.
If you are willing to put in some Project Management time yourself, you can get solar for a LOT cheaper than if you hire an outside solar company.
For the installation - most roofing companies will install the roof mounts and screw on the solar panels for $1.5k-$2k (might be different in your area, but still cheap). An electrician can be hired to make all the solar panel connections and the grid connection for a few hundred $$$.
As the Project Manager - you'll need to source the panels, file the permits, and hire the roofers and electricians. https://www.solarwholesale.com/jerry-rig-everything/ can assist (assist, not do) all of that for you for a cheap price. $10k-$15k with Solar Wholesale will get you the panels and cables you need, plus the engineering drawings, the permit paperwork, and etc. (thank you for the great Solar DIY series Jerry!)
For $20k and working as the Project Manager yourself, you can get what most solar companies will charge you $50k for. Which is ballpark inline with construction project management costs - typical residential construction project management cost 40-50% of the total project budget. A lot of those projects as complex enough to warrant those fees, unless you have a lot of experience, but in my opinion adding solar to your roof is not a complex process and does not warrant those fees.
I will context virtually all. I have never had this come up. I suppose it depends on what products you're looking at, but buying pure creatine is easy.
Creatine does tend to get added to pre-workouts chocked full with caffeine, but stimulant free pre-workouts exist and you can always buy it in bulk seperately either in pill or powdered form.
>> Places like West Virginia have way less homelessness than places with high housing costs like the west coast.
COLD towns without major homeless shelter capabilities always have lower rates of homelessness b/c the cold weather is literally life threatening.
Warm(er) regions, like most of the West Coast that isn't known for blizzards, have higher rates of homelessness b/c there is little risk of death if a homeless person camps out in the woods. Note that a lot of homeless folks in warmer regions didn't become homeless in those warm regions - they often become homeless in northern regions and migrate to warm regions prior to winter.
Comparing homelessness in WV to Cali doesn't seem fair since so much of the folks that become homeless in WV are forced to leave the state to survive.
Chicago, Milkwaukee, Boston all have major visible populations of street-living homeless people. I feel like this is a myth west coasters believe or something. I don't see how you could have spent time in a cold city and think it's true.
Parts of NYC and Philly give SF a run for it's money but the homeless in Chicago, Milwaukee and Boston are neither as ubiquitous nor as troublesome as they are in the big cities on the west coast.
Until recently (not sure about the current status), NYC had a "right to shelter" so that people could have a place to stay for the night. This meant that they still had a lot of homelessness, but it wasn't nearly as visible as, say, San Francisco.
I'm willing to bet that WV police have a less 'tolerant' attitude towards homelessness, even "non-problematic", and very a much a "move along/gtfo of our town" attitude.
Did you not read the part of my comment were I clarified "cities without major homeless shelter capabilities"? New York has major cities that have the infrastructure and resources to shelter homeless populations during major cold events. Plenty of Northern CITIES have those capabilities, but WV doesn't. WV doesn't have a single major city and doesn't have the capabilities to shelter a homeless population during major cold events.
A woman in a homeless camp north of Seattle died and her adult son’s spine was crushed last month when a large tree fell their tent during a windstorm.
The local graffiti says that ACAB includes Batman. I’m the son of a cop and grew up around cops. It’s probably more accurate to say TVMOCAB. The vast majority, probably around 90%, of cops are bastards, but there are a few Boy Scouts mixed in. It’s certainly inline with my interaction with cops over he past ~50 years. How could it be otherwise, in accordance with Sturgeon’s law?
>> COLD towns without major homeless shelter capabilities
"without major homeless shelter capabilities" is a key part of my original claim. Every city you listed is a major city that has the infrastructure and resources to shelter homeless populations during major cold events. Plenty of Northern CITIES have those capabilities. but WV doesn't have any major cities and lacks cities with the capabilities to shelter homeless individuals during major cold events.
>>> Credit card fees are where the real money is made, and the meat of the complaint here.
From the DOJ Press Release [0]:
"Justice Department Sues Visa for Monopolizing Debit Markets"
"Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the complaint alleges that Visa illegally maintains a monopoly over debit network markets by using its dominance to thwart the growth of its existing competitors and prevent others from developing new and innovative alternatives."
0 mentions of the word "credit"
27 mentions of the word "debit"
I'd love for this lawsuit to be about Credit Card fees, but it appears be limited in scope to debit card fees.
Efficiency... Supersonic is even less green than air travel in general. Efficiency is quite a big issue always when flying is involved. Not that you can't use gliders, but those are not practical for general transport.
It's not even the environment, just the cost of fuel made supersonic travel uneconomical. Saving 3 hours off of a flight isn't worth thousands of dollars to enough people. Boom's innovation is to target billionaires with supersonic bizjets. Personally I think their business model is risky, but not necessarily impossible.
If you know your car's engine is going to need replaced after exactly 100,000 miles, you know to save up for a new engine or a new car - and you know how long you have to save, so you can precisely set aside an appropriate figure every month.
If you know your car's engine will die sometime within the next 15,000 miles, you know you need to start saving up immediately, but b/c you don't know when in the next 15,000 miles you have to rush your saving.
If you have no idea when your car's engine is going to die, you are likely to end up dead engine and little to no savings.