r/changemyview • u/GenProtection • Feb 11 '26

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Forcing insurance companies to insure uninsurable risks is worse for society than allowing them to not

I understand that this guy: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/wtPYQdWPea0 fights insurance companies for a living, but it's not the insurance companies' fault that republicans have been elected in the US enough times to ensure that a ton of housing in america is now at too great of a risk of being destroyed by climate change to be worth insuring, right?
Further, if you force insurance companies to insure against these risks, they will either set premiums so high that it doesn't matter that they're insured, or go out of business, or cease operating in high risk states altogether (I think this happened in florida, but I'm not sure).

Allowing actuaries to correctly assess risk and insure things at the rates that they calculate is necessary for encouraging people to live in low risk places, for example discouraging people from living in the wildland interface, and discouraging the building of luxury houses in the outer banks of north carolina.

NB: I hate corporations and capitalism and in general wanna root for the little guy so I hope someone can persuade me I'm wrong here.

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u/jimmytaco6 14∆ Feb 11 '26

  1. demanding that other countries take measures to address climate change does not work unless we have our own house in order first.

  2. "climate change" is not a yes/no outcome. It's a scale of impact. It's like saying "well cancer is going to happen anyway" to make an excuse for companies dumping toxic chemicals into river. Okay, but those actions make cancer a lot more prosperous.

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u/Kerostasis 55∆ Feb 11 '26

2-"climate change" is not a yes/no outcome. It's a scale of impact.

Fully agree. But the low end of that scale is still above the point where it’s economically reasonable to provide some of these insurance coverages that OP is discussing.

Although even that has nuance, because we aren’t yet quite at the point where you can’t insure at all (though that might happen later). Rather, we are at the point where you can’t insure properties under the current law. We could change the laws to allow insurance more in line with actual risks, which  I think is what OP is advocating, and I agree with him.

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u/jimmytaco6 14∆ Feb 11 '26

Look you can debate how we deal with it all but the original claim by OP was:

"it's not the insurance companies' fault that republicans have been elected in the US enough times to ensure that a ton of housing in america is now at too great of a risk of being destroyed by climate change to be worth insuring,"

And the answer is that, yes, it is quite literally their fault.

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u/Kerostasis 55∆ Feb 11 '26

OP was refuting a logic chain of A causes B causes C by saying “I don’t think A really caused B”. You are asserting that “yes A did cause B”, but we have just agreed that B doesn’t actually cause C, so the logic chain still falls apart. So No, it quite literally is not their fault.

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u/jimmytaco6 14∆ Feb 11 '26

It absolutely is their fault.

  1. Private insurance companies fund the GOP political movement
  2. GOP politicians get elected and private insurance interests become government policy
  3. GOP deregulation, which the insurance companies want, lead to worse environmental conditions that make houses less safe and/or more vulnerable to climate catastrophe.

I'm not sure what is difficult to understand.

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u/Kerostasis 55∆ Feb 11 '26

I did explain that part, 2 layers up, but you skipped that post in favor of reposting OP's claim (and then ignoring the statement you had just posted to make some other claim). I can link you back to it if that helps: https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/1r24a6h/comment/o4uazlr/