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A comment on We're only beginning to understand the historic nature of Helene's flooding. Parent comment

Re:We're only beginning to understand the historic nature of... by zem on Monday September 30, 2024 @11:24PM (#41704363)
there is very little living space in the US that is not subject to some sort of natural disaster. where i live in california, e.g., fire insurance is getting increasingly expensive and many insurance companies are opting out of offering it altogether. what you should be annoyed about is that you have to pay for private natural disaster insurance on a per-disaster-type basis rather than the government explicitly providing a national pool by default.

edit: also it's worth considering that the worse the land in terms of risk, the poorer the people who will be forced to live there because they were priced out of everything else. with climate change accelerating this will increasingly be a factor, and it is unconscionable to expect those people to bear the burden of insurance themselves. this is what a civilisation is for.

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Re:We're only beginning to understand the historic nature of... by none4methx on Tuesday October 01, 2024 @12:45AM (#41704674)
We should also fix the part where some dunce with a letter put a town where physics (at least occasionally) put a river.

What we call a civilization should have education at least equivalent to a seven year old sand castle architect. Not hubris so large we go broke attempting to occupy the waterspouts of the world just because there’s pipe and cable there.

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Re:We're only beginning to understand the historic nature of... by antisthenes on Thursday October 03, 2024 @01:04PM (#41732602)
> We should also fix the part where some dunce with a letter put a town where physics (at least occasionally) put a river.

How do you fix that, short of moving the entire town (which is going to cost almost as much as rebuilding it)? The dunce that established the town is long dead, and his relatives probably moved away to better pastures.

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Re:We're only beginning to understand the historic nature of... by xingped on Tuesday October 01, 2024 @12:50AM (#41704691)
If I'm understanding you right, I totally agree with your idea of a national government-provided disaster insurance akin to universal health insurance. Throw it on the stack of things that should be like that and not run by for-profit companies. Unfortunately that will likely never happen. Except maybe Florida right now because it's almost happening by default.
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