GEICO is Terminating Insurance Coverage of Tesla Cybertrucks, Says “This Type of Vehicle Doesn't Meet Our Underwriting Guidelines”
shoulderoforion@fedia.io to 
torquenews.com
GEICO, the second-largest vehicle insurance underwriter in the US, has decided it will no longer cover Tesla Cybertrucks. The company is terminating current Cybertruck policies and says the truck “doesn’t meet our underwriting guidelines.”
Lol
Lmao, even
With some rofl on the side.
For Elon this means Relying On Father's Luxuries
ROFLMAO
Wow, haven't seen a roflcopter in a long time.
Yay, I knew it would be that super old reference!
I was actually looking for the version that includes The Muppets, because there absolutely is/was a version of that video with the Mnah-mnah muppets. I just couldn't find it.
Edit: excuse me, but 17 years old isn't super old. That's not even voting age.
Ijbol?
Elon bad, haha
Tomorrow I post Elon bad, ok?
No, truck bad. More read article.
God, I hope other places follow. I work in insurance and not only is everything about the cybertruck an absolute fucking nightmare to source, let alone find a shop for, every single goddamn owner is like the most insufferable chod. That goes for women too. Tesla drivers could already be a problem, but the truck owners are like regular Tesla owners gone feral.
Are they actually allowed to sell these pieces of shit elsewhere?
Also is anyone else stupid enough to buy one?
they started taking orders from presales in Canada and they went through the entire list, I'm not sure if any have been delivered here yet though
Presumably, "other places" refers to other insurance companies. IOW, GEICO is (allegedly) denying them coverage. OP is hoping that Allstate, Progressive, etc will also deny coverage.
People knowingly buy stupid vehicles. I'm one of them. It's expensive to drive, big, has expensive insurance and only seats two but I love it.
I didn't realise they only had two seats!
Is that one for each of your brain cells? 😉
Someone with more than two brain cells could easily look that up and and realize they're talking about a different vehicle before insulting a complete stranger for no reason.
Why comment in the first place then? We're talking about Cybertrucks and you start talking about your vehicle, people are gonna assume you mean the Cybertruck
Because I'm pointing out that people don't only buy vehicles based on what's wise or optimal. For some, it's also a hobby and they have different preferences as what to drive. At the time of buying my current truck, a wagon would've been sufficient. I just went with what's essentially my childhood-dream car instead. I've since developed an actual need for one too, but even now, a van would be a little more practical. Truck is simply more fun and nicer looking, while being the same size.
You can see why people misunderstood you though no?
I asked "is anyone else stupid enough to buy [a Cybertruck]"
You replied - [context as assumed by a normal person]
I thought 'expensive to drive' would have given away it wasn't a cybertruck, since the only good part about those things is that it's an EV and probably doesn't cost much to charge. I might not agree with your decision to drive a huge vehicle, but I'm not gonna call anyone an idiot for doing it.
It's also generally good form to not make spelling errors (realise) in a comment calling someone else stupid...
Please tell me the comment about the spelling mistake is some kind of weird humour (sic)
It is mostly tounge in cheek, but they did misspell realize in their comment and later edited it to correct it.
I mean if you're gonna call someone else stupid, but you misspell it you're kinda putting your foot in your own mouth no?
Size is relative. Here's my "huge" truck parked next to an American one.
Sorry mate, your comment really makes it sound like you were starved of oxygen at birth and bought a Cybertruck.
As you were
People shouldnt knowingly buy dangerous vehicles.
They likely didn’t know they were dangerous when they preordered and many are now stuck with them. I think they have a no resale contract for 2 years after buying.
I mean I don't mean to sound ridiculous, but they even looked dangerous. I am not sure why anyone would assume they were safe. I didn't even think they were street legal at first.
That is a bummer to be stuck with one though, but you do have to be rich enough to buy one too.
I suspect that looking dangerous is a positive for a great number of truck buyers.
Yeah I think they would be alright personal use offroad vehicles. Although they didnt build them for that, they could have.
Same, but I like the small ones personally
Now there's an insult I haven't heard in a while.
Take my upvote!
State farm was the first to drop them
Tesla drivers have single-handedly done more PR for BMW drivers than BMW ever could have.
Pretty sure they were one of the last major companies that would...
Even if warranty pays for repairs to it, if it damages anything else the insurance still has to pay.
The article mentions multiple examples of them just randomly shutting down during operation. That's already bad. But this is going to be it's first winter, it's not surprising insurers don't want to deal with it. They deal with large numbers, it's not a question of "if" like an individual owner, its "when" for the insurer
Class action lawsuits are gonna be a mother fucker
Part of the purchase agreement of a Tesla agreeing to binding arbitration. This means no class action suit. You can opt out of this within the first 30 days, but you have to send a letter requesting it.
How many Tesla owners do you think do that?
That assumes the court finds that enforceable. Usually they do, but a few times recently, they've said it's not.
That's one of the nice things about the law in Quebec. Binding arbitration clauses are illegal.
Je devrais demeneger a Montreal.
*Je does
"doivent" is third-person plural (they, not I)
Oh, and I didn't notice that autocorrect changed my French to English. Should be"dois" or, as you say, "devrais" for the conditional.
Whoops, I really meant "devrais."
I mean in trumps court of law musk can’t lose.
If dumpy wins, for sure no class action.
If dumpy loses, his Supreme Court will still side with the conservative side anyway, so probably still no class action.
i don't own a tesla, so if their cars injure me I can sue them*
Steam recently removed their arbitration clause, largely because paying for a thousand arbitration cases is worse than dealing with a class action.
I’ve heard that death by 1,000 arbitrations is a good way to make em regret it. Glad to see it’s true.
Which is what Musk is looking at happening.
Between cybertruck and twitter, dude’s gonna bankrupt himself.
Wow, I never thought I'd find an actual good argument for keeping independent car dealers as middlemen instead of allowing first-party sales, but here we are.
Can you connect the dots for me? Third party dealers always have idemnity? clauses anyways.
Presumably anything you'd agree to while buying from an independent dealer would be between you and the dealer, not you and the manufacturer, right? I don't understand how the manufacturer would be a party to the transaction.
(It might be that I'm naive about how modern car sales work.)
I’m pretty clueless too, but to me your assertion doesn’t hold up to the concept of recalls.
The true answer is probably that we’re both wrong and the answer is that as a consumer: you lose, fuck you. Also fuck your family dog.
John Wick enters the chat
This didn't work for valve so I can see it also going poorly for Tesla.
Why would someone own 8 vehicles?
I can't think of a vehicle that is more likely to be a risk to others than the Cybertruck. I'm sure insurance adjusters see how people use Tesla FSD in spite of its shortcomings. The truck is heavy as hell and breaks in all sorts of ways others vehicles don't.
Also, there have been no independent crash tests done so no insurance company can accurately assess the risk, so this is wholly unsurprising.
Tesla have allegedly done their own crash tests, but they still have not released the data. It's kinda what you'd expect when a government-regulation-hating techbro designs a "I got mine fuck you" vehicle.
If Geico, and presumably soon others, are angering the chuds by refusing to insure this, independent crash tests definitely occurred and they were not favorable.
You don't have to be an obnoxious YouTuber to crash a car.
When I said no independent crash tests had been performed, I was specifically referring to the IIHS since they're the only ones who opinion really matters and they've stated they have not tested any Cybertruck. But yes, regardless of whether Tesla's internal crash tests were performed by their staff or some other testing lab, the fact that they're sitting on the results clearly indicates that they know just how poorly the crumplezone-less sharp-edged quality-uncontrolled ketaminemobiles fare.
Ahhh, that’s a reason that makes sense. Much better than the article itself. Thanks.
To be clear, I don't know if that's why GEICO is cancelling policies on Cybertrucks, but I'd bet heavily it's a contributing factor. It could be that they decided the risk was worth it, until the trucks actually started coming out and the sheer number of recalls due to shitty manufacturing was just too much.
I thought that was the sort of thing that the government mandated companies had to do in a controlled and transparent fashion. I wouldn't have thought that the NTSB would allow a vehicle to be registered without a thoroughly vetted crash testing procedure.
Apparently "rare" or "limited-release" vehicles don't get tested. Which means the Cybertruck will probably never get tested 😂
The cyber truck has no crumble zones. I’d like to see Tesla’s tests.
Cody Johnston did a vid about the Cybertruck on his most recent episode of Some More News. He starts talking about the crash test Tesla did (with video) around the 8:45 mark.
He might be too poor to be able to afford more than that.
Suffering from Success
Maybe it's 1 cybetruck and 7 Dodge Caravans saved from the crusher
Why does anyone have anything? If they can afford to collect the things they are interested in, they will have many of those kinds of things.
What if they’re interested in naked pictures of children?
I use an extreme example to point out that “the market will provide” is a terrible argument for the existence of anything.
The gulf of difference kind of undercuts your point in this case. One is undoubtedly immoral and illegal. And it doesn’t change that part of the answer why somebody would have either is because they want that, which says nothing about it being a good thing.
Mining several normal human lifetimes of metals and resources (and the CO2 released into the atmosphere in order to gather those materials) just for something to sit around unproductively is obviously immoral so I don’t understand the relevancy here.
Oh I wasn’t even disagreeing with you. I was just saying that your example may undercut your point. I use extreme examples too, but it only works well when the analogy is solid throughout. In this case I don’t think they are as comparable as you do. That’s all.
Car collectors exist, and I have the impression quite a few of them are among the Cybertruck's early adopters.
Honestly, a car collector is probably the best kind of person to have one I'd bet, given that they now exist out there. They don't seem terribly safe for pedestrians and others to have around, so it they're going to be out there in individuals hands, them being kept parked in some guys garage as some weird curiosity vehicle of the 2020s is probably better than being driven around on the daily as a pointy oversized commute vehicle
Because he's a car enthusiast with a problem.
(Source: I own six.)
Kinda funny how it sneaks up on you when you get the space. I have 7 vehicles split between my wife and I. Most of them were bought at bottom of the market. People act like I must be wealthy as they drive a new suv worth $20 more than my fleet. I could replace the whole spread for like $30k. I'll add the qualifier that 2 are motorcycles and I'm totally, definitely, working on selling my prior daily. But $3k isn't exactly life-changing. I imagine this is a fuckcars zone but it's a hobby for people. Every hobby is destructive. It's not like car enthusiasts are driving multiple cars at a time, so the fuel consumption over time is normal. And the thirstier cars tend to be broken more often!
More than you know: even I use a bicycle as my daily-"driver," LOL!
Of the six cars I have, only one isn't an old, unreliable project car and/or two-seater. Even then, I only have that because my parents essentially forced it upon me. (They have some kind of silly hang-up about having a cargo bike be my sole means of transporting the kids, other than public transit.)
Perhaps ironically, good urbanism is what gives me the freedom to treat cars as a hobby instead of a necessity, and I firmly believe that's the way it ought to be. It's a lot like how people can be into horses while also still understanding that it's a dumb idea to commute to work on horseback.
There are better ways to blow money but that's just a opinion 🫡
Hence the "...with a problem" part.
Who said other ways ain't a problem 🤣
How is cybertruck more risky to others that your average truck?
Heavier (6,898 pounds compared to 5,540 for the F-150), lithium fire risk, inattentive drivers using the FSD
This is all on top of how dangerous American trucks have become to others
Don't forget the cybertruck body panels are basically dull knives due to being flat sheets instead of curves where they are joined.
Just look at the front "bumper". It's triangular, and made of metal. If it hits a pedestrian, unlike other cars that try to bump and deflect the pedestrian up onto the hood, the Cybertruck will cut the pedestrian in half with that angle. Also, because it's metal, there is NO give. That could even be dangerous to other cars, let alone pedestrians and cyclists.
That's just one aspect, though. You got 3 others from another commenter, making the Cybertruck tonight's biggest loser.
I would assume he's either a car collector or he owns a small fleet of work vehicles for his small business, (like a plumbing business or such).
My uncle was like that - he was a contractor and realtor. He had several work trucks, each for a specific purpose, plus one general purpose, and half of them had snowplows of various sizes. Most of them had something wrong with them that didn't interfere with their specific purpose, but would have been a pain to deal with daily. Only new one was a minivan for driving clients to sites... Then he bought a house closer to town that had a flatbed truck left on it...
No word from the insurance company itself? This whole article seems to be based on a single tweet by a cybertruck owner. For all we know his might be modded in a way that they dropped the insurance on it.
More specifically, the only source the article even gives is a link to a reddit post with a screenshot of the tweet, of which doesn't have a direct link to the tweet. This is half assed journalism at best, considering they even quoted the original screenshot wrong.
Edit: lol they couldn't even get the person's name straight. It changed from Robert Stevenson to Anderson after the email portion. Why's this article even here?
Anything Elon bad = upvotes
If you manage to find an article with both Elon bad themes and AI bad themes in the same story Lemmings would upvote it up into the atmosphere. You'd be on top of All for like a day!
To top it all off the email/text had information redacted not by blurring it with paint, but by using characters in the same font with the same line breaks.
I mean seriously, who does that? Only time I've ever busted out inspector to modify a website or tweet or email is to elaborately troll someone with a sceenshot.
Did they really use inspector to redact info out an legit document about an allegedly widespread thing that no one else can produce, or did they draft the whole thing, used strings of 'x' to mark where to blur, and forget to blur? /shrug
This isn’t new. They’ve dropped cybertrucks before, and they’re not the only company to drop/straight up refuse to take them.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CyberStuck/comments/1ejtwkt/insurance_wont_cover_my_cybertruck_so_i_cant/
Everyone in here like yay truck bad, I don't give a fuck about Teslas what's fucked is goddamn insurance companies can just arbitraryly drop your coverage for no fault of your own. It should be illegal. Like sorry but you agreed to cover this, with all its flaws and took my money for years.
I really wish car/home/health insurance were just federalized. These companies are the oldest con perpetrated on the general public tbh.
It's in the article, they didn't drop him during the coverage period they declined to renew.
It's perfectly fair, if you can decline to review and insure with someone else when the 6 month term is up, so can they.
Yep, this is 'merica and a bunch of people are already driving this destruction derby without insurance. Do we really want to add a bunch of Cybertrucks to that terrifying demographic?
Yes the circle jerk on this has gone way too far.
Ah yes, news these days...
Why are insurance companies the ones making the rational decision about saying it's a dangerous piece of shit and not our transportation regulators? It needs to be banned.
I don't think insurance companies care of the trucks are dangerous per se. They care if they are expensive to repair, or prone to accidents which could attach liability to the policy holder and thereby the insurance company.
I keep telling conservatives this. It makes sense to have some form of suspicion around a message when some corporation has a profit motive behind it. For instance, climate change and companies selling solar panels (although I wish they wouldn't put SO much effort into that faint connection).
However, that also applies for the inverse - that when insurance drops coverage for Florida homes, it's because climate change is real and they know it will hurt their bottom line.
i never understood the suspicion about companies selling solar panels... they're not snake oil, they work exactly as they are advertised. But, they allow people to be self reliant and not forced to rely on large enegry companies. It really shows where the allegiance for "conservatives" lie.
Funny enough, that's exactly what the article says.
The extra danger to pedestrians might also affect the liability calculations.
The weird thing about this claim is that these aren't deal breakers. It's possible to get insurance for exotics like McLaren or Bugatti (although no idea if GEICO does those); it just costs a lot.
I'd really like to hear more about those underwriting standards.
There probably aren't that many people using a Bugatti as a daily driver. For Cybertruck I would think there are many people using it as a daily.
Because automobile regulation in the US is an absolute joke.
Because insurance companies are filled with bean-counters (not intended as an insult, I'm a bean-counter in a different field) who want to come out ahead. That's why the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) exists. You'd think organization that does crash tests and promotes new technology would be a government organization, but nope, it's insurance providers that want to minimize payouts.
because it aligns with their financial incentives.
I don't see anything in the article suggesting it's particularly dangerous, only that it's very expensive to fix, and in a collision will probably cause significant damage to the other vehicle (though that doesn't mean it'll necessarily cause injury).
The US doesn't exactly approve or deny vehicles in general; any vehicle that conforms to the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards can be sold, as far as I know. And I don't see any section that covers safety of the other party in a collision, unfortunately. Maybe write your reps and suggest they add one.
Sorry, I'm not getting the distinction here. Isn't a vehicle that conforms to the FMVSS the same as one that is approved?
Or is the check against FMVSS is not done ahead of time, but only later in any lawsuits?
Conforming = here's a guide book. Follow it and we won't bother you unless there's an issue.
Approval = please submit every model/trim you release to our inspection/test facility for approval.
One requires a lot more people going back and forth between the manufacture and government than anyone wants.
They have to pass inspection to be sold initially.
Go try to get insurance for a Lambo or a nice exotic.
Good luck giving that free market talk to the insurance sales guy.
In before trump’s new monkey calls the Gecko a pedo
Next do lifted pickup trucks please!
And the Carolina Squat!
GEICO claiming this isn't true
https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/7/24264330/geico-insurance-coverage-cybertruck-cancelled-dropped-policy
"In an email to The Verge, Geico pushed back. “Geico has coverage available nationwide for the Tesla Cybertruck,” Geico spokesperson Ross Feinstein said. Feinstein did not immediately respond to follow-up questions about individual dropped policies. "
So maybe it was something VERY specific to this persons use of the truck?
I heard he was renting it out on Turo. That is unconfirmed. I have no source.
True or not to this specific situation, in general, that is definitely the kind of reason you might get dropped if you didn't get the proper insurance.
Yes. If this is true the owner should be happy they did this before trying to make a claim. Often people break the terms of the insurance and then when a claim is made they are denied all coverage.
Thank you.
That part about how they insured his other vehicles so that PROVES this is a cyber truck-specific policy was so dumb. Insurance will deny for a million reasons or combinations of reasons.
Now if they would drop giant trucks and anything lifted
those things are very poorly made and all the most important parts are made of cheap plastic that an average person can literally rip off with his or her bare hands
"their" is shorter than "his or her"
(Even if you don't care about gender inclusiveness, they is just more convenient)
Similarly, "they" is also shorter than "he/she"
If you're correcting, sincerely, then good job.
If you're trolling... also, good job.
Either way 👍
I wasn't strictly meaning to correct so much as point out a reason why it's more concise. I value the inclusive motivation too, if that was hard to tell; I just think there is another reason even if you don't care about inclusion.
It seems a lot of people are actively opposed to it though, not sure why. I'm just asking questions, you know?
😉
I’ll bet a lot of times people just start typing “he” and tack on “or she” when they catch themselves.
The best English literature doesn't follow the basis of most convenient or shortest. Sometimes there are other reasons to choose a word of phrase.
The plot of Romeo and Juliet could be rewritten in a paragraph but probably wouldn't have had the same impact.
"some teenage idiots do teenage idiot things and die. fin." roaring applause
I once heard it described as a "3 day relationship between a 13-year-old and a 16-year-old that left 6 people dead"
True, but this isn't prose or high literature. What reason do you suggest why "his or her" would be preferable to "their" in this context?
The prescriptivist "It's grammatically incorrect" argument doesn't hold much water when it has been used since middle English.
In a poem, I can see the thought:
"I tried to fit the cadence of this clause
Within the measure of this poem's form
Which has in past and present be the norm
By which this poem, too, seeks to adhere.
This is my authorial choice's cause
for my decision not to use a "their"." But if to find an alternate way to word
Your writing's pronouns strikes you as absurd
I nonetheless opine that you still ought
To make the token effort to include
With "their" all people by the same respect
That you for yourself would from them expect.
Refusing this, I feel, would be quite rude.
Comments here are a short form of writing, therefore people are allowed to phrase things and say things however they would like to. You won't know someone's intent before reading, so the way they write makes a difference.
And which intent would warrant using "he or she" rather than "they"?
They felt like it? Their brain worded the thought using "his or her"?
Yes, of course, nothing wrong there. I'm asking what's wrong with using "they" instead, given that there seems to be some pushback
I think the pushback is coming from that's how the person talk and or wanted to write the sentenc. Why was it so important to you to tell him a different way to write his sentence?
I wanted to offer a suggestion I felt is better for two independent reasons. I didn't say "you should have said", simply wrote why I consider the more inclusive they more convenient too.
I don't think there was any active "want" behind that way of writing so much as habit ("how the person talks"). Somehow a lot of people seem bent on opposing that suggestion though, and while I don't want to make assumptions, I'm starting to think it isn't out of some deep disdain for convenience.
Thats how they speak.
That's a habit, not an intent. You implied that there were some deeper intent behind using "he or she" over the shorter and more inclusive "they". Of course people are allowed to write however they want to, and they're free to ignore my suggestion. I'm wondering why people are so bent on pushing back against it - what is it about my remark that turned this whole thing into such an involved discussion?
You don't think a display of someones habits counts as their form of expression?
Edit to add: Noone is up in arms about this, its a calm discussion from my point of view. Maybe you are confused there is even an alternate perspective though?
Not an intentional expression, no. If I say something out of habit without thinking, that's out of affect, not intent. If I then double down on that habit when asked about it, it's an intentional expression.
Maybe I came across too strongly in my first comment, but it was really just meant to be a comment on how "they" is more convenient on top of being more inclusive as a suggestion, not as an attack. I think it's better to use it for two otherwise unrelated reasons, and put forth the one not hinging on ideology.
I am confused, yes. You'd either have to be stubborn about not changing habits or so opposed to inclusiveness that you'd rather write something longer to intentionally exclude. I didn't want to assume either and just chalked it up to habit and wanted to suggest an alternative.
Well I wasnt the one who said it, I'm not sure they ever doubled down on it. Maybe they did take your advice already.
I just don't want to limit how people express themselves, because I want to know their perspective. Its more important to me that someone express themselves honestly rather than they are politically correct.
Thats not to say you are wrong to make the point you are now. Ideally people would be able to talk without offending other people.
They didn't. Hence my insistence: the original comment probably wasn't intentional as such, nor do I ascribe any malice.
Plenty other people felt the need to ascribe intent, however. That's what I don't understand - why are people so eager to defend a phrasing and potential intent without ever consulting the original commenter?
I made a suggestion and argument why I find "they" better, without ideological insistence or being forceful about it. There's no limiting going on.
The above note and specific context aside, I don't categorically agree. While reasonable argument should be the first resort, there are honest sentiments rejecting reasonable argument that deserve no expression, no space and no opportunity to spread hateful rhetoric. I think it's more important to foster a tolerant environment, suppressing intolerance if necessary to preserve that environment, than to grant universal freedom even to enemies of freedom.
Again, this probably doesn't apply here - I doubt the original comment made a point of exclusion. We're getting way off topic here when all I wanted was to offer an alternative argument for inclusive phrasing.
Maybe your T key is broken?
Then the original comment would read
That sounds more like someone that would deffend the cyber truck I suppose.
Nice ditty.
Regional dialect, fluidity of language, variety - even habit.
Oh, I do respectfully disagree with that, especially when you cite medieval English but reference an American language dictionary as your source.
I could just as viably give "his or hers" as equally valid as "theirs", because it is. We're not newspaper headline writers, nobody penalises us if we use a few more characters for any reason. And you could switch back and forth between them both for variety.
Thank you :)
Those explain why it might be the first thing people reach to, but I wasn't trying to demonise that. I was trying to offer an argument for the alternative that I consider both more convenient to write and read and more inclusive. Habits can be changed.
Does the nature of the source invalidate the content and points it makes? English is still English, and I was looking for a source that wasn't Wikipedia, but also was publically accessible. I could have just copied all of Wikipedia's references, but most of them are books or journals that I don't expect people to have access to and didn't individually check. We could debate here what burden of proof is to be expected in an online debate, but I didn't think the matter to be worth serious discussion.
The point is the same: there are plenty of historical examples of it being used. To be clear, this is a pre-emptive counterargument to a point I've occasionally seen made: That the singular they was a new invention and should be rejected on that ground. If past usage has no bearing on your current decision, that argument obviously holds no weight.
In the latter case, I contend that the increasing spread, particularly in the context of that spread, legitimises its use for that purpose. I fall in with the descriptivists: Rules should describe contemporary usage, not prescribe it.
Ultimately, I believe using "they" for gender neutrality is more inclusive for identities outside the binary. I consider the difference in usage trivial enough that the difference in respect justifies it.
But that's not what you did, at first anyway. You were looking for an argument. You asked someone to justify something that to you is a slight, with no way of knowing whether the other person intended it that way. They got defensive because they have no idea what you're getting at, from their perspective you're just saying "you said something wrong, this is right" without explaining why.
Irrelevant. You don’t get to grammar like Shakespeare did.
Semi-unrelated but insurance as a whole is bonkers right now and I’m not sure how much the average person knows. I work on commercial real estate. The whole industry is having to review tons of insurance waiver requests because insurance in some properties is out of control. Business either can’t get it for can’t afford it. Especially, in flood zones. I’m actually kind of worried about the damage these hurricanes are doing in the US. Not just in the lives lost, which is devastating, but also the financial damage of all the uninsured losses.
Climate change is a big reason for the policy denials for property insurance. What wasn’t risky 20 years ago is much riskier today. Data doesn’t lie.
If an event chance is too high the cost of insurance increase to a point where it stops making sense.
If every house in an area is 100% guaranteed to get at least one flood event over a 5 years period, that means that every 5 years the insurer need to get in enough money to rebuild all houses, so the cost of insurance will be more than 1/5th of value of a house per year (plus operating cost, profit, and so on). There's no other way, it's just maths.
Ok, the actuarial math is more complex but it boils down to getting enough cash in to pay for claims and pay the operating cost.
At a that point people need to realize that if the risk is too high they need to accept it, plan to rebuild every 5 years on their dime, or move.
Unfortunately people suck at understanding risk.
Sounds kind of like exactly what insurance is for? If you can't get insurance for a flood zone, then maybe there's a fucking reason for that.
The problem is people have gone and built entire cities in unsafe areas. If we were being sensible basically the entirety of Florida should not be occupied, the place is a disaster waiting to happen, or more accurately is a disaster that has already happened, but somehow nobody's learnt from it.
Sounds like their problem? I know that sounds callous, and I'm not necessarily referring to the millions of Floridians who can't afford to relocate (ideally, we'd have a functioning government that could relocate them)... But how many times does your home need to be destroyed on a bi-yearly basis before you decide to move a couple hundred miles away?
I mean... yeah.
Generally speaking, every house in Florida didn't need to be replaced every five years.
I agree! And, I know government was bailing these people out for a long time, which just makes them double down. I’m not worried about those people. I’m worried about the ones that don’t want to be there and can’t afford to relocate, or for some and even worse, evacuate.
Climate change is clearly a hoax, the Republicans were right all along!
/s
That's not bonkers that's sanity. If you want to build your house in front of a dike don't expect to get insurance. The trick is to build in a place where there's a risk, not certainty, of damage.
It's absolutely bonkers. I don't get how Americans can build houses in leopard enclosures and then act all surprised when, inevitably, their faces get eaten. I know you're a settler country with little connection to the land but it's been long enough to know which parts get flooded and which don't, now hasn't it. Around here you don't even get building permits for lots of stuff in places even if you were willing to take on all financial risk yourself because it'd put unconscionable load on disaster relief, and thereby society at large.
So, there's two ways to go from where you are: a) Double-down on being Yanks and say "fuck you got mine sucks to be you", abolish disaster relief and let those rugged individuals fend for themselves, or b) fucking build where it fucking makes sense. It's not like you're Singapore or something, you've got more than enough land.
So I had to look online because I don't know where it is and North Carolina is nowhere near a coastline, so I'm not sure how much the people who live there are to blame.
North Carolina has a coastline though. Granted the issue this time was that the storm came in from the southwest and hit communities that were completely unprepared for the heavy rain, high winds and flash floods
I don't know where you got North Carolina from, I was speaking in general. Also the place has plenty of coastline. Also you don't need to live near the coast to live in a flood area, plenty of rivers that can and do flood. In mountainous regions it's not about building on the right side of the dike, but not at the bottom of the valley, and in the places in between it's about... well, it's usually not really about not building in one particular place, but making sure that there's areas that you can flood to protect areas you want to keep dry. Much cheaper to pay off a farmer for a lost harvest and cleanup than half a million people for losing their homes.
You’re telling me. I just started a small construction company on the side and have to do it uninsured because it cost at a minimum $4,000 a year just for liability. Seems ridiculous
Edit: I’m in Iowa too so clearly away from any possible large disasters. I know liability insurance is different from homeowners but I think it having a large effect on insurance as a whole. Also when the derecho went though Iowa, everyone and their brother apparently became a contractor and collected insurance money and that ruined it for a lot of other people.
Now that little gecko who works for GEICO will probably tell you "You can save a load of money by switching to GEICO, and its so easy a caveman can do it, but we refuse to insure that abomination you call a Tesla Cybertruck that needs to be road illegal everywhere"
Warren Buffet refuses to insure Elon Musk
aka the battle of geriatric nepo babies
Wait, how is Warren Buffett nepotistic? He's giving the vast majority of his wealth to charity. He gave his kids each $17.5M to start their organizations, and then donated like $5B total to their organizations once they proved their management skills. But he pledged to give away most of the rest (almost $100B), and has already given away about $50B (latest pledge is 99% of his assets).
I really don't see him as nepotistic, he's pretty much the best kind of billionaire.
Buffett himself is a nepo-baby. His father was a congressman who's connections were very helpful when starting out in business and investing.
Sure it isn't Emerald mine money, but you can't tell me being the son of a 4-term congressman didn't give him a leg up.
Sure, but he didn't start with millions or anything to invest, he started with money that he, himself, had saved up. He certainly didn't have a normal childhood (he bought his first shares at 11), but this timeline doesn't show much financial assistance from his parents, it shows a lot of hard work.
That's a very different story from people like Elon Musk or Donald Trump.
Just stop
They have to believe in meritocracy, that wealth isn't intrinsically tied to exploitation and a long history of classism.
You're underestimating the effect of his father knowing the right people. Yes, there was no "small million-dollar loan" and yes Warren actually hustled quite a bit to capitalize on the advantages given to him by his father, but that doesn't erase those advantages when talking about his success.
Hard work is not the thing that got him where he is. If it were there are millions of people working multiple who should also be billionaires. Or, better yet, no one should be a billionaire at all and we make it so people don't have to work multiple jobs to survive, but I digress.
No other investor has his track record, or anything close to it, so I really do think it comes down to hard work.
Whether the type of work he did should be compensated as well as it was is certainly a valid discussion to have. That said, he's pretty much the top of his industry and extremely well-respected by his peers, so it makes sense that he has an outsized portion of the wealth of those in his industry. That said, I absolutely agree with Buffett that we should have higher taxes on the wealthy (like Buffett) because that level of wealth concentration doesn't benefit anyone, including the wealthy individual.
What got him to the top of his profession absolutely was hard work. What got him to become one of the richest people in the world was that plus the tax system and other legal structures that reward that work. In other words, "don't hate the player, hate the game."
Warren buffet is literally a senator's son... CCR has a song on the topic ;)
Literally this what nepotism looks like... 17m is prolly just enough not to get eaten by estate tax.
You are confusing estate planning with charity.
Without reviewing the structures, this is just a trust me bro
Use some critical thinking? And a bigger question why are you worshiping some gereatric nepo baby enough to try to defend him with propaganda that he paid a lot of money to get into your head.
You can literally see the donation of $48B. The pledge itself isn't legally binding, but he has been consistently donating. He's 94, so I don't think it'll take long to see the proof in the pudding.
Here are some notes from his Wikipedia page:
I will note that the last figure probably includes the money given to his kids' organizations (not directly to his kids).
And a quote about inheritance for his kids:
He has a pretty consistent track record of philanthropy and statements about philanthropy, so I would be really surprised if he changed that in the last few years of his life. I guess we'll see though.
Where did I say I was worshipping him? I'm merely saying I think what he's doing is admirable and that he doesn't qualify as a "nepo baby." If you look into his history, he worked hard throughout his early life to save and invest, and I see no indications that his parents gave him a huge inheritance or kickstarted his career in any meaningful way. Yeah, his dad was a House Rep for 8 years (6 of those consecutive), and here's a quote about him on his father's Wikipedia page:
That doesn't sound like the kind of man to give his son an unfair advantage...
It's not charity to give money to an organization you (or friends or relatives) control, it's a way to keep your assets under your control without having to pay taxes that would otherwise be required.
It is if that charity uses the money to help people. So any accusation needs to actually look at the financials of those orgs to see where the money is going.
That would be true if he were secretly using those charities to enrich himself but there's no evidence of that at all.
I think you're missing the point - it's not that he's enriching himself - he's already done that. It's that the charity carries out his will, not necessarily the will of people who need charities.
Charity is about who benefits, not about who decides how to provide that benefit.
The idea of choosing a charity based on the donor's will of how it will get spent describes almost all types of charity. If someone donates to any charity at all, they have made a choice on how to allocate their resources and they just take it on faith that that's the people who need it the most.
Furthermore, any given dollar of his can only be spent once. The money he spent on himself enriches himself. It's a considerable amount of money but it's a tiny fraction of the money he controls. Any dollar he gives away can't be spent to enrich himself.
Finally, Buffet has donated over $57 billion. How is he supposed to distribute that? Fly a plane around the country and dump cash out the window? Send a huge check to the IRS? Give it all to your favorite charity? The obvious answer is that he sets up an organization that will analyze existing charities for need and effectiveness and then distributes his assets accordingly.
You are poorly educated on the issue and you are citing propaganda he paid for.
Please do some proper researcher on topic of oligarch charity and what that's all about.
I can't believe in 2024 we still have adults larping this shite. No wonder we got shit sociology-economic conditions and only getting worse...
If you have better sources, I'm happy to review them.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2022/07/how-bill-gates-makes-the-world-worse-off
https://inequality.org/great-divide/true-cost-of-billionaire-philanthropy/
https://apnews.com/article/business-philanthropy-b8acb10f529ac2dbaff7631021d823c9
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVpCbHKqqKI
I haven't watched the YouTube video (I generally distrust what Reich says), but here's what I see from the other sources:
Mentions Buffett once, and only when mentioning the pledge to Gates' foundation. The article seems to mostly be about the Gates' foundation taking credit for things they didn't do. I'll certainly read through the rest of the article, but it definitely seems to be a criticism of that org, not Warren Buffett.
Talks about The Giving Pledge (created by Buffett) and how those who have pledged aren't donating their money fast enough (i.e. their money is growing faster than their donations). I don't really see this as an issue, since the problem should correct itself when they die.
The article also complains about most donations going to foundations or DAFs, but honestly, when you need to move that much money, that's probably the most efficient way to do it. So I guess I don't understand the criticism.
This one is about wealthy people avoiding taxes generally. I don't know how this applies to Warren Buffett, whose wealth is in the US and AFAIK isn't being hidden in tax shelters like offshore banks or trusts. His tax bill is relatively low (this article claims 0.1% from 2014 to 2018), but I think that's countered by his statements about increasing taxes on the rich (he is registered Democrat, if that matters to you at all).
So I don't think the issue here has anything to do with Buffett himself, the issue is the tax law doesn't account for unrealized gains. Or in other words, don't blame the player, blame the game. The closest Buffett gets to tax shelters is his stock donations to his kids' foundations, but my understanding is that those are charitable orgs, so I don't see a ton of difference there vs donating to other orgs like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which he has donated way more to vs his kids' orgs.
My personal view here is that any compensation above some amount (say, $400k) regardless of source should be taxed at the current rates, and those assets stepped up in basis appropriately. I don't like Harris' proposal though because it's based on wealth instead of income, but I think Buffet himself would approve a change here. If we handled it that way, the income from stock grants and whatnot for extremely highly compensated employees (like a CEO) would end up being taxed as income (short term gains), and therefore would be functionally equivalent to a cash salary, which is what it's intending to be.
If you're not being purposefully obtuse I'll save you the time from what the argument is. Wealth of his magnitude is a detriment to society, doesn't matter if he's saint Joseph or the pope. You're saying "he's the best kind", deflecting from all of them being bad. If you don't see that, then it's fine. Just an economical opinion on where to go with society from the stalemate we seem to be in regarding workers and compensation.
I do feel like you're being blind about the nepotism definitions though, you don't need 200 billion from a family slush fund to qualify. The very act of what their parent's profession is changes networking and exposure opportunities. Doesn't matter if Daddy has ethical values, the name recognition and reputation you're proclaiming gives an advantage.
I see two arguments here:
For the first, I and Warren Buffett somewhat agree, and I'll quote him here:
That said, I likely disagree with his specific solutions, though I haven't bothered researching to figure out what those are, because he's clearly not particularly interested in crafting policy.
For the second, I largely hold to this definition of nepotism:
Someone giving their kids the best education they can isn't nepotism, that's normal parenting.
Someone giving their child an job they're not qualified for absolutely is. If you want to see examples of that, look no further than Trump and his kids.
When I look at the top billionaires, most of them are largely self-made. For example:
I don't really consider any of them to be "nepo babies" because their parents didn't give them an undeserved job or anything like that. And honestly, none of their parents were particularly rich, except maybe Musks. Each of them had incredible luck and capitalized on the early days of consumer computing, but that doesn't cheapen the work they put in.
Do they deserve hundreds of billions? Probably not. But I don't think they really benefited from nepotism like Trump's kids, Kim Kardashian, and others did. There's a huge difference between someone who had a good start and builds something great through their hard work and someone who is handed a pile of cash or a prominent position and rides that.
If you show evidence that their success is largely dependent on their parents, I'll believe you. But if they largely built their wealth themselves, that's a harder sell. I think each of those I mentioned earned their wealth, I just think our tax system dramatically increases wealth accumulation past a certain amount, and that's what needs to be changed here.
Mental gymnastic here are supurb.
Politicians son turned oligarch = he earned it
There's an odd trend of labeling everyone with even the slightest advantage a, "nepo baby".
Nepotism is when you give friends or relatives special consideration for jobs or positions. As far as I know the only job Buffet ever had from a relative was working in his grandfather's grocery store. The closets I could find for Elon Musk was that he started one of his companies with his brother.
Elon's father was an engineer. That certainly put him in a comfortable position, particularly as a white engineer in South Africa but it definitely doesn't get you recognition from old money families. Buffet went to public school.
They both had advantages growing up but if we expand nepotism to include people like that, it becomes a pretty meaningless term.
🤡
Makes sense. It's not a truck, car or SUV, it's a cosplay vehicle. Lego vehicles from the toy store will outlast this shitshow.
To be fair, those would outlast Toyotas, too.
Unless you put 100,000 miles on the lego truck 😄
The "break in" period.
“transparent metal” that breaks if it gets too hot, gets wiped with a microfiber cloth, or tapped by a wedding ring… 😂
I want to feel bad for cyber truck owners, but at the same time these problems are not new and not unknown. So if you know that something is known to have problems, and you still buy it, don’t be so shocked that it has problems for you too.
It was only a matter of time before insurance companies did something. I mean is it really that surprising that a company known for not wanting to pay out money if they can avoid it would want to not insure a rolling money pit?
Tesla Insurance
scamPolicy in 3..2..1..Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha
As much as I want it to be true, I couldn't find the original tweet that the reddit post mentions. It's not on that users profile when looking on Nitter.
The CyBeR-rUsT is a total piece of shit 💩
False claim, debunked by snopes. Mods should consider blocking this news outlet.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/geico-tesla-cybertruck-coverage/
https://youtu.be/An9nhAUUFE0
Could it also be that it's a $80K-$100K car?
I have no solid source, but read comments suggesting Geico tends to not insure "exotic" $100K+ luxury vehicles.
...And I think this is important to remember this when talking about it. The Cybertruck is not a peer of a F-150, but a G-Wagon, a Maserati Levante or whatever.
I love this!
I’m waiting for any kind of sourcing of this that’s more than “a guy on Twitter shared the text of his rejection letter.”
This letter does not clarify if, as a matter of policy, all cybertruck insurance will be categorically rejected.