As a participant in tomorrow’s No Kings rallies, I don’t see the likelihood of violence or property damage. We’re not mad at the police or the military. We’re mad at the chief executive’s lawlessness and threats to our rights. The only chance of trouble will be coming from agents provocateurs. We are ready for them with de-escalation protocols. Non violence is the strict order of the day.
Interesting to read about my own profession. I work in reinsurance, pricing and structuring catastrophe risk protection (mostly natural catastrophe - this specific model is outside my remit, though I did work at verisk on similar a long time ago).
The view often given inside the profession is that we are helping put an accurate price on the risk. As a consequence, when disasters do occur, insurance companies have enough reinsurance /capital to pay the claims. Alongside this, policies, situations, behaviours can and should cost more, discouraging the same (e.g. paving over a flood plain)
The most often given example is pre and post hurricane Andrew. Prior to Andrew insurers did not believe such an event was possible, and when it did, many went bust. This is far less common in more recent years despite sustained years of insured losses >100Bn.
Major insurers and brokers have full time teams of people like me working to understand the models, spot their flaws and adjust their output. The interesting point on this verisk model is how recent it is. The research takes time and will not have fed through to re pricing of contracts that are typically annual.
I fully appreciate that the most common interactions with insurance companies is on paying a premium in an ever riskier world or after suffering some horrible event. Hence the broad negative views.
Note that these are GIS-based models, dependent on a lot of assumptions about correlations in space as well as time. I agree that it seems bizarre to sound so cold-blooded about potential losses (freedom and life too, insurance people!), but hey, isn't that just capitalism in a nutshell?
Re: Strikes, Riots, Civil Commotion. Like the insurance industry, the historian Peter Turchin uses statistics, history, and data to forecast future trends. He has long predicted substantial civil unrest in the United States in the 2020s.
The insurance industry is going to kill itself anyway with a combination of leverage and deranged financial speculation and climate change damage.
Then the government has to bail it out again but the government will be on its knees thanks to the hollowing out of the public sphere by deranged ideologues.
"Trump, meanwhile, is geeing up the troops with an inflammatory address at the garrison at Fort Bragg." Trump's comments regarding the military were standard fare 40 years ago under Reagan. Back then everybody KNEW that readiness and combat effectiveness were what mattered in the army, not DEI or transgendered service members. The only reason Trump's comments are inflammatory now is because the country has changed, whereas Trump has not. And these bases were named after confederate generals to further national reconciliation after the civil war. Of course nobody is interested in reconciliation today. It's only about which group wins and which group loses.
For someone so interested in reconciliation, what a tacitly racist comment. The whole point of "reconciliation" in the decades after the Civil War was that since the North and industrial capital had won and the slavery regime ended, it was now ok to recognize the legitimacy of racism in the form of Jim Crow.
Now, it's immediately about which section of capital wins. Notice that while Wall St and Main St have protested tariffs, they haven't said a word about the dismantling of the major sections of the government and, most specifically, the regulatory regime of the Liberal State. And, of course, the mostly symbolic opposition to racism, DEI, is going with it.
I’d throw out as a possible factor growth and growing complexity. Torching, say, a Target results is a much bigger insurance claim than torching a Mom and Pop store. Then add that either has, for example, cell antennas.
In other words, with greater complexity comes bigger insurance claims.
A related problem to that is we’ve gone through a tech revolution in the past couple of decades of a kind unforeseeable to actuaries and insurance company number crunchers.
Yet another factor is the greed of publicly traded insurance companies with all the post-Jack Welch financial screwing around to prioritize stock prices ahead of good management. The hot example these days is of course UHC.
The rule for understanding whether riots internationally are happenstance or created by US Regime change is extreme violence with the intention of generating a heavy handed response (eg Hong Kong where the Police were amazingly tolerant and the small number of blackshirts seriously violent). Followed by visas for the participants to study in UK or US if it fails.
Sometimes the excess violence is generated by friends of the demonstators - ie the Georgian snipers that shot at the Ukraine Maidan in 2014 pretending to be Government Berkut.
These guys that like Regime change around the world also want to get rid of Trump.
Hmm, the protests you say are primarily driven by racial factors and the most at risk areas are all run and have been run for decades by democratic/very liberal governments. Random correlation or causation?
I love that you highlight the data-driven mindset of the insurance and risk-management profession. It may seem cold or unfeeling to analyze risk and the probability, frequency, and severity of economic loss under possible political and social unrest scenarios. Still, mitigating and minimizing resulting destruction to reduce or prevent human and financial suffering relies on such methods. A better understanding of risk helps society take bold steps forward when it can be quantified with accuracy.
I would think only up until (isn't there a clause in policies about that?). It'd be interesting to see the data on payouts after the Russian and Chinese Revolutions.
As a participant in tomorrow’s No Kings rallies, I don’t see the likelihood of violence or property damage. We’re not mad at the police or the military. We’re mad at the chief executive’s lawlessness and threats to our rights. The only chance of trouble will be coming from agents provocateurs. We are ready for them with de-escalation protocols. Non violence is the strict order of the day.
Interesting to read about my own profession. I work in reinsurance, pricing and structuring catastrophe risk protection (mostly natural catastrophe - this specific model is outside my remit, though I did work at verisk on similar a long time ago).
The view often given inside the profession is that we are helping put an accurate price on the risk. As a consequence, when disasters do occur, insurance companies have enough reinsurance /capital to pay the claims. Alongside this, policies, situations, behaviours can and should cost more, discouraging the same (e.g. paving over a flood plain)
The most often given example is pre and post hurricane Andrew. Prior to Andrew insurers did not believe such an event was possible, and when it did, many went bust. This is far less common in more recent years despite sustained years of insured losses >100Bn.
Major insurers and brokers have full time teams of people like me working to understand the models, spot their flaws and adjust their output. The interesting point on this verisk model is how recent it is. The research takes time and will not have fed through to re pricing of contracts that are typically annual.
I fully appreciate that the most common interactions with insurance companies is on paying a premium in an ever riskier world or after suffering some horrible event. Hence the broad negative views.
Note that these are GIS-based models, dependent on a lot of assumptions about correlations in space as well as time. I agree that it seems bizarre to sound so cold-blooded about potential losses (freedom and life too, insurance people!), but hey, isn't that just capitalism in a nutshell?
Re: Strikes, Riots, Civil Commotion. Like the insurance industry, the historian Peter Turchin uses statistics, history, and data to forecast future trends. He has long predicted substantial civil unrest in the United States in the 2020s.
Great piece.
The insurance industry is going to kill itself anyway with a combination of leverage and deranged financial speculation and climate change damage.
Then the government has to bail it out again but the government will be on its knees thanks to the hollowing out of the public sphere by deranged ideologues.
Oh,engaging in psycohistory are we...?
Season 3 of Foundatin coming this summer.
Can these models predict a Mule?
"Trump, meanwhile, is geeing up the troops with an inflammatory address at the garrison at Fort Bragg." Trump's comments regarding the military were standard fare 40 years ago under Reagan. Back then everybody KNEW that readiness and combat effectiveness were what mattered in the army, not DEI or transgendered service members. The only reason Trump's comments are inflammatory now is because the country has changed, whereas Trump has not. And these bases were named after confederate generals to further national reconciliation after the civil war. Of course nobody is interested in reconciliation today. It's only about which group wins and which group loses.
For someone so interested in reconciliation, what a tacitly racist comment. The whole point of "reconciliation" in the decades after the Civil War was that since the North and industrial capital had won and the slavery regime ended, it was now ok to recognize the legitimacy of racism in the form of Jim Crow.
Now, it's immediately about which section of capital wins. Notice that while Wall St and Main St have protested tariffs, they haven't said a word about the dismantling of the major sections of the government and, most specifically, the regulatory regime of the Liberal State. And, of course, the mostly symbolic opposition to racism, DEI, is going with it.
I’d throw out as a possible factor growth and growing complexity. Torching, say, a Target results is a much bigger insurance claim than torching a Mom and Pop store. Then add that either has, for example, cell antennas.
In other words, with greater complexity comes bigger insurance claims.
A related problem to that is we’ve gone through a tech revolution in the past couple of decades of a kind unforeseeable to actuaries and insurance company number crunchers.
Yet another factor is the greed of publicly traded insurance companies with all the post-Jack Welch financial screwing around to prioritize stock prices ahead of good management. The hot example these days is of course UHC.
The rule for understanding whether riots internationally are happenstance or created by US Regime change is extreme violence with the intention of generating a heavy handed response (eg Hong Kong where the Police were amazingly tolerant and the small number of blackshirts seriously violent). Followed by visas for the participants to study in UK or US if it fails.
Sometimes the excess violence is generated by friends of the demonstators - ie the Georgian snipers that shot at the Ukraine Maidan in 2014 pretending to be Government Berkut.
These guys that like Regime change around the world also want to get rid of Trump.
Observe closely.
I know the US is so much more than Trumpism 😃 Thanks for this post - an oft-neglected real part of our economic world history.
What a fascinating find! I just it is very heartening to see and hear a peaceful majority gearing up to show themselves in public 😊👍
Hmm, the protests you say are primarily driven by racial factors and the most at risk areas are all run and have been run for decades by democratic/very liberal governments. Random correlation or causation?
It’s about the future, it’s about your kids.
Fascinating post
I love that you highlight the data-driven mindset of the insurance and risk-management profession. It may seem cold or unfeeling to analyze risk and the probability, frequency, and severity of economic loss under possible political and social unrest scenarios. Still, mitigating and minimizing resulting destruction to reduce or prevent human and financial suffering relies on such methods. A better understanding of risk helps society take bold steps forward when it can be quantified with accuracy.
Minimizing human suffering depends on a data-driven mindset??
You can insure against the revolution
I would think only up until (isn't there a clause in policies about that?). It'd be interesting to see the data on payouts after the Russian and Chinese Revolutions.