Posted on 04/12/2014 2:59:53 PM PDT by Lorianne
I try to tell him that....
When did they start fracking in Nicaragua?
It’s that damned canal the Chinese are digging!
ping-a-roo
Then there’s The 3 Little Pigs . . . .
That’s an interesting economic question, and the issues are different for different areas. For instance, why do people insist on living in the Mississippi flood plain? Why do people live in the Ganges Delta, Bangladesh?
Two reasons: Flood plain/delta land is fertile for agriculture, and rivers are cheap transportation for large volumes of goods.
Why do people live near volcanoes? Volcanic soil is fertile; Hawai’i, for example, or Central America, or Naples. Vulcanism tends to correlate with coastal terrain, such as on the Pacific coast, resulting in commercial adventage.
People make the calculations about the risks and returns, to some extent. Not every individual - most are born in their native location and stay there, dealing with whatever falls on them. But in the big picture, the economic gains and losses are calculated. However, insurance and especially government involvement spreads the costs and reduces the financial risk for those who choose to live and invest in disaster-prone areas.
Coastal recreation development is a little different. There are no agricultural or trade advantages to living on the Atlantic barrier islands such as North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Tourism development on the coasts really didn’t take off until there was government money for disaster relief. “Back in the day,” there were beach resorts and vacation houses, but the values were kept down because the owner took a loss if it blew away or flooded out.
Then the government got involved and skewed the economics, as has also happened with flood-plain development, only more so.
We lived in Nicaragua in 2005. We had a 5.9 and a 6.3 while we were there. They have numerous active volcanoes and frequent earthquakes.
There is always the urban-suburban-rural choice too.
I prefer urban because the city has always been my home and it has the things I love--sports, culture and MY city, the ocean.
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