If you build it… they will pay.
I saw this article today about a landslide in an “upscale” neighborhood in La Jolla. While I feel for the residents in those homes, I have to be a little irked that the Mayor is declaring a state of emergency to “secure state and federal aid for those affected.” That aid isn’t free. It’s paid for out of my tax dollars. So it begs the question, why should I pay so that Richie Rich can have his 3 million dollar view in an area that has been known to be geologically unstable for decades?
The road I could understand, though it boggles the mind how a 50 yard section of pavement is going to cost “hundreds of millions” to repair. If the construction to fix such an access way needs to be so elaborate to prvent something like this happening again, then shouldn’t we be asking ourselves if just maybe… possibly…. WE WEREN’T MEANT TO LIVE IN THAT AREA??!
I get the same warm-tingly feeling when I read about people whining over how they can’t get insurance to cover their Florida coast vacation homes… The same homes that have been clobbered by hurricanes three times in the past two decades.
We in America are spoiled rotten when it comes to insurance. We have this major entitlement complex that says, if some random force of nature destroys my home, then by golly, I should be fully compensated. We just take it for granted that someone else will pay for our “misfortune”. The byproduct of this thinking is that we no longer put any effort into making smart decisions about where we live. Two hundred years ago, they would have laughed in your face if you suggested you wanted to put a house a hundred feet from the water or at the edge of a cliff, and for good reason!
What we really need in America isn’t disaster insurance, it’s stupidity insurance. In high risk areas such as unstable hillsides and seaside hurricane tracks, it’s not IF a disaster will happen, but WHEN. You should have to pay big time for being an idiot. That way at least, I don’t end up fitting the bill for your stupidity.