Whenever I read about natural disasters affecting some large urban dwelling, e.g. Winnipeg, New Orleans, I always wonder why we still have that problem. Not that people are building on that land, but that we haven't yet figured out how to live safely and conveniently on flood plains, etc.
The health care analogy is rather than spending public money on fixing broken people, spend money on making fewer people broken in the first place. Better preventative measures, better safety rules, healthy eating campaigns, more anti-ageing research, etc.
Surely when looking for 'stimulus' plans, this kind of thing that will work out net-positive financially for the government and result in a better quality of life for people in the affected area should be amongst the first thing getting funded?
In short: why on Earth are we still subject to the whims of God?
I think you are right as there are ways to mitigate natural disasters. The question is whether or not there is political will to pay for the mitigation measures until the disaster happens. Winnipeg had been flooded severely several times in the last hundred years until the 1970s when a giant floodway was created which could divert a river's worth of water around the city. Since then the floodway has saved the city from numerous large floods and has just recently been expanded to provide protection for a 1 in 700 year flood.
It seems unfortunate the city was catastrophically flooded several times before that monetary expenditure was politically acceptable.
The health care analogy is rather than spending public money on fixing broken people, spend money on making fewer people broken in the first place. Better preventative measures, better safety rules, healthy eating campaigns, more anti-ageing research, etc.
Surely when looking for 'stimulus' plans, this kind of thing that will work out net-positive financially for the government and result in a better quality of life for people in the affected area should be amongst the first thing getting funded?
In short: why on Earth are we still subject to the whims of God?