Ethical issues of land development and archaeology
Today's society is developing exponentially, and it's sometime at the risk of the past. We think of the country as fully developed but in actuality it really isn't. According to westernwatersheds.org, only 3 percent of lands in the US alone is considered developed and houses roughly 75% of the population.
What this mean is that there's plenty of room for growth and development and develop we will. Although the us population growth is steadily declining, this still has huge implications. These citizens, whether immigrated or born, still need housing. The emergence of e-commerce and the Internet of things forcing the rezoning commercial areas might change this but for the worse case scenario let's assume new land need to be developed for real-estate and housing. This means that they be breaking ground, potentially, into a possible excavation site. The developers are not incentivized to do the right thing because stumbling across artifacts or a burial ground delays development. Further more this developer might of syndicated investor's money, commonly referred to as OPM (other people's money) or have taken out loans for the deal. This means that if there's a delay due to excavations, this doesn't mean that the developers are off the hook for their loans or answering to their investors.
The worse case scenario is they do it anyways, destroy artifacts, and none's the wiser (remember how the movie Poltergeist ended? Spoiler, it's no bueno to build on a burial ground.)
In this case, the right decision is very costly. A potential solution to this ethical quandary is to offer an insurance for this very situation that would cover costs of loans and other expenses incurred by the incident. This gives a incentive to the developer who will not have to worry about development until the site has been fully excavated, it also put investors at ease and we're are able to save very important pieces of the past as we find them without having to fear whether or not the developer will do the right thing when the natural inclination is not to.
Insurance people do good for once!
So maybe a niche startup idea? What do you think? leave it down below! Show this post some love if you liked this post. Follow me (I follow back!).
