Comment by qwerty456127

5 years ago

A classic example of how boring governments are. All they can do is ban, fine and imprison. If I were the governor I'd just import the sand from Sahara and include the expenses (as well as some reasonable profit) in the beach entrance fee. They are going to have to import it anyway, why not just accept the reality and turn the problem into business?

I hope you are joking. The sand that is stolen is not just any sand, people steals that sand because it's different, for example, some sand is pink, some is made by small quartz stones, some is red, some is black. Replacing it with generic Sahara sand will result in a "new" beach, and is not what we want. We want to stop people from taking the sand, not make a business out of it.

  • A spoiler: The people won't stop. No matter how hard you ban.

    • I don't think they need to stop it completely. They just need to reduce it enough that it doesn't outpace the beach's ability to replenish the sand.

    • Tragedy of the commons fatalism, eh?

      I guess there's nothing we can do - burn everything.

> If I were the governor I'd just import the sand from Sahara and include the expenses

It's much easier to prevent it than to fix it by transporting tonnes of sands from africa to wherever the sand is needed. Being able to pay for something doesn't magically make it a good idea. Plus I'm not sure westerners coming to Africa to take sand for their beaches will be well received.

Sahara sand is different from beach sand. It's very fine and when it gets wet it feels more like paste then sand. It's why the UAE has to import sand for construction projects even though the cities are literally built on top of it.