[teractiveodular]

As the 173 million strong population of Bangladesh can attest, they can and do live in such places.

"Each year, on average, 31,000 square kilometres (12,000 sq mi) (around 21% of the country) is flooded. During severe floods the affected area may exceed two-thirds of the country, as was seen in 1998."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floods_in_Bangladesh

Most of the world does not want to aspire to be Bangladesh, but humans have been living in extremely disaster-prone areas for millennia because the short-term benefits (rich soil etc) outweigh the occasional catastrophic losses.

[redwall_hp]

Another example: Japan has many quakes per year and has a strangely high percentage of the world's active volcanos. People have lived there for a very long time, built to accommodate it (both traditionally, using timber and expecting to rebuild often, or with modern earthquake-hardened architecture), and is now a top five economy by GDP.

And, well, most of the US is just a hanger-on to California's economy.

[trescenzi]

> In 2023, California's gross domestic product (GDP) was about $3.9 trillion, comprising 14% of national GDP ($27.7 trillion). Texas and New York are the next largest state economies, at 9% and 8%, respectively.[1]

CA is a huge economy but by no means is the US just CA + 49 other states. Might be fairer to say it’s CA+NY+TX+FL but at that point you’re just aggregating the population.

[1]:https://www.ppic.org/publication/californias-economy/

[daedrdev]

The cost of labor is extremely high in the US compared to Bangladesh, and that along with building standards, minimum lot size, minimum floor space requirements and required low density zoning (lmao) make these two case very different

[HPsquared]

What does it mean when a whole country has expensive labour? The highly-paid people of said country can afford each others' services. It basically means "low cost of materials" from a human perspective.