Over on progressiveminds.bm a discussion has arisen over the concerns of continually rising cost of living and housing. One solution that is suggested is that price caps should be considered. I would like to contest that price caps are not the answer. What we truly should be doing is ensuring that we can better manage our growth and not allow it to spiral out of control simply so we can say we have a booming economy.
I've written in the past about the concept of a Soft Close, one where we'd limit new business as we attempt to deal with our growing pains. Part of this effort should be to do more to make it easier for businesses to reduce their on island presence. One major factor in this is that telecommunications on this island to the outside world are pretty abysmal. Anyone who works in IT and international business would understand that the combination of our high latency and poor bandwidth makes it incredibly difficult to conduct business between global offices and Bermuda. These issues serve as a major impediment to the ability of offices to reduce their on island presence of unnecessary workers.
I've also written numerous times on the concept of "less is more" when it comes to tourism. It simply does not make sense to be building more and more hotels to bring in more foreign workers to be employed in them. It also doesn't make sense to bring in more and more cruise ships so that we can further stress our infrastructure.
We need a leadership who will focus on fixing the fundamental problems long before rushing into new developments.
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