Northwest Dive Club

Greetings,

I normally only participate on the Critterwatchers forum but I thought the following might be of interest to a wider group:
http://www.seadocsociety.org/seadoc-fin ... l-economy/
My apologies if this is the wrong place.

Financially yours,
Alex

Thanks for sharing!! That's fascinating stuff. I had no idea Washington had the 3rd most certified divers per capita.

I had no idea either. That's a pretty interesting report.

It may be true that WA has that high of divers per cap, but I bet we also have the highest divers per cap that don't dive in their own state..LoL!

McGlencoe wrote:It may be true that WA has that high of divers per cap, but I bet we also have the highest divers per cap that don't dive in their own state..LoL!

Actually Colorado wins in that department. Not a insignificant number of divers, and barely any in state diving at all.

I'm curious where their #3 number comes from (edit: upon closer read, i found it, interesting that they are using just PADI per captia numbers vs. DEMA) Historically 20-30+ year ago we used to vie for the top spot for certified divers with California and Florida. We've fallen off more recently, and would be interesting to see the numbers, but I'm not gonna pay DEMA just to sate my curiosity http://www.scubahellas.com/wp-content/u ... s-2015.pdf this report from DEMA (albeit a couple years old) doesn't even have us in top 5, but again, looking at different data set and numbers (certifications per year). The fall off of diving certifications is significant, and to a degree can be reflected in overall health of dive shops (although that is fuzzy as online sales become more prevalent but the drop off began well before online sales took hold) I believe in our heyday there were something like 64 dive shops in the greater puget sound region compared to the current 40 (as stated in article). If we really want to look at economic benefit of diving in our region, we need to also take into account trends, attrition and how PADI counted the certified diver numbers (every certification does not mean another diver) and if those folks have continued to dive at all.

Actually, the study's conclusions are a bit flawed. Local divers who spend local money in local places contribute to local economic churn, but not to the overall economy. That is done by outside divers who bring outside money to the local area.

This is why so many places work so hard to develop and maintain a tourist industry. They want those tourist dollars to grow the economy, and not just circulate money among themselves.

> Local divers who spend local money in local places contribute to local economic churn, but not to the overall economy.

By that logic the entire economic activity of the Earth is just "local economic churn" that doesn't contribute to the Earth's overall economy.

Actually, you aren't far off according to many economic models. In galactic terms the planet we call earth, is indeed "local. When Time is factored in to analysis many answers are changed.

But, attracting people and their money from elsewhere means our businesses grow and theirs decrease. In many analytical ways it is a zero sum game, depending on the definition of "local". Back to earth in a conventional definition, this economic reality is at work in governmental budgets. Every area wants to receive more government money that it pays in taxes. That difference is the foundation of much local economic activity.

Allied to this discussion is the subject of using tax policy to bribe businesses to move to a specific community, Given that companies are free to move at will does such a policy actually enhance the tax subsidizing community? Over the past 20-30 years several analysis have said "No".

A further thought:

Economic well being in this context is only meaningful when population is figured into the calculation. That is why our current global economy is in such turmoil. Our population is rapidly increasing but the ability to provide each person with a job and life comforts is not increasing at the same pace. Further perturbing the situation is the return to an aristocracy like political and economic structure.

In that structure governments are almost, but not quite, superfluous. Companies are free to conduct their business with little regard to people except as resources to be used, much like other kinds of resources used for production. In this environment when a person is no longer economically useful they are discarded and become someone else's responsibility. That was the situation for generations until relatively recently in some countries. Other countries have never changed.

Once a person starts doing actual analysis many of our accepted ways of thinking go flying out the window.

of course we could just take a hint from our our neighbors to the north... I suspect more of us go up there to dive their artificial reefs than come down here to dive ours

http://www.divenewsnetwork.com/single-p ... s-to-Reefs

ljjames wrote:of course we could just take a hint from our our neighbors to the north... I suspect more of us go up there to dive their artificial reefs than come down here to dive ours

http://www.divenewsnetwork.com/single-p ... s-to-Reefs

In a way this is the heart of the tourist industry. To successfully compete with other locations to bring tourist dollars home. "They've a good idea, let's do what they're doing, only better".