In case you haven't noticed, those thousands of houses on Topsail Island ARE part of a booming economy that is based upon the beach. Allowing houses to start falling into the ocean will not "increase the economy." Everyone accepts that continual beach replenishment is the cost of living on a barrier island that is moved South by littoral currents. Now, I'm sure that you had some Barney/Sesame Street free-lunch give-away in mind when you were talking about the "betterment of humankind," but rest assured that beach replenishment betters the humankind who live on, work on, or simply visit the island. Just as the Dutch spend hundreds of millions of Euros every year to keep the North Sea from flooding a third of their country, we can manage beach erosion through periodic replenishment.