First of all, where / what is Conche? Answer: Nobody knows or cares except for the couple dozen people who live there. Why do I bring them up? Because they have their hat in hand telling everyone in Newfoundland that we have to pay for their stupid road going to the middle of nowhere. In that entire community lives 160 people. No, not 160,000, not even 16,000, not even 1600! Just a measly 160 people.
I say if you want to live there, feel free! Maybe you like being excluded from civilization, I don’t blame you with the way things are going, but don’t you dare ask me to shell out thousands of dollars for you to do so. I don’t have all the numbers here, but what we do know is that despite receiving $6 MILLION dollars from the provincial coffers, this place in the sticks still hasn’t completed the construction of its road. They still require significantly more money. By the time all is said and done, it could cost $10 MILLION!!!
Think about this for a second - $10 million for a village of 160 people. If the average family has 3 people in that community, that’s 54 families, so the cost per family is $185,000. But no, they won’t pay that themselves (I’m sure they can’t afford it anyway), they will demand everyone else pay for them.
Compare this to living in St. John’s. If St. John’s even spends $100 million per year on roads (which it doesn’t), the cost per person would be around $500-$1000.
This is why since time immemorial people have congregated in large, densely populated areas. This phenomenon has nothing to do with an increase in population as people have done this since Ancient Egypt and before. The reason is simple: when you live in a more densely populated area, there are economies of scale. A cell phone tower providing service to 100,000 people is much cheaper per person than one providing service for 160 people. A road driven on by 100,000 people costs FAR less per person than a road driven on by 160 people.
But because these people have decided to live out in the boondocks, we all of a sudden have to support them? Are they crazy?? At what point does this arrangement become absurd? What if a family of 5 decided to move to the northern-most tip of Labrador? Would we be forced to build a road connecting them to the rest of the province? Do we have to build a school for the 2 kids? Where does this nonsense end?? 160 is just as absurd. No slippery slope argument required.
And this is just the road. There are probably dozens of other things everyone is forced to pay for such as clinics, schools, police, etc. Who knows how many millions we are sinking into this place. Plus, is it fair that the government will probably spend $300,000-$400,000 per person in this community, but the average expenditure for everyone else is a small fraction of that?
Overall it probably costs $100,000 per person per year to support this crowd. It would be cheaper to pay them to live in St. John’s with personal servants at their fancy estate complete with an expensive car and a chauffeur. And they wouldn’t even have to work, and we would still save money.
To the people of Conche – leave me alone. I don’t want to give you my money, nor does anyone else. Live in a city if you want roads. I would like to live in a multi-million dollar house with all the amenities. Can you pay for it please? Didn’t think so. You know the saying do unto others – well abide by it!
A lot of people will still not be convinced by my arguments. They’ll say some socialist feel-good thing like “we deserve to be all taken care of by our government” or “it is the government’s responsibility to build roads”.
First of all, what is “the government”. Well, really it’s a handful of authoritarians who do things considered illegal for everyone else such as theft and expropriation. But really the government has no money of its own. They must steal it from everyone else. So when some self-righteous do-gooder proclaims that a road “must be built”, they are really telling the military to make sure that everyone pays up against their will to build a road to the middle of nowhere. Is this really any way to organize society? Again, there are many things many people want. I want a helicopter to pick me up and bring me to work every day. That doesn’t mean I should get it. But that would probably still cost way less than this Conche road.
The only moral way to live is on a voluntary basis, not using government to force people to do your whims.
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