Look there's _always_ an edge case that makes the generalized common good approach sound unreasonable.

But in the end, you make the best rules you can that help the majority of people, and you accept that they will not be 100% ideal. If some people end up unfairly benefiting from it, so be it.

Don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

It’s unreasonable even if not extreme. Some dude who wants to retire 50km into the bush because land is cheap shouldnt get a $100k subsidy by tax payers.

Giving a huge subsidy to someone in the top 1% when they buy a luxury electric car with monstrous torque is also suboptimal. https://www.tesla.com/support/incentives

So is giving below market rate housing to someone who rents it out while buying a bigger home elsewhere with the rental payments. https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/11/21/san-francisco-t...

Or giving food stamps to someone who sells them for money to buy more alcohol. https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2012/02/16/investigation-unc...

Welcome to the world of government subsidies - I don't see how you can stop any of this cost-effectively, as money is fungible and stuff can be resold.

Sure. There aren’t enough crazy-rich people to be significant, just like at the other end there aren’t enough people having 12 kids to cause significant expense to government child benefits schemes.

> There aren’t enough crazy-rich people to be significant

In part because of these costs. If it were on the taxpayer to foot the hook-up bill, a home in the middle of the Grand Tetons would suddenly look much more attractive.

The Google maps pictures if they place certainly look pretty, but you need to be pretty rich just to be able to live so far from where most of the work is.

The land in a town or city is more expensive because of all the positive things such places bring outweighing all the negatives, even in the relatively cheap suburbs. Electricity (etc.) supply is part of that, sure, but far from the only thing.

It’s an extreme example but there are actually thousands of people who would want utilities connected to remote locations. The land is cheap.

Thousands, even hundreds of thousands, is essentially insignificant for the government of a nation of a third of a billion (as you said Musk, I’m thinking of the USA rather than Canada).