> Its why should anyone build a house in the middle of nowhere and expect the govt to spend whatever it takes to get connected.

But the article says "he expected to pay a few thousand dollars, given that the nearest pole was across the street, about 45 metres away. He was shocked to find out it would cost $80,000".

So it's not the case of a house in the middle of nowhere...

Just playing devil's advocate here but maybe the whole line cost $400k and they could only charge the other 4 houses on the street $80k each. The fact that the line's already run doesn't mean it's already paid for.

Shouldn't that be built into the service fee though? It's not like this is a one time purchase...

And then we would be reading an article about people going off grid because their power cost is 4x average.

This is how you destroy small farms.

Small farms presumably already have an electrical connection.

True. This is a really a story of the "Fuck you, I got mine" generation.

Power and phone was run for free pretty much everywhere. Now they want 80K for a line and a pole.

This is the same story for internet access.

Have you seen the deficits the governments run?

Should we foot the bill for connecting every rural home because people wanted to move out of the city - increasing the urban sprawl? Maybe if there 5-10 people at a time in batches they could do it at cost. . but custom jobs for every individual homeowner, come on be realistic instead of entitled.

In general I'd expect it to be far more cost effective to enact a massive project to wire every house, than wire a single house

So that's true, but also we don't need new small farms.