For non-metro, utilities should allow micro grids if they are using mostly renewable power. Microgrids can be significantly more reliable when the grid alternative requires long HV lines without redundancy. And from a fire perspective, distributed generation is a huge win -- ever with a grid interconnection for winter, you can de-energize during peak fire risk and run off PV and batteries.
How about this instead: the property developer should pay, we can have a "building code" that sets standards for all residential constructions and disallow building any new housing that doesn't meet it. That way the costs are borne not by the individual home purchaser but by the investor class speculating on new housing development.
Which is exactly what the upthread poster is doing! They aren't an "individual" as commonly understood (i.e. someone who just wants a home to live in). They bought an empty/undeveloped piece of land and want to put a home there. Well, someone has to pay for that home to be of acceptable quality, who do you suggest?
1) pass the (excessive) costs on to the property sales price
or:
2) not speculate (and not build the house)
The OP has chosen one of the possible ways to have a home to live, you either buy an existing one or buy a plot of land and build a new one on it.
Are there other ways that you can suggest?
Around here, PG&E wanted to charge us $10K to remove a poll and move an existing transformer to an existing poll (and would take years to "engineer" the solution and schedule the work, despite it being a few hours of work for one crew).
No idea what a residential transformer goes for, but I guarantee it's not a significant fraction of the $75K bill.
It is also insane that they are moving polls and not burying the lines.
I thought they were forcing you to run some election polls.
Yeah. Completely new feeder. From what I saw it wasn't a ton of work, maybe a few hours, but hours nonetheless.
Poles, transformers, roads? That's what people pay taxes for. The government should deal with it.
LA doesn't seem to be failing, though. I mean, I get that regulation is unfair, and surely they're doing suboptimal things like every bureaucracy. Yet, the lights are on, the toilets are flushing and the ambulances are arriving.
I don't see how demanding the third largest metropolis on the continent switch to a "hook it up or don't, your call" policy is going to do anything but make things much, much worse.
Basically: your argument is predicated on the idea that you personally don't need to do these things because everyone else already did and you don't need the incremental advantages. But give everyone that choice, and no streets will be lit, no roads will be paved, and power and sewage will be plumbed only to neighborhoods that will collectively pay for it. That's the way it works in most of the developing world, and it sucks. No freeloading. If you want to live in the urban core of Los Angeles you need to be willing to live like your fellow Angelenos.