Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Can payments persuade Canadian residents to move away from dying villages?

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 195 posts

Re: Can payments persuade Canadian residents to move away from dying villages?

#51

Post by blackbagboys »

ryandrake wrote: post #47

> After appeals were settled, a total of 95 residents received ballots. Ninety percent of them needed to approve the move for it to pass. That’s 86 votes. They got 85. Seems kind of daft to make it all-or-nothing AND set such a high bar. Why weren't the 85 residents who wanted to leave allowed to participate on their own, taking the money and leaving those 10 trolls behind to enjoy living in Nowheresville?

Most likely it would be legally difficult for the government to shut off services to the area if any residents remained.

Re: Can payments persuade Canadian residents to move away from dying villages?

#52

Post by philh »

ryandrake wrote: post #47

> After appeals were settled, a total of 95 residents received ballots. Ninety percent of them needed to approve the move for it to pass. That’s 86 votes. They got 85. Seems kind of daft to make it all-or-nothing AND set such a high bar. Why weren't the 85 residents who wanted to leave allowed to participate on their own, taking the money and leaving those 10 trolls behind to enjoy living in Nowheresville?

If the point of the scheme is that the government wants to stop providing services to Nowheresville, then they basically have four options:

1. status quo

2. pay 85 people to relocate, keep paying to provide services for 10 people

3. pay 95 people to relocate; 10 of them really strongly do not want to relocate, but force them to do so anyway

4. pay 85 people to relocate, leave ten people to the wolves

None of these are very appealing.

Re: Can payments persuade Canadian residents to move away from dying villages?

#53

Post by ryandrake »

philh wrote: post #52
ryandrake wrote: post #47

> After appeals were settled, a total of 95 residents received ballots. Ninety percent of them needed to approve the move for it to pass. That’s 86 votes. They got 85. Seems kind of daft to make it all-or-nothing AND set such a high bar. Why weren't the 85 residents who wanted to leave allowed to participate on their own, taking the money and leaving those 10 trolls behind to enjoy living in Nowheresville?

If the point of the scheme is that the government wants to stop providing services to Nowheresville, then they basically have four options: 1. status quo 2. pay 85 people to relocate, keep paying to provide services for 10 people 3. pay 95 people to relocate; 10 of them really strongly do not want to relocate, but force them to do so anyway 4. pay 85 people to relocate, leave ten people to the wolves None of these ar…

If #4 was actually the option on the table, then perhaps the nay-sayers would have changed their mind, and all would have opted to leave.

Re: Can payments persuade Canadian residents to move away from dying villages?

#54

Post by jkaunisv1 »

msbarnett wrote: post #43
jkaunisv1 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised somebody hasn't started a software company in a place like this. Maybe not the very out of the way island featured in the article but similar ones. Rent must be dirt cheap. I wonder how big a company (or collective of freelancers?) it would take to save a town like that.

> I'm surprised somebody hasn't started a software company in a place like this. Maybe not the very out of the way island featured in the article but similar ones. Rent must be dirt cheap. I wonder how big a company (or collective of freelancers?) it would take to save a town like that. It's tough. This isn't "the suburbs", this is way way off the beaten path. Six-and-a-half hours one way, by car, to St Johns, which…

Great points! Thanks :) I didn't look and didn't realize it was that far from St Johns (I'm in Ottawa and my east coast knowledge is laughably poor).

Re: Can payments persuade Canadian residents to move away from dying villages?

#55

Post by abz10 »

philh wrote: post #52
ryandrake wrote: post #47

> After appeals were settled, a total of 95 residents received ballots. Ninety percent of them needed to approve the move for it to pass. That’s 86 votes. They got 85. Seems kind of daft to make it all-or-nothing AND set such a high bar. Why weren't the 85 residents who wanted to leave allowed to participate on their own, taking the money and leaving those 10 trolls behind to enjoy living in Nowheresville?

If the point of the scheme is that the government wants to stop providing services to Nowheresville, then they basically have four options: 1. status quo 2. pay 85 people to relocate, keep paying to provide services for 10 people 3. pay 95 people to relocate; 10 of them really strongly do not want to relocate, but force them to do so anyway 4. pay 85 people to relocate, leave ten people to the wolves None of these ar…

What about stopping the services as well a stop taxing them? Then if it is viable they can stay.

Re: Can payments persuade Canadian residents to move away from dying villages?

#56

Post by lmm »

mhurron wrote: post #50
lmm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is releated. The economic factors that have shifted jobs away from the land and into the cities are the same ones that attract young people to the cities.

The article is about the government wanting to close towns because it is too expensive to provide services that they must to citizens that live there. It's not about people moving from small towns to cities because they want different types of jobs.

You don't think those phenomena might be related?

Re: Can payments persuade Canadian residents to move away from dying villages?

#57

Post by bitwize »

jkaunisv1 wrote: post #32
balabaster wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny, as a young'un I felt the draw to the city and have worked in some of the greatest cities in the world. Now I'm still not old, but I find myself drawn to places like this. I feel like they could turn their slump into a booming tourism trade. There's nothing like the ocean and the large majority of people only ever get to see it on vacation. I grew up next to the ocean and even in a city where we have easy…

I'm surprised somebody hasn't started a software company in a place like this. Maybe not the very out of the way island featured in the article but similar ones. Rent must be dirt cheap. I wonder how big a company (or collective of freelancers?) it would take to save a town like that.

Somebody has. My current employer contracts out to a software consulting shop in Fredericton, which is the boonies to us (Boston area) but still the big city to those island dwellers. The other day I had the pleasure of meeting a pair of my Canadian colleagues, who had taken the drive down, in person.

The problem is, without an urban hub it becomes difficult to foster the sort of connections it takes to accelerate a company to the sort of fast growth that's expected of today's unicorn-oriented startup economy. So you haven't heard of any of the software shops in NB or PEI, because they're all small, and if one is destined to become big it'll take some time.

Re: Can payments persuade Canadian residents to move away from dying villages?

#58

Post by abz10 »

wmil wrote: post #49
throw20160915 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's because Toronto is in a state of transition. No one complains about NY, London, HK real-estate because it's already understood to be expensive in the mainstream. But Toronto real-estate being expensive is relatively new such that you have people who grew up in Toronto not being able to afford it in adulthood. People are slowly realizing that TO is now just another global city out of reach to the middle class unl…

The other big issue is that there's no local economic boom driving the increase. Which is very confusing to locals -- salaries aren't going up, unemployment is fairly high, but prices are skyrocketing. Apparently low interest rates are a big driver. If they increase then many people won't be able to afford their mortgages.

Statistically more people would be able to afford the mortgages because houses would be cheaper and wealth is on a powerlaw distribution. High interest rates is great for poor people for which their labor dominates their wealth.

Re: Can payments persuade Canadian residents to move away from dying villages?

#59

Post by msabalau »

mikestew wrote: post #37
burnt1ce wrote: post #6

I actually live in Toronto and I agree real estate here is expensive. What I don't get is WAY more expensive in places like London, Hong Kong, New York and San Francisco but I don't hear as many complaints or alarms going off in those areas. Why? Is this just me being oblivious?

What I don't get is WAY more expensive in places like London, Hong Kong, New York and San Francisco but I don't hear as many complaints or alarms going off in those areas. Why? Those places have always been expensive to my memory, and I'm not a young man. But Toronto? Expensive? Get outta here! And if Toronto is anything like Vancouver, BC, you get the same expensive housing as (places with which I'm familiar:) Seatt…

Given that 46% of the population of Toronto are immigrants, presumably many, many people disagree with you about the attractiveness of the city as a place where you pack up and move to seek fame and fortune.

Re: Can payments persuade Canadian residents to move away from dying villages?

#60

Post by sedachv »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #36
trapperkeeper79 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it has to do with local incomes and land area. The GTA is massive when considering land area. Incomes don't compare to places like SF and NY. Although I might be wrong on the income front. A friend of mine remarked that lawyers and bankers in TO may be making 300K+. So maybe I'm wrong about local incomes being depressed.

This is a big part of it. It's not that the cities are expensive, it's that they're so unaffordable. This is especially so in Vancouver where the average income (~C43k)[1] is lower than Toronto, and yet prices are higher. The large disparity between local incomes and housing prices is a major reason why there is so much attention on the implications of foreign capital on Vancouver's housing market. It seems like ther…

Vancouver real estate is the way it is because it has been targeted by Chinese ponzi schemes, bank fraud schemes, and money laundering:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/vancouver/out-of-...

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/real-estate/vancouver/canadia...

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/chinese-police-run-...

Post reply on HN