Chanakya
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- Joined
- Apr 29, 2015
- Messages
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I'm reminded of this non-fiction story from China:
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China ‘stubborn nail house’ owner regrets not selling before highway construction
Construction team creates special access route, allowing family to reach outside world despite heavy traffic.www.scmp.com
Man refused to sell his home, so they just built a highway around it.
It's obviously quite different from the fictional Arthur Dent story, in that the man had plenty of warning and could have accepted compensation to buy his house, but he chose not to. I can't help thinking that the authorities ultimately took a certain sadistic pleasure in the solution they came up with.
Awesome story.
Actually this speaks very well of Chinese authorities, who I thought were a bunch of vile authoritarian citizenry-bulldozing dictators. Which they of course are, given Tiananmen Square, given like everything, but still, like I was saying, credit where it's due, this actually speaks very well of them, that the local authorities should so humor one individual's sticking stubbornly to his rights, that they should be so scrupulously respectful of those rights.
And this guy, he may yet make a killing. For instance if he manages to wangle a permit to run a roadside restaurant there, maybe even an overnighter motel, or a garage, or some such. Of maybe if he manages to negotiate a way more favorable deal some years later, assuming that highway really takes off and it become important to town planners/ road planners to get rid of that bottleneck and potential accident site. ...Or, of course, not, maybe he lives and dies in regret for not having sold it while he still could.
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