There’s a reason beyond its physical beauty why most people who set foot on an island resolve to come back and stay longer and perhaps even work towards relocating and staying there permanently. Island life is considerably slower than life on any “mainland” and it’s certainly slower than the post-industrial United Kingdom.
Yes, we’re technically an island as well, but I’m pretty sure when someone from the European mainland, from the USA, from Asia, South Africa or anywhere else really who dreams about escaping to an island isn’t exactly thinking about the often wet and seasonally cold UK. I’m talking about those exotic post card perfect tropical islands of the likes of those which are in the Caribbean and maybe islands such as the Seychelles or Maldives. There are many others, but my point is it’s very easy to fall in love with a remote, exotic island location to the extent that you seriously consider packing your life up into a suitcase and moving on over there to live out the rest of your life as an islander in peace and quiet.
The slower pace of life on an island probably won’t bother anyone who resolves to make the move and it’s perhaps one of the sacrifices you must make, but that’s perhaps what contributes to the generally longer life span of islanders – far less stress. A big sacrifice you’ll need to make however is not quite having full and complete access to all the products and services you’ve become accustomed to getting by just driving down to your nearest store or even by just clicking away at your computer to have them delivered to you on a day of your choice.
You can forget about what are otherwise super convenient services such as being able to browse and order your car tyres online as such services depend on the mass participation of consumers in order for them to be economically viable, unless of course you can get them shipped to your remote location. That just about sums up exactly why life on an island is so expensive, apart from the fact that just about everything needs to be imported, that is.
Think about it from the perspective of a service provider or someone who sells goods on an island. Whatever economic activity they’re involved in is likely their only source of income, a source of income which they themselves must live off of on what is an expensive place to live in, so there’s less volume to deal with and so the mark-up on all goods and services has to fill that void that would have otherwise been easily filled by trading high volumes.
Space is likely also limited, relatively speaking of course, so the reduced costs which would have come with sourcing raw materials and producing goods locally are nothing but a dream to islanders.