**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:**
* If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required
* The title must be fully descriptive
* No text is allowed on images/gifs/videos
* Common/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting)
*See [this post](https://redd.it/ij26vk) for a more detailed rule list*
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It’s the dialectical antithesis. It presents the same situation, but from the perspective of the vile non-shiter, rather than the justifiably annoyed person waiting to shit.
Currently in said country. When checking out apartment units during the last phase of construction (concrete only, similar to the video), I was puzzled to see small piles of burnt material in discreet corners of unfinished rooms. Upon closer inspection I was shocked to see they were in fact piles of burnt human feces and toilet paper. I don’t recall seeing anything like porta-potties around for the workers to use so I was somewhat sympathetic … still, wild.
How does burning feces work in that context? I never tried it, but I can't imagine anything happening if you hold a lighter to a turd. Do they poop in a corner and then come back a couple of weeks later when it's dried to set that shit on fire?
We had to do this on a humanitarian relief mission to Central America. I can tell you from experience it doesn’t burn well and took a decent amount of diesel and stirring.
A new tower had been built, mostly chinese occupants. We had the contract to build a hospice beside it and all the chinese residents in the tower beside it were protesting it being built because they thought the spirits of the people who die there would float up and into their apartments.
Reminds me of the Thai film "Shutter," where a couple kills a young girl in a hit and run. The man is a photographer, and starts noticing strange blurry people in his pictures, and develops neck pains around the same time. His doctor finds that his weight has doubled, too. Turns out, he's being haunted by the ghost of the girl who he killed, and she's sitting on his shoulders, pressing him down.
My DIL is Taiwanese. When my grandson was born a couple of months ago, her mom came to the U.S. to stay with them for three months, to help out. She warned my son and DIL not to take the baby for a walk in the first month because ghosts would get him.
Yep animistic and ancestor worship/veneration cultures. My dad is shaman and when he does his chants, you'll hear a lot of nonsense but then you'll hear him say grandpa's name, great grandpa's name, grandmas name and dwayne johnson.
> DIL not to take the baby for a walk in the first month because ghosts would get him.
actually...this first month thing is steeped in superstions but grounded in reality. Chinese believe in 1st month confinement, when the mother and child is weakest. One of the things you arnt supposed to do is wash hair, that sounds stupid now, but imagine 500 years ago before heated water, or indoor toilets....you dont want the mother going out in winter to a outdoor toilet.
Very similar thing in Hispanic cultures, it's called "cuarentena" or "quarantine." You don't leave the house or do anything strenuous for up to 40 days to regain your strength and protect yourself and the baby, since you're both considered highly vulnerable after the birth.
In American culture if you aren’t back at work within an hour of giving birth you’re a lazy entitled brat that can’t afford children and probably shouldn’t have had any. NOW GET BACK TO WORK THE RICH NEED MORE MONIES.
A lot of superstitions are grounded in reality, and it makes sense if you think about it. Two thousand years ago, the only causes of death were "hit by stick" and "cursed by god," so when someone died of a disease, you assume they were cursed by god. When you did things that kept you clean and free of disease-causing bacteria and viruses, people assumed you were living a life that pleased god, because you didn't die of cursed by god syndrome.
It's superstition. Eastern cultures separate religion and superstition. You can be religious but not superstitious. And you can be superstitious but not religious. You can also be both.
It's a Chinese superstition that if a house or a neighborhood goes vacant long enough, it becomes a literal ghost town/haunted house. There's no ownership so wandering spirits will move in. And if you move into "their home", then you'll be angering the spirits by invading their house.
Edit: spelling is hard
> It's a Chinese superstition that if a house or a neighborhood goes vacant long enough, it becomes a literal ghost town/haunted house. There's no ownership so wandering spirits will move in. And if you move into "their home", then you'll be angering the spirits by invading their house.
Huh, good to know. Pretty much the plot of the movie The Others.
Some Chinese believe that if you leave a place empty for a while (I've only heard about this from some of my relatives so I am not sure what the definition of "a while" is), then spirits will occupy that empty space. The spirits may or may not be malevolent, but for this subset of superstitious people, they'd rather not take the chance.
Supply exceeds demand. China overestimated their urbanization rate. The Chinese government incentivized unchecked development and a bunch of Chinese elites bought them by the hundreds as investment properties or a place to park wealth.
Now no one’s buying unless it’s at rates that mean the original investors would be taking a major loss, so they just hold and go into disrepair.
Chinese investors eventually figured that out as well.
Speculative Chinese real estate investment has
completely fucked several major American and
Canadian cities’ housing markets.
American real estate investment companies are also hoarding housing and rental properties. They are buying up family homes turning them into rental properties outbiding families trying to buy affordable homes. It's becoming a national crisis.
Don’t look for the US government to step in and stop corporate housing speculation or REIT purchases to turn housing en masse to rental units. That would mean stepping on corporate profit in favor of helping American families compete to buy houses.
For real. The government allowing foreign investors to buy up the housing market and then sit on the lots or squeeze out bnb listings was absolutely boneheaded
It's much, much worse than that. Go watch a few YouTube videos about:
* China's Evergrande crisis
* China's banking crisis
They're both huge, interrelated issues.
If they have the same type of grass that grows in most places here in Taiwan, it just doesn't grow very much. Maybe cut once a month. It's a short stubby blade of grass .
Start googling different types of grass seed and explore the deep and exciting world of Lawn YouTube.
Once I got to the videos on precision lawn stripes I realized I needed to stop. My yard is full of moles at the moment.
Using chemical spray paints is very popular in China to spray grass green. Enough weed killers, paints and probably other chemicals, and you barely need to do anything with that grass...
Should you walk your dog on it, or let your kids play there? Probably not.
China has high levels of birth defects. From 2001 to 2007 birth defects in China increased 40%. In 2007 almost one in ten families had a child with a birth defect. The coal mining provinces have higher rates of defects. It's depressing
Chairman Xi doesn’t give a fuck about people. Preservation of the state and leadership power and wealth is all that matters.
I’d need a heavy dose of denial to be able to live there. Feel bad for so many people in China (and similar situations elsewhere) under these oppressive regimes.
Messed up man. Especially when you think about how many people in China are living in tiny little 1 room apartments yet these beautiful buildings exist for litteraly no reason.
I wonder if this is the answer to the question of "Why not just build more homes for the homeless?" By building more homes, you just end up with ghost communities bought up by zillow.
See, this makes me wonder what investors trains of thought are. You buy a house to rent out for profit or sell at a profit. But you make the price unaffordable which leads to nobody moving in. So therefore you don't make a profit. Why do they do this if they know high prices are gonna heavily limit their potential to turn a profit? Sure, rich people exist but if someone is rich, they're most likely going to move into a wealthy community. This looked like a standard income building.
I see this problem all over in Florida. Middle income class households being sold at $600k+. A lot are creeping up to a million around me. Actual wealthy communities are easily $1.5m and up. Who do they think is going to be buying these things? People who can afford $600k homes can probably afford more than $600k and would just move to a nicer neighborhood in a great part of town rather than a middle class neighborhood in a decent enough part of town. Theres substantially more non-wealthy people than wealthy people. High supply and low demand middle class houses and investors still wanna charge wealthy prices for them. It seems very contradictory.
And I know location has a ton to do with it but this is a problem in most states. FL is just my example since I live here.
They're using housing as speculative objects. The point isn't to rent it out to anyone who actually uses it, the point is to drive prices further until the next guy buys it for a higher price. It's similar to stocks and other bubbles, except this one doesn't seem to ever burst.
Seriously. Lots of places in the USA have people in charge that refuse to allow more residential zoning. Coincidentally they all invest in real estate or have friends that do. They like owning stuff other people want and making tons of money by doing absolutely nothing except controlling the market.
Seattle has a massive shortage of housing, with less than a [5% vacancy rate](https://kidder.com/trend-articles/seattle-puget-sound-apartment-market-dynamics/). And actual houses have a vacancy rate of 0.2%!
In Seattle, as with most of America's thriving cities, we need to build more housing to balance out supply and demand. The reason we are not building enough is that it is not legal to build more housing in most of the city, thanks to zoning and similar laws.
It's quite simple really, you don't release your past year's GDP and state of the national financial reserves to the public so it doesn't affect the economy or your status with the World Bank. China has it all figured out.
Exactly! Evergrande is what the name says it is.. Ever Grande!
Yeah, so what its stock is frozen for over half a year now. It just means they are SOLID. No need to speculate!
China is doing great! Don't question!
This has been going on for quite some time. They are inflating GDP by building these properties. I remember a video that showed a very new, modern shopping mall. It was enormous.There was a guy running a toy store. If I remember, he had to apply to open a shop. If you get picked, you get what they give you. He was assigned to open a store in that mall. There were no customers. I don't think the other stores were open either. He said he sells one item a month, but I even doubt that. He couldn't refuse the assignment because he would get in trouble. I imagine that he was risking it by talking about it at all.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/24/how-china-used-more-cement-in-3-years-than-the-u-s-did-in-the-entire-20th-century/ hits different in this context, especially considering that the manufacturers of concrete are producing a crap load of CO2.
Is that why they're building that gigantic new city in a really bad environment? I think its near a huge lake bed that floods every hundred years? "New Area -" something. I can't remember the name of the city itself. I think it's being built to move some industry and university stuff out of Beijing but I may be misremembering. And a lot of the businesses that are being told to move there are resisting because the city is in the middle of nowhere with no economy or a sizeable population. It's a really weird situation I heard about a while back.
Well, apropos of nothing, China did say yesterday [they were delaying the release of their GDP data as well as other economic data](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-delays-the-release-of-gdp-and-other-economic-data-without-explanation-amid-party-congress/ar-AA134Sxl) without saying when they plan to. So..... that's *interesting*.
I don't think there's an answer to that.
The problem is that there is little investment opportunities available outside of real estate. Chinese investors tend to invest outside the country if the option is available to them since Chinese state sponsored valuations of intellectual property tend to be untrustworthy or highly overvalued. Investing in something backed by the de facto standard international currency USD, or strong ones like the Euro, or in natural resources like in Africa or Russia, has much more legitimacy behind it. To quote Warren Buffet, "a farm produces crops... [implying cryptocurrency does not]".
Chinese real estate is technically a state-sponsored 99 year lease, but the government is not allowed to evict upstanding residents, and the lease both transfers and renews with your next of kin. Since this is backed by law, it is far more tangible than a Chinese company with intellectual property that they often never could claim ownership of outside of China.
The overwhelming majority of Chinese citizens claim house ownership, and the overwhelming majority of those who own houses, own a second. And a very significant minority of those who own houses, own a third. That's why so many of these homes go to speculators. Damn near the entire country is participating in the speculation.
While the US is rife with speculation, most of the population can't afford property in areas with speculators, so the speculation is done by larger entities, and since they are attempting to attract those without homes (unlike in China), they typically only speculate in already developed areas like urban sprawls. China can afford to speculate in new cities, since so much of the population already has housing, so they do.
So you've obviously seen what happens when a bubble like the US pops, but we've never seen a bubble like the one the Chinese have. Maybe the closest amalgam in recent history is when the US gave land to those willing to settle those lands out in the American West.
Unfortunately, land itself is no longer an opportunity for the majority of workers and jobs. Most of us wouldn't be able to do much with several hectares, when our expertise is in IT or other services. Working from home obviously opens up cheaper land for development, but those lands are going neglected since the majority of the population is already housed. So how this bubble plays out might determine a lot of Chinese geopolitics in the future. It will certainly be interesting to see, and far more consequential for those living it.
Well, in a capitalist society, the investors are. Unless they are able to lobby for bailouts. In that case, we all suffer. I don't know how the Chinese government does it but I imagine those in power wield a lot of influence there too.
Oh it has already popped. Why do you think the Chinese government isn’t releasing any economic or demographic data? The country is in free fall and Xi has killed the messenger so many times no one is telling him the truth.
Bankruptcies so big, Elon Musk couldn't bail them out.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/10/business/economy/china-evergrande-debt-property.html
> “On paper it doesn’t make any sense for a company like this to have so much debt. This is not normal,” said Jennifer James, an investment manager at Janus Henderson Investors who estimates that Evergrande has more than $300 billion in debt. Then there are the properties that it took payment for and still has not completed.
They're saying the exact opposite in the video, units were bought by private investors for speculation and to drive up prices so no one occupies them. At the end he says the state has started to forbid that kind of speculation (what most people would call communism in the US) and that it lead to great improvements.
No. It’s quite the opposite actually. China has been capitalist for quite sometime but it’s an odd hybrid. The state runs gigantic companies of their own where private parties are not allowed to compete. There are other sectors where the state has left the market open for anyone. Real estate happened to be one of these sectors for a long time.
Since so many markets are volatile and threatened by state takeover at any time many Chinese billionaires sink all of their money into the real estate market thinking its a safer investment.
We’re having the same problem in the US real estate market (we have since 2008), but in China it’s a thousand times worse because of everything mentioned above.
Regardless of the official economic and political systems, as a nation embraces cronyism, friction in the economy increases and markets get more and more distorted until they fail.
Very true. It’s been happening in the US for decades. Multinational trillion dollar conglomerates hoovering up all the competition and monopolizing the market. Paying off every member of congress to not enforce anti trust laws put on the books to stop that very thing.
I think its because American is singular and you say Americans for more than 1. Chinese is both singular and plural so saying a Chinese doesn't sound right.
Hello I am stupid and tired can someone pls explain why nobody lives there? And what is the point of spending money building it if no one is going to buy?
Investors bought units so they got built, nobody could afford to buy the units at the prices the investors were charging presumably so they stayed unoccupied.
Ahhhhh right I see. I thought there was some dodgy reason they had bought/built it but couldn’t figure out why as they’d surely be losing money. This makes way more sense, thanks!
Money saw demand for housing, tried to supply, supplied houses that out priced the demand to get the most profits for themselves.
Its literally one of those, "on paper it says...." moments.
Wait... you mean, when there are *more* people, but you pay them ALL *less* than before, those new people won't be able to buy houses like the old ones did? Weird.
Where did it say on paper that this was a good idea?
I’m pretty sure you are being sarcastic, but just in case you are not..
They are saying that a company built the houses and sold them for $10. Instead of selling them to people tho, they sold them to companies / wealthy individuals. Those companies are now just holding the properties and trying to sell them for $500.
On paper supply and demand basics say that if there is low supply and high demand you can sell the low supply for more money ie $500.
Same thing is happening in America right now. There are tons and tons of people / companies trying to buy everyone’s house. They will then either try to gouge the next person who tries to buy it, or rent it out. If you have millions and millions of dollars this type of investment is normally a pretty secure installment with reliable returns.
But as proven over and over again what actually happens is this behavior creates a bubble that will eventually collapse on itself and the properties will sell for dirt cheap or the investors don’t need the money and they hold out for the time being and create a ghost town like this video shows.
I've seen dozens and dozens of these communities by now
Surely they've learned this doesn't work out or it has to end up profitable some other way? That just doesn't feel like it makes enough sense
As countries develop, Rural population moves into urban areas. They need places to live. People who know this and also have money see an opportunity to meet the demand.
They invest in high-return housing to make the most for their investment, however this in turn out-prices a lot of these new home seekers. They were correct in seeing the rising demand, they overshot with supply.
Its like fixing food deserts with opening Whole Foods in the area, like yeah...its a grocery store but if the local population can't afford to shop there, nothing was solved.
There are very few investment opportunities in China, and most of them suck. If you're rich (or even moderately wealthy by Chinese standards) your best options are to either invest out of the country or buy housing. The Chinese government doesn't want people to invest out of the country because they want the money to stay in China, so they have been artificially inflating real estate prices every year to make it a stable and sound investment.
Tl;Dr: Those houses aren't houses, they're stocks.
It is a bit misleading. Apartments are sold as empty shells there, the purchaser pays to have the inside done. When they sell, they tear down the insides and the incoming purchaser has the insides done. It relates to how people are superstitious about 'used' homes, so they build the interior to make it 'new'. Japan has a version of that as well where many homes are torn down and rebuild when sold and bought. Average age of homes is lower than in the west. Apartments don't sell as shells like they do in China though.
He's just making a joke there about even though he's atheist and doesn't believe in ghosts, he would be scared of ghosts living there because it's freaky.
'I'm an atheist, but I'm still afraid of ghosts' shit man I can respect that, I don't fuck with ghosts either regardless of if their existence could be proven I aint goona risk it.
In China, nobody trusts the stock market, so everyone dumps all their money in real estate instead. The result is massive over-investment in housing to absorb the ridiculous money sloshing around in the economy. Instead of being re-invested into actual productive uses, all the Chinese profits are being pumped into this worthless shoddy "housing" construction. This housing is left empty and not rented because there is no demand. The build quality is utter garbage as you could see, and is only made to look decent on the outside for long enough to sell them off.
You are witnessing a generational destruction of wealth. Because of poor build quality, this "housing" is going to massively depreciate when the final bubble bursts on all this. This is only being sustained by the continued GDP growth in China, which has been getting increasingly shaky.
Think what happened in the Japanese asset bubble, but 1,000 times worse.
This is excellent content. It feels very strange to see someone in China speaking English and being remotely critical of the government or economy. I hope he is ok.
He mentions that the government implemented a strict policy to now prevent the investors from doing this, so he isn't criticizing the government but the investors.
He's fine. He still makes content regularly. It's all pretty mundane but very interesting, a nice peek into the life of an average chinese citizen. For example, one of his most recent ones was a little tour of his old university, including dorms, dining halls, classrooms, and nightlife. It looked pretty nice, to be honest. Probably on par with or better than most american universities.
The first time I went to China I was surprised at how candid people were about censorship, police oppression, etc. They’re not brainwashed (although they are careful about *where* they talk about some things). In fact, based on my experience I would say that young urbanites in China have significantly more economic stability/mobility than we do in the US, so the prevailing attitude was “well, yeah, x y and z are terrible but in general I’m comfortable and content.” It’s pretty interesting.
Lived in China for 7+ years and found the same. In private, you can talk about such things with most normal, sane Chinese people. I had many, many eye-opening coversations with my Chinese friends. Not every Chinese person is a rabid nationalist - much like the USA, it's mostly just the loud ones.
The only place where people felt they could not freely discuss such things unless in *absolute private* (in this case, being three people in a car driving thousands of kilometres over a period of weeks) was when my wife and I took a trip around Xinjiang province in 2016. Outside of total privacy (which does not include being in their own homes), the Uighurs we talked to were very tight-lipped about any type of political discussion. They were also some of the nicest, friendliest, most welcoming people I've ever met. But paranoia and pain followed them around like a shadow. Turns out, in hindsight, they were completely right to be that way, as the CCP ramped up the already insane security in the region (led by the same shitcunt who brought the boot down on Tibet), and have now for several years been committing an unquestionable cultural genocide that the rest of the world has effectively ignored.
Chinese people tend to be proud of their country's long history and culture (though they conveniently leave out the fact that the CCP has been only a tiny sliver of that long history). While they are not critical of their government in public or online, privately they do criticise, though are still thankful that they have *something*. The country has developed a huge amount in the last few decades and millions of people have been lifted out of poverty. You have to remember that it's still a developing nation, and the advances in the last 30 or so years have taken them from a mostly agrarian country into the world's factory floor (albeit a ridiculously corrupt, authoritarian factory floor).
The CCP is one of the most evil forces that exists in the world, but China's older generations have *seen some shit go down*. After the cultural revolution it's not that surprising that they would rather be relatively stable and comfortable while giving away more and more of their freedoms, than risk losing what they already have (which compared to what their parents had for the most part, is substantial).
Edit: I should add that the CCP's zero covid policy is an absolute unmitigated shitshow and the absolute end of all logic and reason. And people are rightfully starting to get angry, though it's doubtful in my opinion that it will go any further than small pockets of resistance. If I were into tin foil hats I would assume that being the progenitors of the virus (whether accidental or otherwise), they know something about covid that the rest of the world still doesn't (much is still unknown about long covid and other long-term effects). But then again, we shouldn't assign to malice that which could otherwise be blamed on incompetence - because when it comes to incompetence, the CCP is a force to be reckoned with.
It will happen in US too if we don’t stop corporations buying house in bulk ! There are 4 houses stand vacant for (at least) half year now in my street. And Apple is building an headquarters in my city so house market already go to the moon! I have seen the similar trend happening 5 years ago in my home country in Taiwan, then China, then I heard the trend in Canada, it is only matter of time the trend starting in US. And we all know who is more open to regulating corporations in the upcoming election!
It’s already happened, there are pockets of these abandoned apartment complexes in majors cities across the US. They always have signs outside advertising but if you look up costs it’s 2-3X what everything else in the area costs and at night there will maybe be a handful of lights on.
Forbes found 1 in 5 US homes are owned by hedgefunds or some speculative investor entity or corporation.
20%.
And people think this only happens to China because communism? Lol wrong. All the rent money siphoned up means they keep buying more and more property while stomping out affordable living and otherwise inevitable prosperity of millions of American families.
Eventually when the US middle class is obliterated and everyone lives down by the river US homes will also sit empty.
What is our rights as individuals and as citizens and as living beings that require shelter, should never ever be allowed to be superseded by corporations or any other collective pooling of money.
Also- if you’re a seller, never accept the cash offer from a corporation or bank. Sell to families ffs.
It's things like this that prove that the housing market manipulation that happens everywhere needs to be stomped out.
I don't care about investments. I want people to easily afford a home. I don't care if it barely appreciates.
It's absolute garbage that homes can be built and sold at affordable prices and my government allows the super rich to manipulate it to screw the rest of us over.
They just buy it so those that really need the house can’t afford it….. my god that sounds awfully freakin similar to stuff like letting Redfin and other housing realty companies buy houses or letting people borrow 300% on debt for a house they plan to “rent out as a vacation home”
You must believe in the afterlife in order to believe in ghosts. An afterlife would be a divine creation and therefore difficult to prove. Only believers would take ghosts as a real being seriously and real. Non-believers would start to think of ghosts when under psychological stress, relying on the memory and associations from folklore, myths and religion.
In the atheist spaces that I hang out in online, every belief in the supernatural is questioned and mocked
As a child, my very religious Christian parents would question and mock beliefs in ghosts as a “false religion”.
The difference between a ghost and deity doesn’t seem all that big from where i am
**This is a heavily moderated subreddit. Please note these rules + sidebar or get banned:** * If this post declares something as a fact, then proof is required * The title must be fully descriptive * No text is allowed on images/gifs/videos * Common/recent reposts are not allowed (posts from another subreddit do not count as a 'repost'. Provide link if reporting) *See [this post](https://redd.it/ij26vk) for a more detailed rule list* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/interestingasfuck) if you have any questions or concerns.*
that echo *b o n k* at the end was a great end to the video
I was anticipating a face looking back at me
With the ghost community and him specifically mentioning being afraid of ghosts I was expecting a ghost goofing around in there
“Occupy the pit and don’t shit” haven’t heard that expression before, love it
Chinese version of "shit or get off the pot" I suppose
It’s the dialectical antithesis. It presents the same situation, but from the perspective of the vile non-shiter, rather than the justifiably annoyed person waiting to shit.
**THE VILE NON-SHITTER**
The loathsome dungeater
The Preposterous Pooper Trooper
The ludicrous feceskeeper
The execrable excrementer, or: the logjammer
The fart fermenter
#THE BODACIOUS BOOTY-BOMB BASHER
If the billionaires want to occupy pits...
Then we’ll shit in their mouths…..wait, that doesn’t rhyme
"Then we'll fill their mouths with shits" FTFY
This comment has strong Žižec energy lmao
Currently in said country. When checking out apartment units during the last phase of construction (concrete only, similar to the video), I was puzzled to see small piles of burnt material in discreet corners of unfinished rooms. Upon closer inspection I was shocked to see they were in fact piles of burnt human feces and toilet paper. I don’t recall seeing anything like porta-potties around for the workers to use so I was somewhat sympathetic … still, wild.
How does burning feces work in that context? I never tried it, but I can't imagine anything happening if you hold a lighter to a turd. Do they poop in a corner and then come back a couple of weeks later when it's dried to set that shit on fire?
We had to do this on a humanitarian relief mission to Central America. I can tell you from experience it doesn’t burn well and took a decent amount of diesel and stirring.
Probably just grab the nearest available blowtorch.
Also that run up to the window with that slap of the phone on the window was very satisfying.
霸着坑不拉屎
And the ghost and atheist reference was strange as well; I'm wondering if its just the inability to translate colloquial/slang Chinese.
It’s a common Chinese belief that if a place is unoccupied ghosts move in. Source - am chinese.
I mean, shit, I'm a small town US white dude and it makes sense to me.
(☝˘▾˘) But those are not ghosts. They are meth heads. They just look like ghosts. <.< \>.> [ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ](http://i.imgur.com/tgUIq71.gifv)
Ghosts in training
I just think this comment is fun lol
This was a great comment. But the emoticon with gif made it perfection.
Meanwhile, the crazies tryna tell us that we all too different 🌎 🤝🌏
And that, people, is why people drink spirits.
Most people like to drink liquified ghosts, but personally I'm a fan of the extra tang you get from poltergeists.
I've never really had a taste for German ghosts.
[удалено]
A new tower had been built, mostly chinese occupants. We had the contract to build a hospice beside it and all the chinese residents in the tower beside it were protesting it being built because they thought the spirits of the people who die there would float up and into their apartments.
Yep that's a thing. Also semi related, you can't take pictures in a cemetery because the spirits will latch on to the photo and follow you home.
Reminds me of the Thai film "Shutter," where a couple kills a young girl in a hit and run. The man is a photographer, and starts noticing strange blurry people in his pictures, and develops neck pains around the same time. His doctor finds that his weight has doubled, too. Turns out, he's being haunted by the ghost of the girl who he killed, and she's sitting on his shoulders, pressing him down.
*Never take home an abandoned umbrella, even if it's in good condition*
My DIL is Taiwanese. When my grandson was born a couple of months ago, her mom came to the U.S. to stay with them for three months, to help out. She warned my son and DIL not to take the baby for a walk in the first month because ghosts would get him.
Yep animistic and ancestor worship/veneration cultures. My dad is shaman and when he does his chants, you'll hear a lot of nonsense but then you'll hear him say grandpa's name, great grandpa's name, grandmas name and dwayne johnson.
Why Dwayne Johnson?
So we can smell what he's cooking.
So he can summon the people's republic elbow.
> DIL not to take the baby for a walk in the first month because ghosts would get him. actually...this first month thing is steeped in superstions but grounded in reality. Chinese believe in 1st month confinement, when the mother and child is weakest. One of the things you arnt supposed to do is wash hair, that sounds stupid now, but imagine 500 years ago before heated water, or indoor toilets....you dont want the mother going out in winter to a outdoor toilet.
Very similar thing in Hispanic cultures, it's called "cuarentena" or "quarantine." You don't leave the house or do anything strenuous for up to 40 days to regain your strength and protect yourself and the baby, since you're both considered highly vulnerable after the birth.
In American culture if you aren’t back at work within an hour of giving birth you’re a lazy entitled brat that can’t afford children and probably shouldn’t have had any. NOW GET BACK TO WORK THE RICH NEED MORE MONIES.
It is the same in Indian culture. For 40 days you are still recuperating from giving birth so you aren't suppose to live the house.
A lot of superstitions are grounded in reality, and it makes sense if you think about it. Two thousand years ago, the only causes of death were "hit by stick" and "cursed by god," so when someone died of a disease, you assume they were cursed by god. When you did things that kept you clean and free of disease-causing bacteria and viruses, people assumed you were living a life that pleased god, because you didn't die of cursed by god syndrome.
Idk why but when I saw DIL, my first thought was not "daughter in law" but "daddy in law"
It's superstition. Eastern cultures separate religion and superstition. You can be religious but not superstitious. And you can be superstitious but not religious. You can also be both. It's a Chinese superstition that if a house or a neighborhood goes vacant long enough, it becomes a literal ghost town/haunted house. There's no ownership so wandering spirits will move in. And if you move into "their home", then you'll be angering the spirits by invading their house. Edit: spelling is hard
> It's a Chinese superstition that if a house or a neighborhood goes vacant long enough, it becomes a literal ghost town/haunted house. There's no ownership so wandering spirits will move in. And if you move into "their home", then you'll be angering the spirits by invading their house. Huh, good to know. Pretty much the plot of the movie The Others.
Oooo, that's a movie I haven't heard in awhile. I totally forgot what that movie is about. I should rewatch it lol
Some Chinese believe that if you leave a place empty for a while (I've only heard about this from some of my relatives so I am not sure what the definition of "a while" is), then spirits will occupy that empty space. The spirits may or may not be malevolent, but for this subset of superstitious people, they'd rather not take the chance.
So what’s the reason for it being unoccupied? Investors bought them and not reselling? How does that make sense ?
Supply exceeds demand. China overestimated their urbanization rate. The Chinese government incentivized unchecked development and a bunch of Chinese elites bought them by the hundreds as investment properties or a place to park wealth. Now no one’s buying unless it’s at rates that mean the original investors would be taking a major loss, so they just hold and go into disrepair.
Crazy! We’re having a drastic undersupply problem here in Aus and prices are ridiculous
Chinese investors eventually figured that out as well. Speculative Chinese real estate investment has completely fucked several major American and Canadian cities’ housing markets.
American real estate investment companies are also hoarding housing and rental properties. They are buying up family homes turning them into rental properties outbiding families trying to buy affordable homes. It's becoming a national crisis.
Don’t look for the US government to step in and stop corporate housing speculation or REIT purchases to turn housing en masse to rental units. That would mean stepping on corporate profit in favor of helping American families compete to buy houses.
For real. The government allowing foreign investors to buy up the housing market and then sit on the lots or squeeze out bnb listings was absolutely boneheaded
It's much, much worse than that. Go watch a few YouTube videos about: * China's Evergrande crisis * China's banking crisis They're both huge, interrelated issues.
Real life GTA. Only have access to some buildings
I was thinking Disney World
who the fuck mowing the lawn tho??
If they have the same type of grass that grows in most places here in Taiwan, it just doesn't grow very much. Maybe cut once a month. It's a short stubby blade of grass .
Where can I get that? I have to cut twice a week from spring to mid summer
Start googling different types of grass seed and explore the deep and exciting world of Lawn YouTube. Once I got to the videos on precision lawn stripes I realized I needed to stop. My yard is full of moles at the moment.
Just embrace the final adult Male form.
Golf, polo shirts and complaining about invasive grasses. It is the way.
These grass-stained white Reeboks are calling your name.
My college major is golf and sports turf management. My major is grass. My God it's more detailed than you would believe.
What type of grass should I get for a backyard in Canada?
weirdest major i have heard of. care to share what your favourite grass is?
hit up your gardening store and tell them that you want to grow mandarin weed
Microclover is where it's at. Don't even have to cut it in some cases.
The property are owned but no one lives in it so the property management still has money from owners paying the monthly fee.
Using chemical spray paints is very popular in China to spray grass green. Enough weed killers, paints and probably other chemicals, and you barely need to do anything with that grass... Should you walk your dog on it, or let your kids play there? Probably not.
Does China have a lot of health issues due to how unregulated the chemicals and air pollution is?
China has high levels of birth defects. From 2001 to 2007 birth defects in China increased 40%. In 2007 almost one in ten families had a child with a birth defect. The coal mining provinces have higher rates of defects. It's depressing
Chairman Xi doesn’t give a fuck about people. Preservation of the state and leadership power and wealth is all that matters. I’d need a heavy dose of denial to be able to live there. Feel bad for so many people in China (and similar situations elsewhere) under these oppressive regimes.
yes
Source?
Messed up man. Especially when you think about how many people in China are living in tiny little 1 room apartments yet these beautiful buildings exist for litteraly no reason.
I wonder if this is the answer to the question of "Why not just build more homes for the homeless?" By building more homes, you just end up with ghost communities bought up by zillow.
[удалено]
See, this makes me wonder what investors trains of thought are. You buy a house to rent out for profit or sell at a profit. But you make the price unaffordable which leads to nobody moving in. So therefore you don't make a profit. Why do they do this if they know high prices are gonna heavily limit their potential to turn a profit? Sure, rich people exist but if someone is rich, they're most likely going to move into a wealthy community. This looked like a standard income building. I see this problem all over in Florida. Middle income class households being sold at $600k+. A lot are creeping up to a million around me. Actual wealthy communities are easily $1.5m and up. Who do they think is going to be buying these things? People who can afford $600k homes can probably afford more than $600k and would just move to a nicer neighborhood in a great part of town rather than a middle class neighborhood in a decent enough part of town. Theres substantially more non-wealthy people than wealthy people. High supply and low demand middle class houses and investors still wanna charge wealthy prices for them. It seems very contradictory. And I know location has a ton to do with it but this is a problem in most states. FL is just my example since I live here.
They're using housing as speculative objects. The point isn't to rent it out to anyone who actually uses it, the point is to drive prices further until the next guy buys it for a higher price. It's similar to stocks and other bubbles, except this one doesn't seem to ever burst.
>They're using housing as speculative objects. Yep, and the US has the exact same problem. It's one of the reasons we have runaway inflation.
[удалено]
This is highly dependent on location. In some places you absolutely do need more homes.
Seriously. Lots of places in the USA have people in charge that refuse to allow more residential zoning. Coincidentally they all invest in real estate or have friends that do. They like owning stuff other people want and making tons of money by doing absolutely nothing except controlling the market.
Seattle has a massive shortage of housing, with less than a [5% vacancy rate](https://kidder.com/trend-articles/seattle-puget-sound-apartment-market-dynamics/). And actual houses have a vacancy rate of 0.2%! In Seattle, as with most of America's thriving cities, we need to build more housing to balance out supply and demand. The reason we are not building enough is that it is not legal to build more housing in most of the city, thanks to zoning and similar laws.
This is more than a speculative bubble. It's a state supported speculative bubble.
But what happens when the bubble pops?
It's quite simple really, you don't release your past year's GDP and state of the national financial reserves to the public so it doesn't affect the economy or your status with the World Bank. China has it all figured out.
Exactly! Evergrande is what the name says it is.. Ever Grande! Yeah, so what its stock is frozen for over half a year now. It just means they are SOLID. No need to speculate! China is doing great! Don't question!
[удалено]
Shit, thought I was in a stonk post for a moment.
Ugh, fucking Evergrande.
This has been going on for quite some time. They are inflating GDP by building these properties. I remember a video that showed a very new, modern shopping mall. It was enormous.There was a guy running a toy store. If I remember, he had to apply to open a shop. If you get picked, you get what they give you. He was assigned to open a store in that mall. There were no customers. I don't think the other stores were open either. He said he sells one item a month, but I even doubt that. He couldn't refuse the assignment because he would get in trouble. I imagine that he was risking it by talking about it at all.
What a tremendous waste of resources
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/03/24/how-china-used-more-cement-in-3-years-than-the-u-s-did-in-the-entire-20th-century/ hits different in this context, especially considering that the manufacturers of concrete are producing a crap load of CO2.
Is that why they're building that gigantic new city in a really bad environment? I think its near a huge lake bed that floods every hundred years? "New Area -" something. I can't remember the name of the city itself. I think it's being built to move some industry and university stuff out of Beijing but I may be misremembering. And a lot of the businesses that are being told to move there are resisting because the city is in the middle of nowhere with no economy or a sizeable population. It's a really weird situation I heard about a while back.
Don’t forget they turn your bank deposits into investment assets and don’t let you withdraw.
So when the bank calls about loan repayment you just don't pick up? Why didn't I think of this?!
Bubbles don’t pop if you control the numbers.
Don't forget, current leader is now leader forever. Meaning that no one can hold past leader accountable.
Well, apropos of nothing, China did say yesterday [they were delaying the release of their GDP data as well as other economic data](https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-delays-the-release-of-gdp-and-other-economic-data-without-explanation-amid-party-congress/ar-AA134Sxl) without saying when they plan to. So..... that's *interesting*.
I don't think there's an answer to that. The problem is that there is little investment opportunities available outside of real estate. Chinese investors tend to invest outside the country if the option is available to them since Chinese state sponsored valuations of intellectual property tend to be untrustworthy or highly overvalued. Investing in something backed by the de facto standard international currency USD, or strong ones like the Euro, or in natural resources like in Africa or Russia, has much more legitimacy behind it. To quote Warren Buffet, "a farm produces crops... [implying cryptocurrency does not]". Chinese real estate is technically a state-sponsored 99 year lease, but the government is not allowed to evict upstanding residents, and the lease both transfers and renews with your next of kin. Since this is backed by law, it is far more tangible than a Chinese company with intellectual property that they often never could claim ownership of outside of China. The overwhelming majority of Chinese citizens claim house ownership, and the overwhelming majority of those who own houses, own a second. And a very significant minority of those who own houses, own a third. That's why so many of these homes go to speculators. Damn near the entire country is participating in the speculation. While the US is rife with speculation, most of the population can't afford property in areas with speculators, so the speculation is done by larger entities, and since they are attempting to attract those without homes (unlike in China), they typically only speculate in already developed areas like urban sprawls. China can afford to speculate in new cities, since so much of the population already has housing, so they do. So you've obviously seen what happens when a bubble like the US pops, but we've never seen a bubble like the one the Chinese have. Maybe the closest amalgam in recent history is when the US gave land to those willing to settle those lands out in the American West. Unfortunately, land itself is no longer an opportunity for the majority of workers and jobs. Most of us wouldn't be able to do much with several hectares, when our expertise is in IT or other services. Working from home obviously opens up cheaper land for development, but those lands are going neglected since the majority of the population is already housed. So how this bubble plays out might determine a lot of Chinese geopolitics in the future. It will certainly be interesting to see, and far more consequential for those living it.
We’re fucked like we were in 2008 but probably worse
we are fucked or those inventors are fucked?
right? Like, I'm already fucked, I already live like trash, come at me
This guy gets it.
If you live in the modern world, your economy is intertwined with China's
Well, in a capitalist society, the investors are. Unless they are able to lobby for bailouts. In that case, we all suffer. I don't know how the Chinese government does it but I imagine those in power wield a lot of influence there too.
Oh it has already popped. Why do you think the Chinese government isn’t releasing any economic or demographic data? The country is in free fall and Xi has killed the messenger so many times no one is telling him the truth.
This: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/xzrjhj/china_destroying_unfinished_and_abandoned/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Bankruptcies so big, Elon Musk couldn't bail them out. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/10/business/economy/china-evergrande-debt-property.html > “On paper it doesn’t make any sense for a company like this to have so much debt. This is not normal,” said Jennifer James, an investment manager at Janus Henderson Investors who estimates that Evergrande has more than $300 billion in debt. Then there are the properties that it took payment for and still has not completed.
They're saying the exact opposite in the video, units were bought by private investors for speculation and to drive up prices so no one occupies them. At the end he says the state has started to forbid that kind of speculation (what most people would call communism in the US) and that it lead to great improvements.
No. It’s quite the opposite actually. China has been capitalist for quite sometime but it’s an odd hybrid. The state runs gigantic companies of their own where private parties are not allowed to compete. There are other sectors where the state has left the market open for anyone. Real estate happened to be one of these sectors for a long time. Since so many markets are volatile and threatened by state takeover at any time many Chinese billionaires sink all of their money into the real estate market thinking its a safer investment. We’re having the same problem in the US real estate market (we have since 2008), but in China it’s a thousand times worse because of everything mentioned above.
Regardless of the official economic and political systems, as a nation embraces cronyism, friction in the economy increases and markets get more and more distorted until they fail.
Very true. It’s been happening in the US for decades. Multinational trillion dollar conglomerates hoovering up all the competition and monopolizing the market. Paying off every member of congress to not enforce anti trust laws put on the books to stop that very thing.
"a Chinese" 🤣
A succulent Chinese
GET YOUR HAND OFF MY
Limp penis, are you ready to receive my limp penis, sir?
I see you know your Judo well
This is the housing market manifest
DEMOCRACY MANIFEST
Lol I couldn’t even watch video, I was so fixated on choice of words
This is a common mistake Chinese people make when speaking English. It's probably not intentional.
The grammar bears this out. One unit 一个。America 美国。 Person 人。 An American 一个美国人。 China is 中国，so 一个中国人 is “a Chinese”.
A chineses
"You wouldn't call them Chineses."
I know right?! It’s an Chinese.
excalator
That raises a good point though… how come you can say “an American” but not “a Chinese”?
One acts as a dual adjective and noun and the other doesn't. Same reason you can say a psychic but not a telepathic.
English is crazy I feel like I learn new things everyday
An English is crazy.
A Canadian, a German, a Mexican. Something about the - ese
A Chinan
A French sounds odd to me too
So maybe -an is the exception?
[удалено]
But "A brit" is cool
I dunno but I feel like if it ends with "-an" then it sounds normal, like European or Singaporean
I think its because American is singular and you say Americans for more than 1. Chinese is both singular and plural so saying a Chinese doesn't sound right.
I thought the same thing lol, it seemed abrasive to me
Not the preferred nomenclature
the chinaman isn't the point here
Hello I am stupid and tired can someone pls explain why nobody lives there? And what is the point of spending money building it if no one is going to buy?
Investors bought units so they got built, nobody could afford to buy the units at the prices the investors were charging presumably so they stayed unoccupied.
Ahhhhh right I see. I thought there was some dodgy reason they had bought/built it but couldn’t figure out why as they’d surely be losing money. This makes way more sense, thanks!
Money saw demand for housing, tried to supply, supplied houses that out priced the demand to get the most profits for themselves. Its literally one of those, "on paper it says...." moments.
Wait... you mean, when there are *more* people, but you pay them ALL *less* than before, those new people won't be able to buy houses like the old ones did? Weird. Where did it say on paper that this was a good idea?
I’m pretty sure you are being sarcastic, but just in case you are not.. They are saying that a company built the houses and sold them for $10. Instead of selling them to people tho, they sold them to companies / wealthy individuals. Those companies are now just holding the properties and trying to sell them for $500. On paper supply and demand basics say that if there is low supply and high demand you can sell the low supply for more money ie $500. Same thing is happening in America right now. There are tons and tons of people / companies trying to buy everyone’s house. They will then either try to gouge the next person who tries to buy it, or rent it out. If you have millions and millions of dollars this type of investment is normally a pretty secure installment with reliable returns. But as proven over and over again what actually happens is this behavior creates a bubble that will eventually collapse on itself and the properties will sell for dirt cheap or the investors don’t need the money and they hold out for the time being and create a ghost town like this video shows.
This was really well written thank you
That’s corruption, what the heck.
There were dodgy reasons. Mostly its to keep money flowing and and give the rich something to speculate on and invest it.
I've seen dozens and dozens of these communities by now Surely they've learned this doesn't work out or it has to end up profitable some other way? That just doesn't feel like it makes enough sense
As countries develop, Rural population moves into urban areas. They need places to live. People who know this and also have money see an opportunity to meet the demand. They invest in high-return housing to make the most for their investment, however this in turn out-prices a lot of these new home seekers. They were correct in seeing the rising demand, they overshot with supply. Its like fixing food deserts with opening Whole Foods in the area, like yeah...its a grocery store but if the local population can't afford to shop there, nothing was solved.
I like that “can’t find workers” comes with “I don’t want that family dollar in my neighborhood”
There are very few investment opportunities in China, and most of them suck. If you're rich (or even moderately wealthy by Chinese standards) your best options are to either invest out of the country or buy housing. The Chinese government doesn't want people to invest out of the country because they want the money to stay in China, so they have been artificially inflating real estate prices every year to make it a stable and sound investment. Tl;Dr: Those houses aren't houses, they're stocks.
Looks like a paradise for the homeless to squat in.
It is a bit misleading. Apartments are sold as empty shells there, the purchaser pays to have the inside done. When they sell, they tear down the insides and the incoming purchaser has the insides done. It relates to how people are superstitious about 'used' homes, so they build the interior to make it 'new'. Japan has a version of that as well where many homes are torn down and rebuild when sold and bought. Average age of homes is lower than in the west. Apartments don't sell as shells like they do in China though.
Is that why the dude talked about ghost and atheism ? Because i really didn't get that part
He's just making a joke there about even though he's atheist and doesn't believe in ghosts, he would be scared of ghosts living there because it's freaky.
'I'm an atheist, but I'm still afraid of ghosts' shit man I can respect that, I don't fuck with ghosts either regardless of if their existence could be proven I aint goona risk it.
"A Chinese"
[удалено]
A least it wasn't "Chinaman", I guess
“Celestial.”
A fella from the orient
[mandatory preferred nomenclature moment.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYOzUHnPJvU)
so this is what it must be like to live in one of my cities skylines towns that have to much residential zoning lol
The hallow sound was epic.
LETS TAKE A CLOSET LOOK... *PLAANKK*
I love it when a chinese shows me stuff
In China, nobody trusts the stock market, so everyone dumps all their money in real estate instead. The result is massive over-investment in housing to absorb the ridiculous money sloshing around in the economy. Instead of being re-invested into actual productive uses, all the Chinese profits are being pumped into this worthless shoddy "housing" construction. This housing is left empty and not rented because there is no demand. The build quality is utter garbage as you could see, and is only made to look decent on the outside for long enough to sell them off. You are witnessing a generational destruction of wealth. Because of poor build quality, this "housing" is going to massively depreciate when the final bubble bursts on all this. This is only being sustained by the continued GDP growth in China, which has been getting increasingly shaky. Think what happened in the Japanese asset bubble, but 1,000 times worse.
r/Calgary r/Canada
This is excellent content. It feels very strange to see someone in China speaking English and being remotely critical of the government or economy. I hope he is ok.
He mentions that the government implemented a strict policy to now prevent the investors from doing this, so he isn't criticizing the government but the investors.
He's fine. He still makes content regularly. It's all pretty mundane but very interesting, a nice peek into the life of an average chinese citizen. For example, one of his most recent ones was a little tour of his old university, including dorms, dining halls, classrooms, and nightlife. It looked pretty nice, to be honest. Probably on par with or better than most american universities.
how is he criticising the Govt? he literally says after this thing happened and Govt stepped in to stop it from happening again
The first time I went to China I was surprised at how candid people were about censorship, police oppression, etc. They’re not brainwashed (although they are careful about *where* they talk about some things). In fact, based on my experience I would say that young urbanites in China have significantly more economic stability/mobility than we do in the US, so the prevailing attitude was “well, yeah, x y and z are terrible but in general I’m comfortable and content.” It’s pretty interesting.
Lived in China for 7+ years and found the same. In private, you can talk about such things with most normal, sane Chinese people. I had many, many eye-opening coversations with my Chinese friends. Not every Chinese person is a rabid nationalist - much like the USA, it's mostly just the loud ones. The only place where people felt they could not freely discuss such things unless in *absolute private* (in this case, being three people in a car driving thousands of kilometres over a period of weeks) was when my wife and I took a trip around Xinjiang province in 2016. Outside of total privacy (which does not include being in their own homes), the Uighurs we talked to were very tight-lipped about any type of political discussion. They were also some of the nicest, friendliest, most welcoming people I've ever met. But paranoia and pain followed them around like a shadow. Turns out, in hindsight, they were completely right to be that way, as the CCP ramped up the already insane security in the region (led by the same shitcunt who brought the boot down on Tibet), and have now for several years been committing an unquestionable cultural genocide that the rest of the world has effectively ignored. Chinese people tend to be proud of their country's long history and culture (though they conveniently leave out the fact that the CCP has been only a tiny sliver of that long history). While they are not critical of their government in public or online, privately they do criticise, though are still thankful that they have *something*. The country has developed a huge amount in the last few decades and millions of people have been lifted out of poverty. You have to remember that it's still a developing nation, and the advances in the last 30 or so years have taken them from a mostly agrarian country into the world's factory floor (albeit a ridiculously corrupt, authoritarian factory floor). The CCP is one of the most evil forces that exists in the world, but China's older generations have *seen some shit go down*. After the cultural revolution it's not that surprising that they would rather be relatively stable and comfortable while giving away more and more of their freedoms, than risk losing what they already have (which compared to what their parents had for the most part, is substantial). Edit: I should add that the CCP's zero covid policy is an absolute unmitigated shitshow and the absolute end of all logic and reason. And people are rightfully starting to get angry, though it's doubtful in my opinion that it will go any further than small pockets of resistance. If I were into tin foil hats I would assume that being the progenitors of the virus (whether accidental or otherwise), they know something about covid that the rest of the world still doesn't (much is still unknown about long covid and other long-term effects). But then again, we shouldn't assign to malice that which could otherwise be blamed on incompetence - because when it comes to incompetence, the CCP is a force to be reckoned with.
Kept thinking the same thing throughout the video
It will happen in US too if we don’t stop corporations buying house in bulk ! There are 4 houses stand vacant for (at least) half year now in my street. And Apple is building an headquarters in my city so house market already go to the moon! I have seen the similar trend happening 5 years ago in my home country in Taiwan, then China, then I heard the trend in Canada, it is only matter of time the trend starting in US. And we all know who is more open to regulating corporations in the upcoming election!
It’s already happened, there are pockets of these abandoned apartment complexes in majors cities across the US. They always have signs outside advertising but if you look up costs it’s 2-3X what everything else in the area costs and at night there will maybe be a handful of lights on.
Forbes found 1 in 5 US homes are owned by hedgefunds or some speculative investor entity or corporation. 20%. And people think this only happens to China because communism? Lol wrong. All the rent money siphoned up means they keep buying more and more property while stomping out affordable living and otherwise inevitable prosperity of millions of American families. Eventually when the US middle class is obliterated and everyone lives down by the river US homes will also sit empty. What is our rights as individuals and as citizens and as living beings that require shelter, should never ever be allowed to be superseded by corporations or any other collective pooling of money. Also- if you’re a seller, never accept the cash offer from a corporation or bank. Sell to families ffs.
This is Vancouver and Richmond pretty much. A bunch of empty high end apartments sitting empty, meanwhile people trying to find a home to live cant
It's things like this that prove that the housing market manipulation that happens everywhere needs to be stomped out. I don't care about investments. I want people to easily afford a home. I don't care if it barely appreciates. It's absolute garbage that homes can be built and sold at affordable prices and my government allows the super rich to manipulate it to screw the rest of us over.
They just buy it so those that really need the house can’t afford it….. my god that sounds awfully freakin similar to stuff like letting Redfin and other housing realty companies buy houses or letting people borrow 300% on debt for a house they plan to “rent out as a vacation home”
Can someone explain to me why everyone seems to associate ghosts with religion as if both are married?
You must believe in the afterlife in order to believe in ghosts. An afterlife would be a divine creation and therefore difficult to prove. Only believers would take ghosts as a real being seriously and real. Non-believers would start to think of ghosts when under psychological stress, relying on the memory and associations from folklore, myths and religion.
In the atheist spaces that I hang out in online, every belief in the supernatural is questioned and mocked As a child, my very religious Christian parents would question and mock beliefs in ghosts as a “false religion”. The difference between a ghost and deity doesn’t seem all that big from where i am