Hong Kong has long been a financial hub and a city of prosperity, but the global economic crisis has led to plunging prices and the devaluation of property. Al Jazeera’s Aela Callan reports on the city’s once-booming property sector.
long realestate
Comments
Also you are confusing me a bit, when you say market you mean … like store, supermarket, a flee market. Or do you mean the “game” market.
Sorry you misunderstood me, I do not place blame exclusively on the market but on the (power - market) package. Absolute free market would hold absolute power it would not free people it would give stronger mechanism of deception to those high enough. It would actually make it easier for them since they would not need to mess in politics at all.
There is only one direction for free market. And it is a game of who will first become strong enough to privatize it.
That’s exactly what I’m saying! You place blame for these commitments to the system on the market, yet it is centralized power and management of our money behind the scenes into pockets we do not support that perpetuates control.
You can refuse to eat from the supermarket, you can buy local produce. You are not trapped having that job 50k away, it is the anticipation of consequences that limit change. Change is a risk to be sure but your determination will limit your options.
Can you refuse to eat today? Can you refuse to buy milk for baby. Can you refuse to buy expensive car when a workplace is 50km away. Can you refuse to wear shorts. Can you refuse to buy citizenship by paying taxes.
Things you talk about are school book stories, and only there do they function. But the pictures produced by factual reality are telling us a different story.
In a pure market driven economy people can ultimately take control of their lives. The fundamental design flaw is our forced association and intervention by schemers wearing a veil of “greater good.” Corporations are given influence over the market with government subsidies and regulations. Excess credit (unearned, undeserved capital) from corporate banks undermines us and our control. There is no accountability from investments. When we are in a free market you will have all means to opt out!
I agree with the premise of what you’re saying, up to a point, but I think there is some confusion as to what the cause of your misgivings are. We, as individuals, place value on absolutely everything. We are given a pre-given range of products and services, as it must be, and if you decide the price isn’t worth the effort of you earning it, you have the choice to refuse. I think we all take luxury for granted. In a free market, design in the scope is left those willing to pay.
People are absolutely meaningless in pure market driven economy. They consume themselves. And the product is more strength to the establishment. It’s existence is enabled by “perpetual motion” money out of the hat engine.
This still bugs me “natural extension of the values WE place on commodities”.
Nobody of us in these comments ever ever placed a value on anything, we just choose a value in the pre-given range or scope. Design of this scopes is something that we know nothing about, and the same people that design these scopes also control the market. All this in the space where personal gain is the ultimate goal. You see it just has to crash, it’s the fundamental design flaw.
It came because people were willing to to pay those prices. If it is your property you have the right to sell it at whatever cost you desire, if someone is desperate/foolish enough to pay, the markets adjust. There is a real estate bubble where I live as well, rated highest cost of living in Canada. If I cannot pay rent I will move.
TRIPLE is an inherently relative value, how can we define what property is worth other than what people are willing to pay? That is the downfall of socialism.
-”natural extension of the values we place on commodities”.
How it came that we placed triple value on realestates?
Resorting to such an absurd insult shows how desperate you are in your argument, and clearly shows that you have no respect for reasonable debate and would rather spew ideology blindly.
I am indeed aware of my position as a labourer in the system, and I never said the “order” is right. The “order” is. Markets are natural, regardless of your wishes.
I have all the power to change the system, and you do too, despite your misguided utopian dreams. I just haven’t figured out how to do it yet!
I’m not going to debate semantics here but obviously “bourgeoisie” has a distinct Marxist connotation and undermines a rational approach to the subject. Your opinion of how an elite class “create the whole structure of social order, just because they can” radically over-simplifies the development of society over thousands of years. Markets existed before us AngloSaxons took the throne. The Romans even had a stock market. Centralized power is the root of corruption and socialism is another branch
I’m not injecting anything, I’m launching them as I have planned. Stop putting meanings into my mouth. The AngloSaxon elite class of rich middle aged men create money, assets, goods, markets, and the whole structure of social order, just because they can. I find it ridiculous that you, semi-illiterate person, who is ignorant of your own status as a laborer in their system, comes up with opinions of how the order is right, while you have no power to change it. Back to my first comment.
Injecting terms like the “bourgeoisie” and simplifying issues by blaming a vague elite class such as “white AngloSaxon rich, middle aged men” likens itself to reading scripture in my opinion.
Money is created as a means of liquidating our assets into a form that may be readily exchanged for goods you desire. Markets do not disallow sharing or common planning, they free us to trade and purchase with whom we choose.
Take a business course, watch some videos on my channel.
It is not a dogma, it from my recent course reading at the Manchester Metropolitan University. Don’t twist things up to make your status look better. Money was invented after protocommie tribes, after the institutions of priests and military men. Market is a social construct to disallow sharing and common planning and result in personal gain. A form of symbolic violence invented by opportunist traders in 1700-1900ties which is not coerced but versus political equality. Private ownership hurts
Oh wow I guess I should have expected you to be a hardline communist, spouting that kind of dogmatic drivel. Ever consider reading about business after your intake of utopian ideals? Money has existed since “protocommie” tribes began trading with eachother.
Absolutely we all place exchange values on commodities. Is your computer worth a loaf of bread? You just placed a value on it. Your “bourgeoisie” secure the difference between production and exchange because they run the company!
Not according to conflict theory, in which exchange value is invented by the bourgeoisie to make workers give up use value in the name of impersonal money, and so as to secure the surplus value, the difference of production and exchange value, to themselves. We don’t place exchange values values on commodities and we used to live in a protocommunist society without markets. We are in this mess because of the white AngloSaxon rich, middle aged men. Yet you all are just a symptom, not the cause
I never made any attempt to simplify society. My point is that “markets” exist as a natural extension of the values we place on commodities.
Your analogy is a neatly dressed sentence however you fail to provide any alternative to the market economy, that we, the AngloSaxons, have imposed on you.
Your focus on race disturbs me, as if it has any role to play whatsoever in my philosophical views.
In addition to a game, society has also been explained as a theater play with backstage and frontstage roles, language with regulative or costitutive rules, mechanism with structures and organism with functions. Society is not as simple as you, an AngloSaxon person, would like us to think. Besides, people are not equal, capital accumulates, people are seriously denied the game table while others are improving the playing hands. AngloSaxon’s are the embodiment of unequality, they lead everybody
Markets exist wether you recognize them or not. Values are derived from what people are willing to pay for them. Present an alternative.
