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China mortgage boycott data erased by censors as crisis spreads

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Re: China mortgage boycott data erased by censors as crisis spreads

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> confusing a “30 year mortgage” with a “30 year mortgage” No need for confusing naming. You're talking about fixed rate, variable rate and short period fixed rate mortgages.

I expect the meaning taken by the average person in different countries varies, without much overlap. My point is that mortgage products are very different in different countries, and the average person is very unfamiliar with the differences. Perhaps you are technically correct (the best kind of correct!) For example, in Australia and NZ a “fixed rate”[1] mortgage is not the same as what you have called a “fixed rat…

> What you call “variable rate” is called “floating rate” in New Zealand

And it's typically called an "adjustable rate" in the states.

Re: China mortgage boycott data erased by censors as crisis spreads

#212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you haven’t heard about what happened to Jack Ma recently

Jack Ma was a figurehead and didn't know anything about tech (see his interview with Musk). Musk has a very deep understanding of tech of his companies (at least for a CEO), so are most other American tech CEOs. As was pointed out, you can't siphon away tech like you can do with oil and other commodities without making things stop working.

No post body was provided.

Re: China mortgage boycott data erased by censors as crisis spreads

#213
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a great article on this system, basically to build a house you need to have so much skill to navigate the maze of red tape, rules and regulations and so on.

That is true for every field, the skills required to do anything is increasingly specialized. My grandfather became a pharmacist by simply apprenticing to one and then later owning a pharmacy. My mom had to only do a 3-year course, today it would be lot more difficult than that. You can call it red-tap or code, we have learnt a lot over the last centuries, we put these regulations to protect the average consumer. Som…

> That is true for every field, the skills required to do anything is increasingly specialized.

I think OP's main point is that the majority of the regulated process is not necessary for his project. I would guess OP went through the whole process, and felt that the checks and examinations probably did not do much good to himself or the future home buyers. Thus the outrageous cost becomes an issue, because with the cost, the value is not justifiable.

As for pharmacist, I would totally agree that modern medicine is exponentially more complex than 30 years ago, and that's in a good way: the mechanism of how the medicine works are more advanced, variety increases exponentially, cost is down and more people are using more medicines.

Comparably, building a house has not been much different than what's in 1970s. Aside from newer materials in components, the house building is largely equivalent to what's in 1970s. I got this impression from my own house that is built in 1972, and watching the new building materials been used now on YouTube.

Re: China mortgage boycott data erased by censors as crisis spreads

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Musk has a very deep understanding of tech of his companies Like with his white paper for the Hyperloop which was fundamentally wrong and couldn't have worked? Or with his idea of putting Hyperloop segments on.... Wheels? Or with his idea to make the whole rocket reusable, until SpaceX accepted reality and pivoted to at least partial reusability? Or to cite current examples: full self driving that doesn't actively…

Musk has a "I am very smart and thus can never be wrong"-problem, has gravitational bending amounts of arrogance, and seems to have some personality issues. But he's not stupid or ignorant, and has a better understanding of tech than most CEOs. I don't think that's putting him "on a high pedestal".

> Musk has a "I am very smart and thus can never be wrong"-problem

Outside his own domains of expertise he certainly comes across that way, but he does also say "yeah I reckon there's only like a 60% chance of our latest rocket not exploding".

Re: China mortgage boycott data erased by censors as crisis spreads

#215
post #5

They can’t block GitHub because a lot of chinese tech firms depend on it. That is something very hard to develop locally because the entire world can contribute

They are trying with https://gitee.com

gitee is a startup project.

The use of "They" seems inappropriate here, which is belittling the entrepreneurs' ambition. The culture of code sharing in China is indeed different from US. So I bet gitee has a lot of features tailored to that market.

Re: China mortgage boycott data erased by censors as crisis spreads

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jack Ma was a figurehead and didn't know anything about tech (see his interview with Musk). Musk has a very deep understanding of tech of his companies (at least for a CEO), so are most other American tech CEOs. As was pointed out, you can't siphon away tech like you can do with oil and other commodities without making things stop working.

> Musk has a very deep understanding of tech of his companies Like with his white paper for the Hyperloop which was fundamentally wrong and couldn't have worked? Or with his idea of putting Hyperloop segments on.... Wheels? Or with his idea to make the whole rocket reusable, until SpaceX accepted reality and pivoted to at least partial reusability? Or to cite current examples: full self driving that doesn't actively…

I will not deny that he spouts a lot of nonsense, but I would like to point out that all the famous old-school rocket companies also spout a lot of nonsense, the difference is they deliver even less of their less ambitious goals than SpaceX does.

Re: China mortgage boycott data erased by censors as crisis spreads

#217
post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess you haven’t heard about what happened to Jack Ma recently

Jack Ma is just one example. The CCP went after celebrities more recently. No individual or organisation in China should be allowed to be more popular (or powerful) than the CCP in their view. That's why they went after Falun Gong decades ago - it had more practitioners than the CCP had members.

Ah have to be careful mentioning Falun Gong now. No one seems to understand that until the CCP crackdown it was a harmless group of old people. And after the CCP got worried by the growing numbers that all of a sudden they are a terrorist organization with a bad history and all this bad stuff they believe pops up.

Re: China mortgage boycott data erased by censors as crisis spreads

#218
post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is at risk of following Japan into stagnation. It is especially likely given the massive wave of manufacturing repatriation going on now. If China loses its position as the world's manufacturer, it will have to rely on its untested military strength to obtain resources to appease its restless population. Interesting times indeed.

> China loses its position as the world's manufacturer they will not because the reason japan (and the US) lost theirs is that china was cheap. Where are you going to get this type of labour - skilled but cheap - other than china, in the next 10-30 years? Southeastern asian countries could make up some of the amount, but if they could do it today, they would've dominated already! The repatriation of manufacturing is…

One scenario: USD is weakened by a BRICS* based basket of currencies and the US is released from the chokehold of the Triffin Dilemma.

Another scenario: Automation makes labor costs less relevant.

Anyway, it's happening already. Tons of news articles covering it lately. For instance: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/us-factory-boom-heats-up-as-ceos...

> but if they could do it today, they would've dominated already

Weird logic. I don't follow.

Re: China mortgage boycott data erased by censors as crisis spreads

#219

I was one of those people that thought China would never collapse due to its iron grip on economy and population. But look at recent activities * Chinese GDP shrinks to 0.4% in Q2 2022. Which is still suspicious because Shanghai economic activities declined -40%, and real estate overall activities dropped -30% * Massive mortgage boycott. Also public protests against lost deposits and unable to access bank is being ai…

> * ... GDP shrinks to 0.4% in Q2 2022 ...

GDP growth

> Massive mortgage boycott.

Probably won't be as bad as 2008.

> The 1 billion people data leak has some experts analyzing the data ...

Link please?

> Chinese firms are still selling Russia good its military needs

What do you expect? China does not sanction Russia. And USA is hard pushing China in all China's surrounding areas: Taiwan, South China Sea, Xinjiang, South East Asian... Punching a cow and you'll be paled.

> incurring the wraiths of normal folks in Europe and other allied countries.

"Wraiths"? Can we first see the wraith be unleashed onto the Russian troops in Ukraine, which supposes to incur even more "wraiths"...

> Zero covid practice still going on, with tons of public discontent. There are videos of the people waiting in line to test in the pouring rain and huge wind!

You can measure how anger the US public is towards their covid policy, vs Chinese public's reaction. ANY public policy is going to err some people, especially in a country with close to 5 times the population of USA.

> * Zeihan gaining more popularity, which implies that people do believe that China is crashing. Foreign investors and companies are pulling out in record numbers

Who/what is Zeihan?

> * public sector employees taking 30% salary cuts

Err... Link please...

Re: China mortgage boycott data erased by censors as crisis spreads

#220
post #185

We saw the same thing happen in Korea and Japan after their post war construction, they moved up the ladder, worked hard, but then when they got a taste of real success there was a huge amount of speculation. In the late 1980's Japanese real estate was the most valuable in the world, then it collapsed and they have not recovered. This is a big secular shift for China. All of the previous projections were wrong, just…

> is now finding it's 'reality equilibrium' with the rest of the world. the one big difference with all the previous examples is that China is authoritarian, where as the others were all (at least on paper) democratic. China _could_ mandate the population to perform actions that the other tiger economies couldn't. I would be hesitant to assume that historical economic performance of japan and korea would give much in…

You should read about the political history of South Korea before making the claim that Korea was democractic (yes you hedged with "on paper" but that is meaningless).
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