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Real estate giant China Evergrande will be liquidated

nytimes.com

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Re: Real estate giant China Evergrande will be liquidated

#321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canada allows medically assisted suicide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_in_Canada

Thank you. I have responded to you, since you were one minute earlier. I won't repeat the whole comment that I had written and lost due to my phone running out of battery, but still wanted to at least add part of it with thanks for the information. This kind of euthanasia (voluntary, with a review board, like in Switzerland) is something I feel should be a human right, though I'm not sure about the intricacies of the…

> sure about the intricacies of the Canadian system.

It's not as bad as what I believe China might do if worst comes to worst.

But from what I have heard the Canadian system has issues, with cases of especially permanent sick+poor people being in some cases constantly "nudged" to say good by even if they still have a strong will to live. Through I'm not sure how wide spread such issues had been and if they where fixed.

The reason I mention it is because china would also claim it's fully free choice, then if that isn't enough start nudging and then if that isn't enough go further.

Lets just hope it won't happen.

Re: Real estate giant China Evergrande will be liquidated

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the historical birth rate through the 20th century (hard to find data before 1950, but not impossible), the birth rate hovered around 5 children/woman or 35 children/1000 population. These numbers drop immediately and precipitously starting in 1960, the year "the pill" became publicly available. Lots of people, young and old, take pills every day. People forget and unwanted pregnancies still happen, bu…

Agreed, from everything I've seen the catalyst for this [low birth rates] is birth control and women's rights. Both gave women choices [a good thing]. When they use these choices it creates large demographic shifts. Enough time has passed that 2-earner households are required for a similar QoL, which makes children more expensive.

Birth control + abortion + IVF are what makes fertility rates a choice for those with the wealth + health to choose them, but like you (I think) I wouldn't actually call the existence of the choice the root cause of declining fertility. Instead, the lack of choice covered up the fact that many people would not choose to have children in our society, which is the root cause of falling fertility rates and a failure of our society. As well, there is structural bias against the choice to have children, because birth control is extremely cheap & accessible compared to IVF - if we imagined a population overall neutral on having children, the higher availability of birth control compared to fertility increasing treatments would bias it towards less children anyway, the same way that a tax on cigarettes leads to less people smoking.

Why don't people choose to have children? Part of it is cultural, aggressively anti-child beliefs. A big part of it in my generation is depression about the future - many people feel the future is hopeless because the government is not doing enough about climate change and we seem to be getting closer and closer to a large war. Most of my friends would express that sentiment when asked why they don't want children. A big part of it is financial & health related - a lot of people don't feel comfortable having children unless they are in perfect health & quite wealthy, because of proto-eugenicist ideas that are just accepted as part of our culture. Some of this is individually rational choices: if no one will provide you with appropriate financial & medical support for the full-time, critical-to-society job of raising children, some people accurately believe their standard of living will drop dramatically if they have a(nother) child.

All of these issues can be solved. The government can act on climate change and de-escalate tensions rather than preparing for war in order to let people have hope for the future again. The government can make IVF and other fertility increasing treatments free to the end user and otherwise as accessible as possible to lower the barrier to entry as much as possible. The government can choose to compensate people for the critical-to-society job of making & raising children, ensuring that having children is not a financial burden compared to not having children, & structure healthcare + educational outcomes such that people do not feel they and their children's lives will be worse after having a child, or at least that that isn't a true statement in terms of personal standards of living.

Western governments choose not to do these things because they don't need to, because they can rely on other countries having widespread lack of choice + poverty & instability to push young people to emigrate to the West & keep Western demographics very healthy. This solution works (at the expense of poorer countries), and while it can't last forever it can last for a very long time from our perspective. Eventually though, countries will need to solve the fundamental problem or accept widespread decreases in wealth & standards of living as population decreases.

Re: Real estate giant China Evergrande will be liquidated

#323

This is a much more financially accurate article: https://www.ft.com/content/d7b61c43-be36-49da-894e-cac68fefb... > While Evergrande is listed in Hong Kong, almost all of its assets and the vast majority of its more than $300bn in liabilities are in China. > In theory, the ruling could pave the way for liquidators to attempt to seize control of some Evergrande assets in mainland China, since Hong Kong has a mutual re…

> Most of the unfinished buildings will be completed in 2-5 years. Many things wrong with that statement. Chinese local governments are overloaded with debt - 12.6 TRILLION https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/china-orders-local-gove... . National government has refused to supply local governments with more money, in fact it has limited some local governments to what they can build. Local Governments have zero incent…

> overloaded with debt

As I understand, most of the debt issued by local gov'ts is RMB-denominated. The PBoC can easily assume (large) parts of this debt without large negative economic impacts. Other countries have done similar in the past by creating "bad banks" that are financed by the central gov't or central bank.

Re: Real estate giant China Evergrande will be liquidated

#324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since we're at "quoting wikipedia" levels of pedantry, may I point out that your article calls this a "Compound" not a "Compound word". And the statement "group of words that is not a compound is a phrase" requires that there exists a "group of words that is a compound". "If they are joined with a space (e.g. school bus, high school, lowest common denominator), then the result – at least in English[1] – may be an ope…

It’s an open compound word composed of individual words that aren’t used singularly, in that the meaning is changed if they are interpreted individually or singly. This isn’t an adjective phrase in this case. I don’t know who you’re trying to convince but the person I responded to is simply mistaken or ignorant of compound words and how they are used, interpreted, or referred to. The fact that open compound words are…

We are now up to three wikipedia links and in none of those documents is the phrase "open compound word" used. An "open compound" is a group of distinct words. A "compound word" is a compound made of two more words that have been joined together to make a single word. There is no such thing as an "open compound word".

The person you responded to wrote "That is two words or a phrase". You replied "In a word: no. Specifically, it’s a compound word (singular)."

In this, the evidence you yourself have provided says you are incorrect. "nominative determinism", if it is a compound at all, is an "open compound", not a "compound word". It is an "open compound", and as such is made up of two words. The person you are refuting is correct. You are correct in identifying it as an open compound. You are incorrect in claiming that it is a single word.

Re: Real estate giant China Evergrande will be liquidated

#325
post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is always crazy to me the ratio of damage done to benefit received by people committing crime and fraud. I don't know how much one could possibly pocket using such scheme, but I'm certain that compared to the destruction of the entire project it is not that high of a percent.

As a popular Polish libertarian politician (Janusz Korwin-Mikke) likes to say: "a government official will waste a billion to steal a million".

That's a great way to put it. I'm always amazed at how small the bribes can be.

When I hear stories with some quote similar to "then the senator granted them the mining rights to an $800M mine on public lands for a 3-night stay at Sandals." I'm mad about the corruption, but I'm also mad at the politician for being dog shit at realizing how large their bribe should be.

Re: Real estate giant China Evergrande will be liquidated

#326

In the long term, the bursting of China's property bubble is probably good news, affordable housing is in the interest of everybody except property developers. In the short term, though, this is likely to trigger a domino effect of other property developers defaulting and a lot of pain for everybody who (thought they had) bought property with them. The real tests are whether China will allow the Chinese entity to go…

So the long term is more affordable housing, but Xi's perceived success was lifting millions out of poverty, with a majority tied to realestate.

Time to invade Taiwan, I guess.

Re: Real estate giant China Evergrande will be liquidated

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ye the competition is too high in the base and the profit taken by middle men. However, I think covid changed that, where producers collectivly realized that if they just raise prices the middle men need to pay up. Being stuck in a sector that operates "efficiently" sucks. You want guilds, like lawyers and doctors, or inefficiency, like the financial sector.

No, not like that: Evergrande is in the first group here, fruitlessly producing something of no real value, as there is too much of it. The second group are those who invested in Evergrande itself, or the housing it built. It sucks for everyone. It sucks for Evergrande, as sooner or later it had to go bankrupt. It sucks for those who invested in the housing, as it's clear that if they actually tried to sell or rent o…

> It suck ls for those who can't afford a place to live because of the inflated prices.

Wouldn't a bubble pop help these people?

Wouldn't the ruling class on the opposite end of the leverage chain have benefited greatly with stacks of cash? The fun party is over now, but at least profit was successfully extracted from others. The extreme losers being people on the other side of the chain, paying mortgages on property that will never be built.

Re: Real estate giant China Evergrande will be liquidated

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s an open compound word composed of individual words that aren’t used singularly, in that the meaning is changed if they are interpreted individually or singly. This isn’t an adjective phrase in this case. I don’t know who you’re trying to convince but the person I responded to is simply mistaken or ignorant of compound words and how they are used, interpreted, or referred to. The fact that open compound words are…

We are now up to three wikipedia links and in none of those documents is the phrase "open compound word" used. An "open compound" is a group of distinct words. A "compound word" is a compound made of two more words that have been joined together to make a single word. There is no such thing as an "open compound word". The person you responded to wrote "That is two words or a phrase". You replied "In a word: no. Speci…

Since you didn’t like my Wikipedia link, here’s a Wiktionary link:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/compound_word

It’s okay to be wrong. I’m just not wrong on this point, and if I were, I’d be okay with that. Are you okay?

Re: Real estate giant China Evergrande will be liquidated

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We are now up to three wikipedia links and in none of those documents is the phrase "open compound word" used. An "open compound" is a group of distinct words. A "compound word" is a compound made of two more words that have been joined together to make a single word. There is no such thing as an "open compound word". The person you responded to wrote "That is two words or a phrase". You replied "In a word: no. Speci…

Since you didn’t like my Wikipedia link, here’s a Wiktionary link: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/compound_word It’s okay to be wrong. I’m just not wrong on this point, and if I were, I’d be okay with that. Are you okay?

That link doesn't refute my claim. I have acknowledged that there are, indeed, compound words.
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