alt Hacker NewsSo far you're right but the tide can always turn. China has massively overbuilt housing supply, which is the kind of mistake that a freer economy couldn't make. China's failed birth policies (1 child until 2015!) are another example.
My opinion is still that capitalism (Western style) will win. Not because markets are never wrong but because the scope for fucking up is so much less. Markets can't decide "families can have only one child" or "we need to build 90 million units of housing" (that now sits empty). An accumulation of fuck-ups in this vein is inevitable when you have a small group of people making these kinds of decisions. In the long run, it will be fatal.
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> Markets can't decide "families can have only one child"
Sure they can. Just make it unaffordable to do anything else.
> Markets can't decide "families can have only one child"
Actually they can. It's part of the reason why a lot of capitalist nations are seeing major problems with population stagnation and possibly shrinkage.
The problem is markets don't care at all about society. If they can require that every member of a household has to work and extract all their money as efficiently as possible, then they leave little room for society to have families.
Capitalism is geared towards minimizing workers' free time. And, unfortunately, free time is how babies get made and kids get raised.
That is where western capitalism is failing. Shouting louder and young adults to pull on bootstraps harder isn't making them have kids in their studio apartments.
South Korea and Japan are 2 examples of this train-wreck that's coming for the US and other nations.
China is still moving millions of people from rural to urban areas every year. The overbuilt housing is a complete non issue that will naturally solve itself in under a decade. Meanwhile in the west there is a massive housing affordability crisis because the government lets special interests make new housing illegal. I am not a fan of the chinese government but their housing policy is one spot where they are obviously better than western policy.
They prebuild 10 years of housing runway but still have another 10 years, aka 100m+ housing shortage for urbanization goals. They realize they got overzealous and was venturing in bubble and and intervened during boom vs after collapse. AKA preplanning and prematurely fixing something, which is the kind of intervention a freer economy can't do.
Family planning was also massive successful in preventing frankly 100s of millions of useless mouths from being born and concentrating resources to upskill 1-2 kids, hence their massive catchup within a few generations. Now they make more technical talent than OCED combined and will have the greatest high skill demographic dividend to milk for at least our life times, giving them 40+ years to sort out better family planning.
BTW US overspending 5-10% of GDP aka 2.5 Trillion per year on healthcare vs OECD baseline is basically more wasteful misallocation than anything PRC has ever done, including RE misallocation (3-5% waste). And at least they still have housing units left to use (being converted into affordable housing), instead of piles of paper work and personal debt. Accumulation of fuckups that are not resolvable in western style capitalism, it will be fatal medium term.
It depends though, whom you are asking about failed or successful policies. For example I have seen a normal flat of a friend in China in a capitol of a province, who lives alone in this 4 room apartment. I asked how much rent they had to pay and then asked them what they think, how much they would have to pay for that in Berlin. When I told them they would probably have to pay some 2k EUR rent, they thought for a moment, then just said: "That's insane!". The rent they paid was maybe 1/8 to 1/6 of that. And that apartment was not somewhere far out. It is well within the city and has good public transport connection. People can afford to rent. People can move. Single people. Over here not so much. This is also a result of the state having built houses and apartments.