Hong Kong Reaches the Zenith of the Microloft and Free Market Liberty Simultaneously

[dcarrigg]

I mean, is there anything more free than working all week at $30 per day to pay a landlord $150 a month to rent a squalid cage?

From over at Business Insider (and I really recommend you give it a click for all the other pictures alone):

Hong Kong has a problem. With its population growing steadily, it doesn't have enough space to house the 7.2 million people in its 426 square miles.
But where the government sees a major issue, realtors see dollars. Because of demand, they can charge high rents for tiny spaces, charging up to HK$90, or $11.60 USD, per square foot.
And the spaces are getting smaller. People are living in apartments stacked with wooden boxes, known as "coffin houses," and sleeping in cages about the size of rabbit hutches.
The photos of these spaces are extreme and expose the harsh realities of a city with the highest levels of inequality in the developed world.

50,000+ people are literally stacked in cages like pigs on a factory farm for $150/mo:




And this is in 2015, in a busting, futuristic city with a per capita income of over $54,000 USD at PPP. About equal to the USA. There's even a bucket for the "sharing economy."




So buckle up, Bubba. Things can get a lot worse.

[touchring]

Re: Hong Kong Reaches the Zenith of the Microloft and Free Market Liberty Simultaneously

China probably learned the lesson and decided to build and build until the streets are overflowed with apartments so that the current supply will meet demand a decade into the future.

The economic cost of overbuilding is probably less severe than the social political cost of "under-building"?