This is the future Capitalism offers us

news.yahoo.com...

You ready to live in a cage? Hong Kong has been capitalist for years and has very little of a middle class. Real estate costs a fortune and the free market is ruthless and there's little of a safety net.

Without a form of support for middle class and lower class people, soon we will be living literally like pet rats.

reply to post by lampsalot


You know better than to create a one liner OP

reply to post by lampsalot


Do you know how to use any of the features in ATS. You can copy and paste information from the article, by copying and pasting in EX-TEXT button. It's also worth stating your own opinion

HONG KONG (AP) -- For many of the richest people in Hong Kong, one of Asia's wealthiest cities, home is a mansion with an expansive view from the heights of Victoria Peak. For some of the poorest, like Leung Cho-yin, home is a metal cage. The 67-year-old former butcher pays 1,300 Hong Kong dollars ($167) a month for one of about a dozen wire mesh cages resembling rabbit hutches crammed into a dilapidated apartment in a gritty, working-class West Kowloon neighborhood.

news.yahoo.com...

Hong Kong is often trumpeted by our politicians as somewhere we need to compete with.

Sorry - I'm just tired. I added some more to the opening.

reply to post by lampsalot


S+F Lampsalot. I hadn't heard about this before and I am with you on the future of capitalism.

Originally posted by lampsalot
news.yahoo.com...

You ready to live in a cage? Hong Kong has been capitalist for years and has very little of a middle class. Real estate costs a fortune and the free market is ruthless and there's little of a safety net.

Without a form of support for middle class and lower class people, soon we will be living literally like pet rats.

edit on 8-2-2013 by lampsalot because: (no reason given)

Still seems to have worked out better than anything else. What would you prefer ? feudalism, communism ?

Any sort of system, if used exclusively, it will deteriorate eventually.

Various systems combined tend to sustain and endure longer.
There are countries that combine areas of capitalism and socialism in their structure. From my own limited view, that seems to be the most effective idea (but then I tend to feel repulsed by extremes in anything, I admit).

But this is the thing- even when talking of pure capitalism having, at it's ultimate outcome, this sort of effect (a huge split between rich and poor; those who have luxury and those who do not have the necessities to survive) it is a choice. I mean, it is not good or bad in any universal way. It is a possible choice a peoples can make, and ANY choice will have a negative side to it.

And yes, some people see the gamble worth it. If they feel there is a chance they might make the right side of the tracks, that dream is worth it. That is why you get people who ended up on the wrong side and they still support the system they are in, and those who ended up on the other side.

In the days of kings and queens, the poor loved to watch the people of the court, the gold and jewels... see them having exciting intrigue, dancing and partying.... they lived it through them!
Those rich and powerful would walk amongst the crowds and give out alms, to confirm their ethical standing and stir their dreams. They dreamed of making their daughter a concubine or wife of royalty- it was always possible!
They wanted to keep that possibility, even if they themselves lived in hunger and poverty. A world in which they had more, but there was no decadence to watch (and live precariously, in imagination) was simply not what they wanted. ......until it was.

Times come when people simply are ready for change, and when enough of them are, change starts. That doesn't mean that what was before wasn't okay, or good- it was at the time!

This is nothing new to humanity, they choose it often.

reply to post by lampsalot


This is very sad, but thanks for sharing this. S&F and for that.

Unfortunately it makes a good example to people whom believe that the free enterprise system is a good one. There are so many places among the western civilization where it's completely implausible to have a decent place to live.

Either a revolution or that's definitely the future we can expect. First for the uneducated, then for the rest.

Correction: this is what pure capitalism with no social net offfers us. Fight against capitalism itself is futile, it is the natural state of human condition and the only system proven to work. Hong Kong is still one of the wealthiest nations after all. But it needs a little augmentation, in the form of social capitalism

I'd rather die than live in a cage. I'd start an uprising if it actually got that bad. Wtf does it take for people to realize this aint right

Originally posted by Maslo
Correction: this is what pure capitalism with no social net offfers us. Fight against capitalism itself is futile, it is the natural state of human condition and the only system proven to work. Hong Kong is still one of the wealthiest nations after all. But it needs a little augmentation, in the form of social capitalism

I disagree that capitalism is the natural state of the human condition. For one thing, the human condition is not a static thing, but is shaped in part by the greater sociocultural environment.

For another thing, the "hunter gatherer" human society of our past most likely would have mostly shared their resources and traded time to time with other bands, so I'd say it was definitely partially, maybe even mostly socialist.

Actually I'm a big fan of militarism for a political ideology.

However don't confuse pure militarism with social militarism as they are quite different. In its original design it is used as a tool to protect the people and since the armed forces are the dominant structure in society even the politicians must put aside social and economic reforms that would go against it thus hurting a middle class.

reply to post by Maslo


Sorry bud, but you're wrong this time:

His only income is HK$4,000 ($515) in government assistance each month. After paying his rent, he's left with $2,700 ($350), or about HK$90 ($11.60) a day.

I don't know how much it worth in Hong Kong, I guess not much, but at least he's getting some money from the government. Otherwise he would probably end up on the street.

That cage is his social net, without capitalism and horny pigs around looking to suck the blood of the sufferers for their own wealth we would be in a much better position worldwide. At least in my own honest opinion.

Capitalism sucks.

You'll hear people go on about "real capitalism", but that "real capitalism" never takes place. People with money will always influence the state in any form of capitalism economy. They believe in some fantasy utopia candy land that is impossible. The "real capitalism" myth is kept going because they don't want to admit that capitalism sucks. They are brainwashed and are living in denial.

This is the future Capitalism offers us

Work faster!

The standard's not good enough, you have to improve.

There are 26 meetings next week I've scheduled you in for.

I know it's your day off, quit moaning or you'll be out of a job.

You're too slow, you missed the deadline - disciplinary hearing.

Here's some more paperwork for you to do......


That's the present


..........I don't want to even think about the future.

I doubt it has anything to do with 'capitalism' or any other political philosophy.

This is what happens when you have too many people vying for too little space. Hong Kong has a population density of almost 17,000 people per square mile. Compare that to the United States with 89. Even on the Chinese mainland, its only 365. You're going to have people living like rats under those conditions, unfortunately.

You should have posted the pic OP

Maslo did a good job of clarifying "pure" or rather, "absolute" capitalism and Vor explained it in real terms. It isn't capitalism that has brought this person to this situation. We can find plenty of examples under all known economic standards, doing the same thing.

Here is a question since it is proposed and levied that 'capitalism' is the cause of this: what is the solution? Socialism? Communism? Feudalism? Cooperative?

Always a thread about how one system or another is so horrible but never a solution of how to fix it. Sadly, no one here could possibly present a solution because the human factor will always come into play and their system relies upon unpredictable factors operating in a known fashion.

Originally posted by vor78
I doubt it has anything to do with 'capitalism' or any other political philosophy.

This is what happens when you have too many people vying for too little space. Hong Kong has a population density of almost 17,000 people per square mile. Compare that to the United States with 89. Even on the Chinese mainland, its only 365. You're going to have people living like rats under those conditions, unfortunately.

Mass immigration?......hello?......

"How the Other Half Lives"

The existence of tenement legislation did not guarantee its enforcement, however, and conditions were little improved by 1889, when the Danish-born author and photographer Jacob Riis was researching the series of newspaper articles that would become his seminal book "How the Other Half Lives." Riis had experienced firsthand the hardship of immigrant life in New York City, and as a police reporter for newspapers, including The Evening Sun, he had gotten a unique view into the grimy, crime-infested world of the Lower East Side. Seeking to draw attention to the horrible conditions in which many urban Americans were living, Riis photographed what he saw in the tenements and used these vivid photos to accompany the text of "How the Other Half Lives," published in 1890.

The hard facts included in Riis' book--such as the fact that 12 adults slept in a room some 13 feet across, and that the infant death rate in the tenements was as high as 1 in 10--stunned many in America and around the world and led to a renewed call for reform. Two major studies of tenements were completed in the 1890s, and in 1901 city officials passed the Tenement House Law, which effectively outlawed the construction of new tenements on 25-foot lots and mandated improved sanitary conditions, fire escapes and access to light. Under the new law--which in contrast to past legislation would actually be enforced--pre-existing tenement structures were updated, and more than 200,000 new apartments were built over the next 15 years, supervised by city authorities.

www.history.com...

^ What happens when there is no regulation........