Got into a heated discussion with a coworker over this. My stance is it was probably for the best it was demolished. The entire thing was a massive fire and disease hazard. Massive amounts of crime and unlicensed businesses too. Despite its reputation for a kind of tight knit anarchist type community, most of the stuff I've read seems to suggest triads and the HK police were largely running the place.
I hate forceful eviction as much as the next person here. What else could have been done? There was some compensation given to the residents, but I know some residents complained it wasn't enough.
My coworker's stance is the place should have remained as it was, without any sort of intervention whatsoever, despite being so hazardous.
How do y'all feel?
His reasoning is the people chose to live there as it was, so they'd prefer it staying as it was. This is far from his worst stance. He also has a positive view of Ted Kaczynski.
Just because the most disadvantaged people in a society choose to live somewhere (out of limited options), does not mean that they don't want to see that area improved, or to be given the opportunity to live in better conditions elsewhere.
Does your coworker also believe that people living in shanty towns for the unhomed would all turn down a free apartment if they were offered one?
Some would, sure. But all of them?
He's told me being homeless or being poor is a right people should have. He would probably saying offering free homes disrupts a person's choice to remain poor and shouldn't be done. He's... Odd. I would call him a libertarian, but he's also outright talked about wanting a dictator.
Isn't the obvious answer to that concern the fact that a person who wishes to be poor and unhomed can simply turn down the free housing?
Or is he using "choose to be poor" in the ghoul sense of certain people choosing to be poor because they don't choose to bootstrap?
He doesn't mean anything coherent and has some weird obsession with balance. He would say free housing disrupts the choice because he believes being poor or rich is an aesthetic lifestyle choice and both contain their own pros and cons, so offering free housing to the poor would disrupt their choice in that it would put too many pros on the poor side. It would make one choice far easier to make, meaning some arbitrary balance has been disturbed. He's quite strange.
So he's a moron