most Chinese families invest everything plus everything they can borrow, into a home. if property values fall, that will be perceived as a giant loss and could be a widespread freakout. so they try to keep home values growing like forevers. a bubble that is kept growing forever?

it may be more productive to make seperate posts on these matters. many people have shared factual and nuanced, sensitive approaches to these topics. unfortunately all i have are my vibes based on what ive heard or seen.

1. many locals trust foreign brands more. unknown local brands are often thought to be risky. but i dont see a real danger, i mean, people dont seem to be dying or whatever. i dont see lab test results of random products either but if those exist it would add to this topic. also the limited scandals over the years, if anything, led to crackdowns and more safety.

2. no idea about those untrustworthy demographic scare mongerers. I think a lot of old people mainly care about becoming a grandparent. that is a big thing. however most families seem to stick to 1 kid, wealthier ones may have more these days.

3. workers think there is a ”situation”, layoffs and finding new jobs is thought to be hard lately. no idea if this is based in reality. a lot of businesses are turning over, closing, a lot of empty stores around the city, these past years.

4. my ”feels” is that competition is due to zhongkao and gaokao, where there is no ”good enough” and every point matters. this leads to at least some people not letting their kids sleep properly, micromanaging their eating, doing everything for the kids so they can focus on studying. of course this doesnt apply to everyone and i cant say how big this trend is, but it seems big to me. people say if you get into a good university (caused by good gaokao), you do not really have to do anything then, and you will graduate and get a good job. if you go to a lesser school, you get lesser jobs. so cramming and overstudying are a practical way to try to ”win” in an incentive structure like that, i think.

also, rightly or wrongly, a lot of money is spent on private, legal or illegal tutoring. often by their school teachers secretly, apparently. also by expensive foreign teachers. some hope to study abroad someday, but others hope to just hedge their bets and try to give their kids an edge by doing lots of different private classes.

5. nepotism. i can't speak to nepotism, but there still are people and companies that seem to have magical abilities when it comes to getting things approved and not getting cracked down upon. it is out there. i cant quantify it. not my expertise. some laws everybody breaks, so when they get enforced on you, it often has a direct cause i e. someone specifically wanted you to pay. but that is a perception that others will have different experiences of. of course.

6. of the average person. generalizations are dangerously unfair, and also we tend to notice the people who stand out, not the average. i will say that some children are not raised in a developmentally appropriate way. like, having their teeth brushed, butt wiped for them, food shoved in their mouth for them as they walk around or worse, watch addictive phonr apps. many kids do not decide what to do in terms of their homework. their job is to copy it down, their parents must see it and take it out for them and make them do it. this plus lack of free time and sleep could create a 20 year old or 25 year old even that is baffling to your sensibilities, whilst others could chalk it up to cultural differences, lack of the education of the grandparents (who often dominate their adult children and the raising of the grandchildren), exceptions not everybody etc.

there is also something like, not the bystander effect. something else. when someone is unusually annoying or loud or rude in public, usually i see people just try to ignore it or move away quietly. the person gets no pushback or feedback. so that one exception, never learns. and they tend to get noticed more by foreign eyes than all the polite people that blend into the background. there is very little fear of being chastized in public by anyone, so this allows some individuals' behaviors to drift quite far. just a pet theory.

i hope this is fair. probably not.

consider a stealth purge. keep the group going as a honeypot, keep the infiltrators in a useless group. quietly make a new one. misdirect the false group appropriately. use them against enemies.

so far it seems the u.s. is happy to take advantage of the situation (iran), which isnt a good sign. another aspect is private contractors, which can apparently be deployed with less oversight. 😓

thank you. this thread has helped me find new pocasts 😁

i teach rich kids about what america did

I need more education before I can answer the class thing. I don't own anything, and I'm definitely not going to be able to retire or get sick, like, ever. But in the short term I am paid more than a lot of workers. 🤷‍♂️

it's amazing how much the web is full of clickbait and fake sites trying to just capture search result traffic. ironically, ChatGPT seems to make it even easier to make sites like that. 😭