>the empty buildings and districts, and that mall in Beijing that is never going to attract any stores, or why the apartment buildings we live in is half empty but has a thriving ant tribe in the basement.
>would never believe it was that crazy.
That doesn't sound crazy at all, as I've seen plenty of all that in the US...
China builds useless buildings/cities because it raises the GDP and because it's often the only viable way to raise funds for local governments. The Chinese people invest in useless buildings because it is often the only viable way to invest your savings.
Some of the useless buildings built for buildings sake will potentially be filled as people move from rural areas, but a lot won't.
The American equivalent is useless military hardware, including sometimes hardware the Pentagon says it doesn't even need.
Both approaches are wasteful but which is more so is debatable. Our military Keynesianism throws off R&D dividends that apply to civilian use cases, but people could live in those cities.
A lot of the empty cities/buildings/apartments are way overpriced due to speculation, so the people who want to live in them can't because they're way too expensive and the people who afford to live in them don't want to. That won't change unless housing prices crash, which would be devastating to a lot of ordinary Chinese who have their savings invested in the housing market.
More people are buying their second and third home than are buying their first.
A lot of those empty cities (well, districts actually) don't have jobs anyways, so no one actually wants to live in them. In fact, the only reliable way the Chinese government has in getting people to live in them is to move government offices to the area (so civil servants have to live there at least), and then there are problems as the speculators have already come in. This is kind of what the government is trying to avoid in Xiong'an by disallowing speculators (good luck with that).
At this point, there is no way for the housing market to crash gracefully. Maybe in 2011, but not in 2018. The amount of leverage offered up by Chinese banks this time means that most speculators can't simply wait out a downturn.
>she will make system more human centered, more friendly to humans. I can understand her, but I cannot understand you.
Any marginal increase in human friendliness this may cause is negligible because advertising in general is a inherently "thing" oriented industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars.
It is at odds with human satisfaction and survival.
I am reminded of an MLK quote:
"We must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered".
Advertising is the driving force behind the current state of insatiable materialism/consumerism that is leading to the destruction our ecosystem.
With all that being said, "advertising" can indeed be used for "good", human oriented goals, but as it stands it's mostly being used for exploitation.
They won't admit it but internet mobs, viral click bait, and bots are all good for FB's stock price. They all increase engagement and active user counts.
Saying they should fix their "problems" by doing more policing is like saying a government which has robbed/oppressed it's people into poverty and desperation should solve their problems with more policing.
It's an appeal to authority and ignores the root problem.
Nah, money is a strong motivator, and the sale of private information on the dark net is a lucrative world wide enterprise. How could you possibly know if one anonymous party has less of an interest to make money than another, simply because they're "foreign"?
Sometimes "safely escaping" is not something you have the time or option to even consider.
It's simply about the human right to defend one's own life.