[crdoconnor]

"thats certainly a valid opinion, however, with those regulations come housing shortages and conditions like in the Bay area."

These are scapegoats. If the city started building social housing the shortage would be over.

If those pesky zoning regulations were eliminated property developers would flood in and build thousands of luxury apartments which would be bought by Chinese investors and left empty much like all the other property they've bought.

[abfan1127]

we have a word for that - its called the market.

[crdoconnor]

Markets unencumbered by regulation are only magically efficient and/or arbiters of society's needs if you're a neoliberal fundamentalist.

For everybody else it's a (rather poor) allocation mechanism that implicitly favors monopoly power, wealth and corruption. Great if you happen to have a lot of wealth thanks to your connections in the Chinese Communist Party I guess, and are looking for an American bolthole. Not so great if you're an American primary school teacher who grew up in the Bay Area.