6 ms·

> It feels like my home is being sold out from underneath me to the Chinese. ... But it makes me very sad to feel like I don't belong in the place where I grew

by jarek 11y ago

> It feels like my home is being sold out from underneath me to the Chinese. ... But it makes me very sad to feel like I don't belong in the place where I grew up. Don't worry. If how the English treated First Nations is any guide, you'll get a reservation at the end of the day. (Really brief history for those from outside the region: ethnic-Europeans have been ruling British Columbia for less than two hundred years.)

beachstartup 11y ago
capitalism sure does feel great when you're winning. but when someone shows up with more money, all of a sudden it starts feeling very unfair. and nothing will be done about it because the powerful locals who make the laws are the ones getting rich (richer, really) selling all of the real estate to the foreigners. and all of the anger will be misdirected at the chinese, allowing the process to continue indefinitely.
- Fluid_Mechanics 11y ago
  Pointing out how foreign nationals are buying up houses in the Greater Vancouver Area and feeding our local housing bubble is "slightly racist"? Edit: Nevermind, your post seems to have completely changed. I suppose you're just afraid this will translate into Xenophobia against [presumably] people like you.
  - beachstartup 11y ago
    i was in the middle of editing my comment when you replied. how is this any different than rich white dot com yuppies pushing lifelong latino or black residents out of San Francisco? am i supposed to feel sad for them, or sad for the white people getting pushed out of vancouver by rich asian people? the answer is i don't really feel sad for either group. i'm sure it's sad if you're the one being pushed, but hey, apparently it happens to everyone.
    - danieltillett 11y ago
      I actually do feel sad for all groups being pushed out of their home, but as you rightly point out this is part of life. What is different about Vancouver is people are being pushed out of their homes and nobody is moving in. Seems a great waste of a beautiful location.
      - jarek 11y ago
        > Seems a great waste of a beautiful location. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. One might inquire what the First Nations think about white man's towers of glass and Vancouver Specials in what used to be beautiful temperate rainforest...
        danieltillett 11y ago
        Vancouver for all its development is still a beautiful place.
        jarek 11y ago
        Yeah but it's hard to say it wasn't a waste of a beautiful location plopping down crap like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Centre_Vancouver.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Centre_Vancouver.jp... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scotia_Tower_Vancouver_2015.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scotia_Tower_Vancouver_20... and hectares of Specials in the 1970s ... and I actually like good brutalism, modernism, and international style, can't imagine what people who don't like them at all must think
adventured 11y ago
> If how the English treated First Nations is any guide, you'll get a reservation at the end of the day. Only if your vast assumption about China is correct, which it isn't. Their economy is in free-fall. China's imports just collapsed by 19% in January, exports collapsed by 11%. Trillions of dollars of capital is rapidly fleeing their economy. Their government is in the midst of an extraordinarily violent and widespread crackdown on individual liberty, murdering billionaires and disappearing high-level executives and journalists. And they're going to have to dramatically devalue their currency, which will have the effect in real terms of slicing their economy down to size, including their wealth. I'm not worried about your premise in the least.
- jarek 11y ago
  I make no assumptions, I only contrast A_fow's experience with that of the Coast Salish
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Where's a good place to read about the crackdown on the wealthy and executives?
  - wavefunction 11y ago
    http://lmgtfy.com/?q=chinese+crackdown+on+wealthy http://lmgtfy.com/?q=chinese+crackdown+on+wealthy
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      Gee, thanks. How many of those articles do I have to skim to see if they mention a murdered billionaire to satisfy you? This one at least mentions disappeared billionaires (if the first 3 do, I missed it): http://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinas-crackdown-on-graft-media-obscures-picture-for-investors/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinas-crackdown-on-graft-media-... But that could be detainment. And it doesn't go into executives. Of course you are right, I was just being lazy, but I was trying to be smarter about it than typing an obvious search into Google and reading dozens of articles with the hope that I found one informing me about the claims made by someone I've in the past observed to be interested in the news.
accountnumber11 11y ago
What about in London where the wealthy Chinese are also known to send their children, where complaints about their arrival can't be easily hand-waved away by saying that Europeans took the land from Native Americans or have only been there a short time themselves?
- jarek 11y ago
  UK voted to sell itself out to rich people with mobile capital when they decided to stop being a manufacturing country and start being a finance country. That started in the 1980s and hasn't stopped since (witness Labour only ruling when they became "New Labour" stripping out all the too-Laboury bits). Plus it's hard to feel bad for people who reaped the benefits of colonizing half the world not too long ago. Not to mention people in London usually complain about the wealthy Russians and Saudis these days
dang 11y ago
Although there could be a relevant point here, the combination of generic ideological tangent with snark is the worst way to make it. Please don't do that here. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11105754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11105754 and marked it off-topic.
- jarek 11y ago
  I will keep my future HN posts strictly ideology free!

by jarek 11y ago

beachstartup 11y ago

capitalism sure does feel great when you're winning. but when someone shows up with more money, all of a sudden it starts feeling very unfair. and nothing will be done about it because the powerful locals who make the laws are the ones getting rich (richer, really) selling all of the real estate to the foreigners. and all of the anger will be misdirected at the chinese, allowing the process to continue indefinitely.

Fluid_Mechanics 11y ago
Pointing out how foreign nationals are buying up houses in the Greater Vancouver Area and feeding our local housing bubble is "slightly racist"? Edit: Nevermind, your post seems to have completely changed. I suppose you're just afraid this will translate into Xenophobia against [presumably] people like you.
- beachstartup 11y ago
  i was in the middle of editing my comment when you replied. how is this any different than rich white dot com yuppies pushing lifelong latino or black residents out of San Francisco? am i supposed to feel sad for them, or sad for the white people getting pushed out of vancouver by rich asian people? the answer is i don't really feel sad for either group. i'm sure it's sad if you're the one being pushed, but hey, apparently it happens to everyone.
  - danieltillett 11y ago
    I actually do feel sad for all groups being pushed out of their home, but as you rightly point out this is part of life. What is different about Vancouver is people are being pushed out of their homes and nobody is moving in. Seems a great waste of a beautiful location.
    - jarek 11y ago
      > Seems a great waste of a beautiful location. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. One might inquire what the First Nations think about white man's towers of glass and Vancouver Specials in what used to be beautiful temperate rainforest...
      - danieltillett 11y ago
        Vancouver for all its development is still a beautiful place.
        jarek 11y ago
        Yeah but it's hard to say it wasn't a waste of a beautiful location plopping down crap like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Centre_Vancouver.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Royal_Centre_Vancouver.jp... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scotia_Tower_Vancouver_2015.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Scotia_Tower_Vancouver_20... and hectares of Specials in the 1970s ... and I actually like good brutalism, modernism, and international style, can't imagine what people who don't like them at all must think

adventured 11y ago

> If how the English treated First Nations is any guide, you'll get a reservation at the end of the day. Only if your vast assumption about China is correct, which it isn't. Their economy is in free-fall. China's imports just collapsed by 19% in January, exports collapsed by 11%. Trillions of dollars of capital is rapidly fleeing their economy. Their government is in the midst of an extraordinarily violent and widespread crackdown on individual liberty, murdering billionaires and disappearing high-level executives and journalists. And they're going to have to dramatically devalue their currency, which will have the effect in real terms of slicing their economy down to size, including their wealth. I'm not worried about your premise in the least.

jarek 11y ago
I make no assumptions, I only contrast A_fow's experience with that of the Coast Salish
maxerickson 11y ago
Where's a good place to read about the crackdown on the wealthy and executives?
- wavefunction 11y ago
  http://lmgtfy.com/?q=chinese+crackdown+on+wealthy http://lmgtfy.com/?q=chinese+crackdown+on+wealthy
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    Gee, thanks. How many of those articles do I have to skim to see if they mention a murdered billionaire to satisfy you? This one at least mentions disappeared billionaires (if the first 3 do, I missed it): http://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinas-crackdown-on-graft-media-obscures-picture-for-investors/ http://www.cbsnews.com/news/chinas-crackdown-on-graft-media-... But that could be detainment. And it doesn't go into executives. Of course you are right, I was just being lazy, but I was trying to be smarter about it than typing an obvious search into Google and reading dozens of articles with the hope that I found one informing me about the claims made by someone I've in the past observed to be interested in the news.

accountnumber11 11y ago

What about in London where the wealthy Chinese are also known to send their children, where complaints about their arrival can't be easily hand-waved away by saying that Europeans took the land from Native Americans or have only been there a short time themselves?

jarek 11y ago
UK voted to sell itself out to rich people with mobile capital when they decided to stop being a manufacturing country and start being a finance country. That started in the 1980s and hasn't stopped since (witness Labour only ruling when they became "New Labour" stripping out all the too-Laboury bits). Plus it's hard to feel bad for people who reaped the benefits of colonizing half the world not too long ago. Not to mention people in London usually complain about the wealthy Russians and Saudis these days

dang 11y ago

Although there could be a relevant point here, the combination of generic ideological tangent with snark is the worst way to make it. Please don't do that here. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11105754 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11105754 and marked it off-topic.

jarek 11y ago
I will keep my future HN posts strictly ideology free!