I guess I'm dubious that you can engineer "surpluses are mostly derived by the state" while maintaining the credibility that makes an apartment in Vancouver so

I guess I'm dubious that you can engineer "surpluses are mostly derived by the state" while maintaining the credibility that makes an apartment in Vancouver so attractive in the first place. Those apartments have secure title, under stable property rights, because they are under the same system as every ordinary Canadian voter's house. That's what protects them: there would be a revolt if you messed with all the ordinary voters. Would you be as keen to buy an apartment that instead fell under some special laws which are designed to squeeze you, the foreign investor, to the benefit of the voters? I think you'd be pretty worried that next time there's a pension crisis, or an oil crisis, they'll be very tempted to squeeze you a bit harder, and then a bit harder... I wish there were ways to exploit this export market with less side-effects. There are smaller ones, like Nestle's roaring trade in trustworthy powdered milk. But in general it seems hard.