We're not dropping prices in NA in good part because our governments are dysfunctional and don't want to intervene, and because large landowners see such interv

We're not dropping prices in NA in good part because our governments are dysfunctional and don't want to intervene, and because large landowners see such interventions as contrary to their benefit. And besides, relaxing zoning is far from enough - you need to build vast and performant public transit systems, and in the case of Tokyo you need to make housing a depreciating asset. Yes - and as I said, this is the defective programming in minds of Westerners. The government does what we tell them to do and most people want this. It's everywhere - it's the entitlement to a suburban home and the subordination of all other interests, even the concept of personal property, in service to this. The fact that the media doesn't discuss these things in spite of the fact that smart people like Warren and others write about it is evidence of the bad programming. South Korea was not a democratic state during most of its crucial growth period either - it was only after a revolution in the 80s, and even then democracy is a very gracious word for a country that was literally ruled by a cult for half a decade. Taiwan also was in quasi-dictatorial KMT rule for most of its rise, and Japan to this day on the national level is basically ruled by the LDP in perpetuity. Is it your contention that these countries aren't democratic and prosperous today? Is that your claim? Is your claim that their citizens live in near slavery, as the previous poster's was? But crucially, Japan, SK and Taiwan aren't where the kind of production China does happens. They are just as economically beholden to China as we are, sometimes moreso. The company that I worked at previously had to assess manufacturing alternatives to China in the wake of Trump's tariffs. Most of the parts on the BOM could reasonably be sourced by other Asian countries like those three at a small premium. US manufacturers either weren't available or were completely priced out. If the West could even just get their manufacturing costs in parity with those three - TW, SK, and JP - that in itself would be huge progress.