I'm not claiming non-empty cities are built by crazy investors. I don't know whether particular empty cities are caused by local or national government in Chin

I'm not claiming non-empty cities are built by crazy investors. I don't know whether particular empty cities are caused by local or national government in China, or both. I was merely arguing that government was distorting things with incentives or coercion. Cheap stupid credit's the cause? I agree. But in a free market, government does NOT regulate the cost of borrowing money. That's governed by supply and demand in a free market. The US is not a free market in this respect. Neither is China. The gold standard was not the cause of the Great Depression; the collapse of the investment bubble created by the Federal Reserve, along with the interruption of international trade by the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act caused the initial problem. Subsequent interference in the economy by both Hoover and FDR extended the problems. The gold standard merely prevented the government from inflating away the dollar and using inflation to hide the consequences of other bad policies. Its a form of discipline that the founders wisely put in place to prevent the disastrous policies that many other governments have perpetrated throughout history. But now the constraint of the gold standard is off and much larger bubbles can be created.