4 ms·

i don't understand the fascination with these ghost cities. they're just giant failed businesses. imagine if they built vegas and nobody came. that's it, in

i don't understand the fascination with these ghost cities. they're just giant failed businesses. imagine if they built vegas and nobody came. that's it, in a nutshell. it's not that weird.

woah 11y ago
Looks pretty weird to me
- beachstartup 11y ago
  there are abandoned buildings/construction and complexes in almost every developing country i've ever been to. china just does it on a bigger scale.
  - peferron 11y ago
    Scale matters.
tdaltonc 11y ago
It seems super weird to me. There are not many places on earth where cities capable of holding millions are built by decree. Even fewer where they are built and then no one moves in. There are good reasons why this happens in China, but it's still super weird.
nationcrafting 11y ago
I think they're fascinating from a Hayekian point of view, namely that small centralised groups of directors have only a fraction of the information necessary to direct large groups, compared to dispersed but dynamic information flows you get from market economies via the price signalling system. Which explains the vast misallocation of resources and overall malinvestment. Funnily enough, the person to first advocate as little interventionism as possible for government was Chinese philosopher Laozi, who compared governing a nation to frying small fish for lunch: too much stirring and lunch is ruined.
IkmoIkmo 11y ago
> imagine if they built vegas and nobody came. that's it, in a nutshell. it's not that weird. That's fucking weird... I wonder on what scale it becomes weird to you. Imagine we built 100s of cities on another planet and just left it empty... I do appreciate, if this is the point you want to make, that literally every newspaper, tv station, radio show, photographer etc has done a piece on Ordos. I've read the same article a million times now and it's totally uninteresting. But that's a function of overreporting, it's still inherently interesting to me.
dnautics 11y ago
I've definitely looked at some of the obviously failed, mid-construction casinos in Vegas that crop up from time to time with fascination

i don't understand the fascination with these ghost cities. they're just giant failed businesses. imagine if they built vegas and nobody came. that's it, in a nutshell. it's not that weird.

woah 11y ago

Looks pretty weird to me

beachstartup 11y ago
there are abandoned buildings/construction and complexes in almost every developing country i've ever been to. china just does it on a bigger scale.
- peferron 11y ago
  Scale matters.

tdaltonc 11y ago

It seems super weird to me. There are not many places on earth where cities capable of holding millions are built by decree. Even fewer where they are built and then no one moves in. There are good reasons why this happens in China, but it's still super weird.

nationcrafting 11y ago

I think they're fascinating from a Hayekian point of view, namely that small centralised groups of directors have only a fraction of the information necessary to direct large groups, compared to dispersed but dynamic information flows you get from market economies via the price signalling system. Which explains the vast misallocation of resources and overall malinvestment. Funnily enough, the person to first advocate as little interventionism as possible for government was Chinese philosopher Laozi, who compared governing a nation to frying small fish for lunch: too much stirring and lunch is ruined.

IkmoIkmo 11y ago

> imagine if they built vegas and nobody came. that's it, in a nutshell. it's not that weird. That's fucking weird... I wonder on what scale it becomes weird to you. Imagine we built 100s of cities on another planet and just left it empty... I do appreciate, if this is the point you want to make, that literally every newspaper, tv station, radio show, photographer etc has done a piece on Ordos. I've read the same article a million times now and it's totally uninteresting. But that's a function of overreporting, it's still inherently interesting to me.

dnautics 11y ago

I've definitely looked at some of the obviously failed, mid-construction casinos in Vegas that crop up from time to time with fascination