China's Black Market City

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?All the roads in this town were built by businessmen, so none of them make any sense"

There's your answer.

Seriously, though, if the article is trying to argue that lack of government oversight is behind the community's riches, it does a pretty poor job. It reads a bit like someone visiting a developing country for the first time and being amazed that there is corruption and widespread illegality.
posted by seemoreglass at 1:50 PM on July 20

There's your answer.

Well I don't know, it sounds a lot like Boston.
posted by shivohum at 1:53 PM on July 20

gimonca, on that day, it definitely does demonstrate a "libertarian paradise", in the same way the fertilizer plant explosion showed off Texas as a "libertarian paradise". Libertarianism being "Rule by non-governmental entities determined by greatest wealth with total disregard for everyone else."

As for China's "shadow banking" providing "the next subprime debt crisis", I think it will totally redefine China's ICBC as the ultimate "Too Big To Fail" enterprise, just because it's joined at the hip to China's Laughingly-Still-Calling-Itself-Communist Government, with the people left owing the "nonperforming loans" filling a new generation of Re-education Camps.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:12 PM on July 20

The words "libertarian paradise" always make me think of Snow Crash or Somalia.

Poor impulse control, indeed.
posted by Foosnark at 2:20 PM on July 20

? Older 18 years ago yesterday, on July 19, 1995, Clueless...??|??Willie Reed, key witness in th... Newer ?

Source: http://www.metafilter.com/130204/Chinas-Black-Market-City

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