The scene that stayed with me the longest was a person working. She was in a space the size of a small closet. There was a small pot of soupy dough and three hot plates. She scooped dough and poured it on the plates. When they were cooked she removed them and put them on a stack. Then she did it again. The narrator said she worked like that for fourteen hours every day, making mu shu pancakes for the restaurants in the city (Hong Kong.) That was it. That was her whole life. Slaving like a robot.
After they destroyed it, she presumably did the same job somewhere else, with better electrical safety but higher rent. Her job wasn't created by the walled city, it was created by the economic order of Hong Kong.
That's almost the point: China is a larger version of Kowloon. The Earth is a larger version of Kowloon. The Solar System is a larger version of Kowloon. The Milky Way Galaxy is a larger version of Kowloon...
We are not mice. We have to decide what population density (and economic order) we will live with.
> We have to decide what population density (and economic order) we will live with.
What does that mean in this case, though? I don't want to put words in your mouth, but if you're saying we have to pick the density we're ok with, does that mean she just shouldn't exist?
> if you're saying we have to pick the density we're ok with, does that mean she just shouldn't exist?
What? No. How does that follow?
I believe she (and everybody else) should have at least the basic needs met automatically: food, shelter, clothing, most medicine, electricity and telecomms, etc. We have the technology and resources to do this now, it's just a matter of logistics. A single modern server could compute utopia in a few minutes.
>> We have to decide what population density (and economic order) we will live with.
> What does that mean in this case, though?
Well, in this case they tore the place down. I have no idea what happened to the residents.
