Yes that's exactly the problem. Thinking that if something is good, more of it has to be better. Its the same with regulation. Of course too much registration is bad but this fundamentalist idea that good will just emerge from pure free trade is nonsensical.

It's like seeing the benefits of event sourcing and then deciding that if we use that everywhere a stable system will just emerge.

Above you blame America's not building on the "motive to get rich above all else", contrasting China. I'm saying only that this seems a strange and unsupported place to pin the blame, going by what actually changed in China and in America. I didn't say that more greed causes more building; I'm saying that more greed for profits, as a candidate cause for less building, is not a relevant thing that has changed in the relevant way. It seems closer to the opposite in what I know about China's history.

Are you saying you think China went from too-low profit motive to the Goldilocks zone, while America went from Goldilocks to too high? Or is this really about something other than profit motive?

Same for deregulation too, TBH.