[Levin]

https://www.thepeakmagazine.com.sg/influ...problem-fb

[Levin]

we’ve arrived at what philosophers might call the “capitalist event horizon” — the point beyond which no alternative vision can escape the gravitational pull of pure profit maximization. Landlords have quietly and insidiously ascended into the ultimate arbiters of our city’s culture and community. They are no longer the service provider — they are the customer, and tenants their obedient supplicants.

We have built a city where storefronts sit empty, waiting patiently for better-funded tenants, while dreams — authentic, community-centred dreams — die quietly behind shuttered roller gates. Better empty and expensive than affordable and occupied. Better sterile than sincere.

And why shouldn’t they? In a system that rewards maximum profit above all else, empty storefronts represent perfect economic logic.

What we’re witnessing today isn’t an aberration — it’s the logical endpoint of unleashing market forces without restraint. When we decided that all land should be valued at its highest possible economic potential, we made our bed. We declared that the meaning of space is not community, culture, or human connection. It is profit. That’s all.