On May 21, 5:33 pm, David Johnston <da...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Wed, 21 May 2008 13:12:54 -0700 (PDT), Vide...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> >On May 21, 3:04 pm, David Johnston <da...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> >> On Wed, 21 May 2008 12:01:06 -0700 (PDT), Vide...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
> >> >On May 21, 12:31 pm, David Johnston <da...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> >> >> On Thu, 15 May 2008 12:32:30 -0700 (PDT), Bret Cahill
>
> >> >> <BretCah...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> >> >> >> > The precondition of free markets is of no concern to free
marke=
try?
>
> >> >> >> Not directly.
>
> >> >> >The direct effect of censor****p is that free markets are
impossible=
..
>
> >> >> The platonic ideal of free market is impossible with or without
> >> >> censor****p. But functionally it doesn't matter much whether you
jai=
l
> >> >> people for grumbling about the government. Commerce can continue
an=
d
> >> >> people can choose who to buy from and what price they will demand
wh=
en
> >> >> they sell. That's free enough to get buy.
>
> >> > talk about a silly scenario. humans that are educated, and not
> >> >insane, crave human rights. so far there have been no successful
free
> >> >market, nor fascist economy, freidman even said so when approached
by
> >> >pinochet. but, being the good psychopath that freidman was, he tried
> >> >anyways, and failed.
>
> >> I have no idea what you are talking about.
>
> > you have basically described what all libertarians strive for. a free
> >market without human rights. i simply pointed out to you that so far
> >that has never worked.
>
> It's pretty much the case in Hong Kong and they are managing to do
> business.
your response is typical libertarian. you have just reinforced my
opinion of libertarians. you are either ignorant, stupid, or a
complete hard wired indoctrinated fool.
the people of hong kong are not the rugged individuals, but are
instead, the product of a socialistic state. your feverish attempt at
saying there is no democracy, over looks the massive street protests
in hong kong since china retook the city.
it is why i am more convinced that ever, that fascism is simply
libertarianism in decay.
Milton Friedman=92s Hong Kong Misconceptions
OUR CORRESPONDENT
27 November 2006
The late economist saw what he wanted to see and ignored some
fundamental accommodations in Hong Kong=92s laisser-faire economy
Milton Friedman was without doubt a great economist and, more
im****tant, one who, for good or ill, influenced politicians including
Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Augusto Pinochet. But his much
quoted praise for Hong Kong was based on brief visits and a tendency,
the norm among economists as most other humans, to see only what he
wanted to see.
So Friedman saw low taxes, private owner****p of most utilities, no
tariffs, no foreign exchange controls, no government intervention in
industry. The low ratio of government spending to GDP in Hong Kong
contrasted with that of its then-sovereign power, Britain, and
explained much about the divergent economic performances of
=93socialist=94 Britain and =93free=94 Hong Kong.
So determined was Friedman to defend his rosy version of Hong Kong=92s
economy, which he attributed to its 1960s Financial Secretary John
Cowperthwaite, that just weeks before his death he claimed to be
seeing state intervention that it =93would no longer be such a ****ning
example of economic freedom=94.
What Friedman cared not to notice about the Hong Kong of the era of
Cowperthwaite and later was that in three key areas of policy
affecting the people the government was more socialist than its UK
counterpart.
At one time 60 percent of the people lived in subsidized housing,
mostly rented cheaply from the government, and some in Home Owner****p
Scheme flats, provided with cheap land and sold to lower-middle-income
households. Even now that public housing has low priority and the
home owner****p scheme has ended, some 50 percent of the people still
benefit from this massive intervention in the marketplace.
The intervention also partly accounts for the low apparent ratio of
spending to gross domestic product. If the cost of the subsidized
housing land were accounted for at market prices in the government
budget, the ratio would be significantly higher.
Hong Kong people have also enjoyed almost free medical treatment at
government clinics and hospitals. Friedman was against =93free=94 medicine
elsewhere but failed to notice it in Hong Kong. Likewise, education,
at least up to the secondary level has long been almost entirely
funded by the government.
In the days when Friedman was writing his praises for Hong Kong, the
territory also had a relatively youthful workforce compared with
western countries and thus less need for spending on pensions and help
for the aged. Nor did Hong Kong have to spend anything significant on
external security, the responsibility of London and now Beijing.
Friedman could actually have helped Hong Kong if he had criticized
rather than ignored the excesses of these interventions in the
marketplace. They had originally been spurred by fears of social
unrest as the then-colony attempted to absorb waves of migrants from
the mainland with nowhere but squatter huts to live.
It was necessary intervention in the marketplace. The government=92s
lack of ideological commitment to laisser faire was summed up by
Cowperthaite=92s successor, Philip Haddon-Cave, as =93positive non-
interventionism.=94 This bit of semantic gobbledegook essentially meant
that it preferred not to intervene but had a paternal duty to do so on
occasion.
Hong Kong=92s problem now is that policy change has not kept pace with
changing economic and social cir***stances. It is hooked on high land
prices for the private sector as a revenue-raising measure, which
leaves a large pro****tion of the public trapped in the subsidized
housing sector.
Likewise the free if basic medical system is stretching the government
as the population ages, drug and equipment costs rise and public
expectations rise. But it is difficult to push people back to the
private sector because that thrives on providing very expensive
services to the top 15% or so of the population. Indeed, private
medicine in Hong Kong is so expensive that instead of being a money
earner for Hong Kong, as it is for Singa****e, it is often cheaper to
fly to Sydney or Singa****e, let alone Bangkok, and get better
treatment.
Nor did Friedman pay any attention to the lack of competition in many
areas of the domestic economy and the high returns given to
competition-free utility companies. Presumably it was oversight
rather than a belief in freedom to extort was behind this lapse.
So, Dr Friedman, Hong Kong mourns your passing and appreciates the
praise you heaped upon it. But it would be well if warped notions of
its realties do not become future textbook examples.
http://www.slate.com/id/2132798/
Fighting for Democracy in Hong Kong
from: Daisann McLane
A Consciousness-Raising Tart
Posted Friday, Dec. 23, 2005, at 11:48 AM ET
Daan taats hot from the oven at Tai Cheong bakery
Last summer, life in my central Hong Kong neighborhood was turned
upside down by a pastry=97a Hong Kong-style egg tart known here as a
daan taat. The taat in question was the product of the Tai Cheong
bakery, a hole in the wall that's been a fixture on Lyndhurst Terrace
for more than 20 years. Chris Patten used to eat them when he was the
governor, and he proclaimed them Hong Kong's best. Personally, I think
their custardy filling is overly sweet=97but I'd occasionally pass by
Tai Cheong's open storefront just when the baker was taking a hot pan
of them out of the oven and be forced to buy one or
two.
In May, Tai Cheong's landlord announced that he was going to more than
double the rent, and so the owner decided to close his shop. This was
not surprising; rents are skyrocketing all along Lyndhurst Terrace,
which is located at the north end of the neighborhood where I live,
recently renamed Soho. Since the revival of Hong Kong's economy, post-
SARS, Soho has become one of the hottest areas of Hong Kong (it is the
setting for the last part of the Wong Kar Wai film Chungking Express).
The area hasn't always had such cachet=97in the 1890s, it was ravaged by
bubonic plague, and the neighborhood has always been considered by
local Chinese to have really bad feng shui. Ghosts are said to roam
the streets. There is a big hospital and a very old temple at one end
of the neighborhood, and Staunton Street has traditionally been home
to a community of gray-robed Buddhist nuns, who, for a small fee, will
wor****p your dead ancestors for you.
But nowadays, Soho's allure trumps the bad feng shui. It is one of the
last places near Hong Kong's downtown with a low-rise, human scale and
a living culture. The beautiful old 19th-century Central Police
Station, one of the last historical buildings left in Hong Kong, is
here. The surrounding streets are mostly five- and six-story walkup
apartments, dating from the 1950s and '60s. Real-estate agents here
call them Chinese buildings, or tong lau. In the mornings, the open
tong lau roofs are busy with Chinese housewives steaming buns in woks,
watering trees in pots, feeding birds, or hanging laundry to dry=97
carving out their little piece of home in Hong Kong's tight and
expensive urban landscape, as the Chinese here have done since the
city's beginnings.
I settled in knowing that the neighborhood was on the verge of major
changes. It was already getting trendy when I moved in, with many
boutiques and Western-style restaurants and bars occupying the ground
floors of the tong laus on Staunton and Elgin Streets. Still, the
swiftness of Soho's development has been disconcerting, even by my New
Yorker standards. A month or two after I arrived last January, I took
the laundry down to my usual corner shop, and there was a notice in
the window: "Closing Business in Two Weeks." I asked the shop lady
what was up, and she told me that someone had made the boss a huge
offer, so he was shuttering the business and selling the building. A
couple of weeks later, the 80-year-old Chinese dim sum place on Elgin
Street, Gwai Yu, shuttered.
Over the next couple of months, the old stationery and general stores
along Staunton vanished literally overnight, their facades appearing
in the mornings covered with a skin of "For Rent" signs in English and
Chinese. Shortly after this, I noticed a monstrous behemoth wrapped in
bamboo scaffolding and green plastic rising up at the end of Bridges
Street. It cast dark shadows over the tong laus for it was taller than
anything in the neighborhood. A red banner on its side proclaimed,
"Centre Stage. Luxury lifestyle apartments."
Property development is the engine that runs the city of Hong Kong.
Land is famously scarce here, and the government owns most of it. It's
sold off, parcel by parcel, and must go for the highest price
possible. Hong Kong has one of the lowest tax rates in the world, and
selling land is how the government keeps Hong Kong's show on the road=97
the expensive, world-class infrastructure, the large sector of well-
paid civil servants. Only a handful of super-rich tycoon developers
and their companies can afford the government prices. Because the
prices are so steep, the developers need to squeeze every last drop of
income from their projects=97they wheel and deal to build as high, as
dense, and as close to the property line as they can. And the deals
happen quickly and quietly, sometimes out of public view. "Until you
have higher taxes or a value-added tax, this is how Hong Kong will
continue to be developed," says John Batten, an art gallery owner who
mounted an exhibition about the neighborhood's destruction and has
organized a community group dedicated to its preservation.
When I talk to my Hong Kong-born friends about the way Soho and its
local culture is being bulldozed, most of them shrug resignedly.
They've lived with this all their lives, and they are stoic and thick-
skinned about it. My friends in their 40s and 50s have seen the
houses, the streets, and sometimes the very space they grew up in
disappear=97you can't fight development in Hong Kong. Here, it's not a
good idea to get too attached to places, to streets, to urban
landscapes, even to your view of the harbor or to sun****ne. Better to
save your heart for the things that can't be blocked or scaffolded,
that you can count on: the companion****p of old friends, the familiar
flavors of Cantonese food.
But lately there are signs that Hong Kong people, who've marched en
masse in the streets for a principle, are making the connection
between the fight for democracy and their daily lives. "With
democracy, there will be more transparency, and it will be more
difficult for the government [and property developers] to collude,"
observes human rights lawyer Chong Yiu Kwong. Over time, this will
lead to neighborhood planning that considers the needs of people, not
just the desires of the developers. Or, as John Batten puts it simply,
"Standing up for the quality of life in Hong Kong is standing up for
democracy."
Shuttered real-estate office, Soho
The announcement that Tai Cheong bakery would close in a month's time
provoked a passionate outburst nobody expected. Newspapers
editorialized, radio talk show hosts lamented, and soon throngs from
as far away as the New Territories began arriving at the shop early in
the morning before it opened. By lunchtime, the lines stretched a
hundred-strong down Lyndhurst Terrace. This lasted for days, weeks.
Hong Kong had gone tart-crazy. As the countdown to Tai Cheong's last
days drew near, Legco members Tommy Cheung and Selena Chow (Chow is
also director of the tourist board) were paying visits to the bakery
and trying to help the owner find another location.
In the end, Hong Kong 's people power saved the pastry. Because of all
the publicity and demand, last month Tai Cheong was able to move into
a new, larger, shop just down the street from the old one; it has even
opened up a second branch in Mongkok.
Though Hong Kongers can take on a rapacious landlord and save a tart,
it may be some time=97perhaps not until they get the vote=97before they're
able to fight the collusion of the government and the property
tycoons. But the im****tant thing, says Batten, is that anti-government
sentiment is swelling, and people are asking questions for the first
time about what kind of development Hong Kong ought to have. "People
have never had that debate here before." The high-rise Centre Stage
apartments are nearing completion on Bridges Street, but a few weeks
ago, Batten and his group were able to collect enough letters and
sup****t at a town planning meeting to stall the razing of a
neighborhood landmark, the old police quarters on Staunton Street. If
they are able to build on their momentum to slow the destruction of
one of Hong Kong's last great neighborhoods, it will be an even
sweeter victory.
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