You know, I’m sure most Hong Kongers do think of themselves as Chinese and always have. Their separation from the mainland was never an ideological matter like it is with Taiwan.
Not better than Singapore.
Nor Brunei.
And South Korea and Taiwan are right in there. Not to mention Japan.
In fact, basicly we have successful nations and Communist (or once Communist) nations which aren’t so successful.
It’s not “government planning and heavy regulation of trade and commerce” vs *laisser-faire * it’s Communism vs Capitalism. We all know (I hope) who wins that battler, economy-wise.
The point isn’t that Hong Kong isn’t a success story but that it isn’t a libertarian success story. The interventions that I describe in the OP go far beyond what libertarians would prescribe. And you can make a strong case that these interventions were essential to Hong Kong’s success: they provided social and political stability, helped to absorb the large number of poor immigrants moving to Hong Kong and built their human capital which in turn provided the basis for economic growth. The same goes for the other Asian tigers like Taiwan, South Korea and Singapore which were about as successful as Hong Kong. All of them had fairly interventionist governments as did practically every economic success story of the last 60 years.
Of course there have been interventionist governments that have failed to provide economic growth as well. So the debate isn’t really about markets versus intervention; it’s about which interventions are smart and which aren’t.
You are making up shit. Again.
Where are the refugees who flee HKG? Where are the demonstrations against the “occupation” of HK by the Chinese? Where are the pro-independence parties and demonstrations? Inquisitive people demand cites.
Maybe you are mistaking HK and China with some other places. Like Puerto Rico where there is, in fact, a sizable proportion of the people who are pro-independence and against the US armed forces being on their soil.
And the level of union penetration in Hong Kong is twice what it is in America. Don’t libertarians regard unions as coercive?
*At the same time, the warnings of the 1997 handover raised emigration statistics to an all new historical level. Many would leave Hong Kong for United States, Canada, United Kingdom and any other destination with no communist influence.
Article 23 became a controversy, and led to a marches in different parts of Hong Kong with as many as 750,000 people out of a population of approximately 6,800,000 at the time.*
*Journalists in particular are concerned about the new law, especially with respect to journalistic criticism of the Central Government of the People’s Republic of China …
…Other organisations which have spoken out against the proposal include the Hong Kong Journalists Association, Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club and the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong. Members of the European Parliament, and officials of the United States Department of State, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have expressed concerns about the Article 23 legislation.
Some banks in Hong Kong were reported to be considering relocation if the proposed Article 23 is passed out of the fear that the laws would restrict the free flow of information. On 7 December 2002, it was reported in the press that ten foreign banks had told the government privately that the introduction of Article 23 would have disastrous consequences for Hong Kong, threatening its demise as Asia’s financial capital.[6]*
And of course, once you know that “pro-independence parties and demonstrations” could lead to the Red Chinese army taking over, then that puts a damper on the protests.
There’s plenty in Vancouver and Australia.
Having spent about six months there in college, I’d disagree with that. At least, partially. A LOT of people ended up in Hong Kong after fleeing Shanghai and elsewhere during the civil war. It’s maybe not as stark an ideological difference, but even in the twenty-somethings I was hanging out with, I encountered a definite sense of being different-from and, really, better-than, mainlanders. When I was there, there was also some dissatisfaction with some Beijing-appointed government officials.
Let us see some citations then. Not immigrants but refugees. How many “refugees” from HK in the last 5 years? Since January 2004. people who have stated they left HK for fear of political persecution. Let us see some facts. i am sure Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch would have such information and I would like to see it.
There was plenty of concern before the handover of what would happen after China took over and many people left at that time. We are talking about what is actually happening now.
I would like to see how in the last five years there are actual refugees. How there are substantial numbers of people in HK who want independence from China and who see the Chinese army as an occupation army. If such movements exist I have never heard of them. And I travel to HK almost every year and have friends there.
Let us see proof of all these refugees and resistance movements.
That’s all old stuff of fears around the handover. I want to see citations of refugees in the last five years.
Since there is freedom of the press and there are demonstrations remembering the Tiananmen massacre and othe such demonstrations against the HK government I can’t see how this holds any water. Not to mention that any fears of the “Red Chinese army”, more properly known as the PLA “taking over” are unfounded. The Red Chinese army “took over” at midnight July 1, 1997.
Now let us see about those refugees. Where did they go? What countries have granted them asylum?
Let us see a cite that Hong Kong allows unlimited real free emmigration.
The USA gets several hundred thousand illegal Chinese immigrants a year.
[edit] China
It is illegal for a citizen of China to emigrate without getting permission from the Chinese government.[11]
About 100,000 Chinese citizens do get to immigrate legaly to the USA each year. The number of Americans going to China to be permant residents is deminimus.
NO. Don’t change the subject. We are talking about Hong Kong. Hong Kong. Remember?
You asserted "They also do not and can not spend any money on defence, and they live in daily fear of the Red Chinese army walking in. " which is quite ignorant and nonsense because, as has been said, the “Red Chinese army” “walked in” over a decade ago. And to say they cannot spend money on defense is like saying New York cannot spend money on defense. They each spend money on defense through their national governments.
I do not have to show you people are free to travel from HK because I have had several friends from HK visit me in America and Europe. You are the one claiming persecution and lack of freedom in Hong Kong (while Sam Stone claims what makes HK work is precisely the existence of freedom).
So, where are the refugees? I am waiting for a cite. How many people have fled HK in the last five years due to political persecution? (The part about the red army “walking in” has already been shown to be nonsense.)
We are talking China when we talk Hong Kong. Hong Kong is part of China, they use Chinese passorts. Thus emigration form Hong Kong is not tracked separatly.
Oh, you had freinds from HK visit you, so that obviously refutes my cite that
China
It is illegal for a citizen of China to emigrate without getting permission from the Chinese government.
Did they emigrate? Did they have permission?
It is true that holders of that special version of the Chinese passport are allowed visa-free entry to several nations, *for a visit. *
Note that a lot of dudes from China and VietNam want to migrate to Hong Kong, so I didn’t say it was so bad people are leaving en masse.
Then how is the PLA an “unwelcome foreign army” comparable to the Nazis in Denmark?
Look, this is silly. Let me repeat: where is the evidence of political persecution, refugees, etc?
The fact is that you have no evidence and that you just have a preconceived notion of what HK should be like and you are not willing to change that. Show me the lists of people who have been denied exit from HK on political grounds. Show me. There must be hundreds if what you say is true. Where are they?
There are probably people who are forbidden to leave HK just like there are people who are forbidden to leave the USA or a particular state. That does not make the USA a police state.
Again, where is the irrefutable evidence of political persecution?
Fun with Google.
- No results found for “political persecution in Hong Kong”.
- Results 1 - 23 of 23 for “political persecution in Russia”.
- Results 1 - 30 of about 214 for “political persecution in China”.
- Results 1 - 30 of about 313 for “political persecution in America”.
One argument is that a minimalist government is inevitable, in that any less government will not result in a stable society. For example, Nozick argues in Anarchy, State, and Utopia that in an anarcho-capitalist setting, you’d have private defense/security/contract enforcement services spring up, and that inevitably one would gain a monopoly over a given territory (because the attractiveness of a security provider’s services are directly proportional to its marketshare, more or less). Once such a monopoly is attained, you in effect have a minimalist government, so you may as well just skip the steps leading up to it.
Another argument goes something like, physical coercion is bad. The least amount of physical coercion will be attained by having a minimalist government, hence that is the form of government we should have. Less government would result in more coercion by private citizens committing crimes against each other. More government results in more coercion by government.
Now, I don’t agree with either of these, but they’re not completely illogical.
A Hong Kong joke.
A foreign journalist travels to Hong Kong after the transistion to get some “man on the street” views.
“What’s your opinion on how things have gone since Beijing took over?”
“I can’t complain.”
“So you’re saying there’s no problems?”
“No, I’m saying it’s illegal now.”
I gave cites. You seem unwilling to read them. There is not currently a lot of political persecution in HK, nor did I claim there was. What there is the the looming threat of political persecution whenever Peking wants to institute it.
Here are the cites again. Please read and refute:
China
It is illegal for a citizen of China to emigrate without getting permission from the Chinese government. HK residents are citizens of China.
Then this about Art 23
*Article 23 became a controversy, and led to a marches in different parts of Hong Kong with as many as 750,000 people out of a population of approximately 6,800,000 at the time.
Journalists in particular are concerned about the new law, especially with respect to journalistic criticism of the Central Government of the People’s Republic of China …
…Other organisations which have spoken out against the proposal include the Hong Kong Journalists Association, Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club and the Faculty of Law at the University of Hong Kong. Members of the European Parliament, and officials of the United States Department of State, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand have expressed concerns about the Article 23 legislation.
Some banks in Hong Kong were reported to be considering relocation if the proposed Article 23 is passed out of the fear that the laws would restrict the free flow of information. On 7 December 2002, it was reported in the press that ten foreign banks had told the government privately that the introduction of Article 23 would have disastrous consequences for Hong Kong, threatening its demise as Asia’s financial capital.[6]
*
And of course we had evidence of a million or so refugees, who left out of fear when the Chinese were about to take over. Then you changed the bar to “Since January 2004”.
Moderator’s Note: Please remember that accusing another poster of lying is not permitted in this forum.
I prefer the formulation that started with Hobbes in Leviathan, describing the nature of the social contract:
Natural rights are simply things we are capable of doing. Can I swing my fist? Yes. Then I have a natural right to do so. Everyone is born with natural rights. No one should be born a slave to another human being, or born in a state of somehow owing something to other humans. We are not serfs or chattel.
In an anarchistic world with all of us exercising our natural rights, we will devolve into a state of endless conflict, much as earlier societies and hunter-gatherer tribes often were. We tend to devolve into tribes or clans and fight with each other or at least isolate ourselves from each other for safety. This means ultimately a significant limit on our natural rights. We are constrained by the violence and chaos around us.
Therefore, we determine to give up some of our natural rights, if others will agree to give up those same rights. We form a social contract. We do this to maximize liberty - recognizing that we will willingly give up some rights (“My right to swing my fist ends where your face begins.”) in order to maximize other, more important ones, such as not having the other guy’s fist intersect our face.
Inalienable rights are those natural rights which are so important, so intrinsic to quality of life and the maintenance of society, that we will enshrine those in a document that says they can not be infringed on or turned into political rights to be bargained away.
We also recognize that we have an incentive to break our vow and gain an advantage over those who keep theirs. But then, so do they. So the system breaks down without enforcement. The best way to enforce the social contract is with a sovereign power, representative to all, so that bias cannot creep into the system. The sovereign must be trusted by all parties, or the contract breaks down. We also need impartial adjudicators to settle our disputes, and we entrust the sovereign with that power as well.
There’s your basic form of government - a social contract designed to maximize our freedoms, a declaration that no human is born subservient to another, and a sovereign nation given the power to use force to protect the citizenry from coercion within and from external threats, and a judicial system that treats everyone impartially and objectively settles disputes.
From that, you can build a fairly Libertarian nation. I don’t agree with privatizing armies and police forces and the courts, because they must remain impartial, and everyone has to recognize their legitimacy. Private police forces don’t work because they will be subject to bias - they’ll treat the people actually paying them differently than they will those citizens under contract to someone else. That would put the two private forces in direct conflict.
I’ll go farther than that and say that as our wealth increases, the marginal utility of a dollar of taxation goes down, and at some point the social contract should allow for some of that money to be used for public purposes. I don’t think that in a modern first-world democracy anyone should ever starve or be denied basic medical care or shelter. We are wealthy enough that the social contract can be extended to that. I’ll go even further and say that there’s a role for government to play in building public works and infrastructure. Regulation that ensures the functioning of free markets can also fit within this framework. Banking regulation, building codes, transparency and disclosure laws, laws against fraud and false advertising, etc.
I don’t even have a problem with government being an information agency. If the FDA operated as an advisory organization, I’d be all for it. Information Asymmetry is one of the main causes of market failure, so let government provide information.
Libertarians can be found all along this spectrum - up to a point. That point generally come when government starts to attempt to push society around, to initiate coercion against citizens for the benefit of other citizens, to block trade, to impose tariffs and regulations in an attempt to change the direction or outcome of the free market, to attempt to stop you from exercising your natural rights ‘for your own good’, etc.