Essays in Idleness

The last time I revisited Hong Kong (“Be brave, be water, be ready,” 2019), it had still an infinitesimal chance of liberty, and its people were apparently rebelling against the obscenity of Chinese Communism. Now I visit the old Crown Colony again, as pure idea.

As I wrote then:

“The British approach was finally, live and let live; but it had an administrative basis. From the 1950s, Hong Kong was an experiment. What would happen if they deregulated almost everything, and cut taxes to match? If they consciously de-politicized the colonial administration? If they shrank police functions to what was needed only to direct traffic, and defeat crime? The result was, as ever, unprecedented prosperity, but more: a people who forgot the habit of kow-towing to men ‘dress’d in a little brief authority’.”

One must also question the advantages of too widespread wealth. It goes to people’s heads:

“For unfortunately, in a broader view, prosperity also kills, as people use their freedom only for material gain, and a new jackboot state grows around the need to protect against” losing stuff. But now Hong Kong gets kicked by both boots — the obscenity of communism, plus the oppression of ease and affluence.

I shouldn’t say anything to encourage politicians, even the undemocratic monarchist types, yet I will do it again, to confute the prospective tariff regimes of The Donald, Polly-ever, and unfriends. This may come about because tariffs are a large-scale option, and large-scale states and federations invariably settle on the stupidest plan.

But if they wanted only to get rich, and quickly, radical free trade would be their best option. Note my use of “radical.” Such arrangements are only suitable for small, independent, city states, in the time before Obscene Communists move in. Freedom works in nation states, too, but not nearly so well, because these are politically awkward: “the peeple” insist on corruption and legislative interventions, to imbalance the playing field and promote special interests. (They always have.) There is a large economy for the politicians to “protect,” and politicians aren’t shy.

In a radical free market, there are no taxes or tariffs, or almost none (perhaps some modest royalties on natural resources, and of course, voluntary patronage). There are no retaliatory tariffs, either. Your free marketeers sell to anyone who will buy, and not to others. You simply don’t buy what foreign powers have marked up. Because you are a city state, you are small, and easily specialize. Only intelligent people will buy from you, because only intelligent people buy beautiful and well-made things, and don’t like over-paying for them.

And you avoid an unbending law of the universe: that those who retaliate (and start wars) soon get destroyed. (But so does every state, eventually, and all the “peeples.”)

Thus in no time, a city once dirt poor, becomes a raging success, like Hong Kong. For as a beleaguered Hongkongois shouted, during street demonstrations in 2019, about the promises of grand nation states:

“Don’t trust China. China is asshole!”