Hong Kong: Statist at Heart?

Interesting, but what level of support do similar measures enjoy in the US or Europe? I'd guess similar or even greater support.

The lack of people who use the word "libertarian" in HK may not be all that indicative of a lack of people who support freedom. I gather that use of the word to denote pro-market liberals has its origins in the US and is still most commonly used there.

That's an argument quite similar to the one that Dinesh D'Souza makes in What's so Great About America - colonialism was bad, but the end result is that the colonies are better off then they would have been without it.

I put myself in the firmly libertarian camp, and I live in Hong Kong, so maybe that counts - though I have largely been educated in the States. Part of the reason libertarianism isn't exactly a strong movement over here is that for pretty much all of our history, there hasn't been any sort of movement similar to the French Revolution, the enlightment, et cetera. Instead, we have dynasties that have ruled for a long time, and if there's one thing that Chinese are painfully aware of, its that its far better to keep your mouth shut and make money then to risk the ire of the dynasty-in-charge. Chances are, they're going to outlast you. The thing about Chinese culture (and other Asian cultures) in general is that they aren't particularly keen on the idea of libertarianism. There's an old Chinese proverb that says "Those in power will alwasy find a way to create policies, and those below will always find a way of dealing with them."

Whereas the Western concept of libertarianism ties both economic and personal liberty together, many Asians feel differently. Singapore is often considered a fine example of the so-called "East Asian Challenge to Human Rights" - you sacrifice social freedom in order to gain stability, but you open up economic freedom to allow things to grow. Works well if you get Lee Kwan Yu, less well if you end up with Mugabe.

When you're talking about Hong Kong and Singapore as being "successful" examples of trading democracy for economic liberty, have you considered that their limited geographic area makes it a lot easier for their autocratic ruling cliques to run them? The rulers are never far from the people. They can deal with problems quickly.

Contrast this with mainland China, whose gerintocracy seems at times to have only a fingernail grip on its regions. Too often the country seems on the verge of flying apart at the seams.

This seems similar to the Pinochet Lesson in Chile. Leave a legacy of rule of law, free enterprise, and trade liberalization, and you get a goodly market economy. But not everyone is going to like it. Why? That's still something of open speculation, but I'd proffer this idea: prevailing conceptions of justice and exploitation can color otherwise rational choices. If people view democracy as a vehicle for legislating "leveling" of the supposed economic playing field through coercive wealth distribution or excessive regulation, then they will vote as such, even if the evidence argues strongly for reconsideration of such views.

Scott - just to clarify, I'm not saying that Hong Kong or Singapore is ideal (though I doubt Hong Kong fits into the "Singapore Model"). I'm just pointing out a common view over here. For most libertarians, social freedom is indistinguishable from economic freedom. It seems apparent that many Asians don't feel the same way - in fact, at the risk of making gross stereotypes, we prefer stability (or perhaps, the powers that be prefer stability). And the "Singapore Way" is supposed to be a fine model of how we can combine economic freedom with social stability. I'm skeptical myself, partly for the reasons you mentioned earlier, and partly for various other reasons. It also brings up an interesting question, if you have to choose, which one would you choose? Or is the choice utter nonsense, i.e. you can't have one without the other?

I think that many of Hayek's insights are non-intuitive (much like conditional probability), and Daniel's point makes me wonder - is it the case that democracies don't like open, free markets, its just that they're less hostile to them then other regimes.

It's true there hasn't been much of a community of libertarians in Hong Kong to date. We are gathering like minded people under the banner of The Lion Rock Institute. Check it out if you are interested and consider becoming a member.

On the posting itself, we conducted a survey of candidates for our legislative council in 2004. Most candidates agreed with statements supporting a mostly free market in principle. However, issue by issue they preferred high levels of wealth distribution and regulation. We predicted an interventionist LegCo and months later legislators voted (42-18) for a motion encouraging the government to establish a minimum wage/max working hours law. Forget Singapore, we're almost French!
Andrew Work

In the United States, our freedoms are protected by the courts. It's understood that if Congress does certain things-- like, say, making it illegal to insult President Bush-- the courts would overturn that law. Is that undemocratic? Or is it an essential condition for democracy? Answer: Yes.

One could conceive of a state where the government was believed not to have the right to set a minimum wage law, or to restrict foreign trade. If there were an attempt to prohibit people from working for $3/hr, or buy Japanese cars, those who wanted to do these things would take it for granted that it was within their rights to do so, and the state was exceeding its rights in trying to restrict these things. From the constitutional point of view, it would not matter in this hypothetical republic what the people's opinion was on the matter, because the state's powers would be circumscribed by the economic rights of its subjects.

In practice, it's hard to design this kind of state because the state has to tax in order to survive, and that muddies the water for economic rights.

Richard Wong, the libertarian Economics Dept. Chair at the University of Hong Kong and Director of Hong Kong Center for Economic Research, used to joke that even he didn't know Hong Kong was a laissez-faire country until Milton Friedman told him about it when he went to study at the University of Chicago.