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Hong Kong is perhaps the best modern case study of relatively free capitalism in action. In just a quarter of a century, a poor country with few natural resour
by tc 17y ago
Hong Kong is perhaps the best modern case study of relatively free capitalism in action. In just a quarter of a century, a poor country with few natural resources raised its standard of living above that of the UK, its colonial parent.
There's an old story that once, in a meeting, Milton Friedman was chastising Sir John Cowperthwaite, Hong Kong's Financial Secretary, for not collecting the economic statistics that Milton and other economists wanted. Cowperthwaite replied that the omission was intentional; he knew that if he collected the data, the bureaucrats back in the UK would see the numbers and expect him to do something about them.
- jacquesm 17y agoI think the opium trade may have had something to do with that (and with the wealth of Macao as well).
- uygbuyb 17y agoSlight statistical effect though - it was a small place that had concentrated banking/shipping etc. The average income of the city of London (the financial centre) is higher than the average for the UK - that doesn't mean the solution is for the rest of the country to build banks on all the farmland.
- jimmybot 17y agoRight. What works for Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, the Isle of Man, and other low tax city states just does not work for the rest of the world--it doesn't scale.
- pchristensen 17y agoExactly. Regulatory arbitrage doesn't work if everyone shares the same regs.