Visiting Hong Kong & Freedom

To get to Hong Kong it is likely you will buy a ticket from an airline and fly into Kai Tak Airport, which is publicly traded corporation.  All transportation in Hong Kong is either private or corporate for-profit private business.  Your invitation to the airport, where luggage carts are free, is your airline ticket.  Passing immigration and customs is astonishingly easy, and the welcome very generous. From there you can take the Metro or Busses or taxis or limousines to the cities, where of course you pay for your ride. What is your destination?  A hotel?  A friends house?  In any event, you will pay some property owner, or be the guest of a property owner.

After that you will eat at restaurants, visit museums, do business at offices, all be means of and with private property owners.  There really is not contact with government to speak of.

But then the people of Hong Kong have little contact with government.  The currency, what we call money, is put out by three private companies.  The payment card, the Octopus which accounts for about US$12 million in small purchases everyday is a private payment means.  As long as you do not push force or fraud, you are likely never to encounter the government, except a the post office, but even then, most mail is now in private hands.

Charities are wildly oversubscribed, and the people of Hong Kong are overwhelmingly generous when disaster strikes elsewhere.

Less than half of Hong Kong citizens pay any tax whatsoever, and the rest pay someone between zero and the 16% maximum rate, which extremely few pay.  Yet Hong Kong is remarkably safe, and food and health care and housing and schooling are cheap and plentiful.  The government runs such a surplus, it invests the money in publicly traded companies, for a rainy day. There is none of the deficit spending, since there is no sense that government should solve all problems. Business solves problems. Hong Kong people can leave anytime.  The government does maintain some sports facilities, gardens and even some public housing which it is selling off, but otherwise it is a laissez faire dreamland.

Hong Kong was formed at the same time as the United States by the same enlightenment Scotsmen who formed the United States. The USA changed, Hong Kong remained remarkably constant.  Will Rogers said invest in land, it is the only thing they are not making more of.  Except in Hong Kong, where they make more land constantly.  And build straight up at a rate rarely matched elsewhere.  With property rights, and a weak government with little ability to do public domain, Hong Kong remains remarkably unchanged, except what goes on underground, straight up and on new land.  Since 1977, Hong Kong is the least changed place I've ever visited.

At the same time, the per capita income matches USA and exceeds their previous masters, the UK.  And As USA declines, HK continues to improve.  It has everything the world has to offer, at a wide array of prices.  You can get anything you need, and likely you can afford it.  It is a most polyglot country, with extremely diverse people working side by side.  It is more panarchy than anarchy, you'll find free marketers, communists, capitalists, Buddhists, Moslems, Christians all working side by side in peaceful cooperation.

People say less government leads to Somalia.  No, less government leads to Hong Kong.  Notice how the visitor depends on the goodwill of property owners ever step of the way in Hong Kong.  Should you decline to pay, your option is to leave.  There is no US-style welfare in Hong Kong, although plenty of charity.  But for people who do not care to produce, the charitable thing is to send them back home.  Note: if you manage to make it to Hong Kong, you must produce or go home.  If you manage to make it to USA, you are guaranteed welfare.  Relatively speaking, Hong Kong has open borders and no welfare.  USA has open borders and welfare.  USA is closing its borders.  It need only eliminate welfare, and respect property rights, especially those in other countries.  Perhaps then there would not be so much immigration.  This is more just.

Another feature of free markets is that the mega-welfare queens have no opportunity to indirectly mulct from the society in which they reside. Hong Kong is the only place where WalMart has failed.  On the other hand, Apple is booming in Hong Kong.  WalMart depends on WelFare.  Apple depends on customers.

It has some oddities: the only gambling permitted is horse racing, and the profits go to charity.  Chinese people are strictly limited access to Hong Kong.  How strange!  It is under the aegis of the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China.  Wow!  If a "public servant" cannot explain how he came by his assets, he can be prosecuted, at any time, whether while working or after retirement.  It's the law.  www.hkma.gov.hk/media/eng/doc/.../code_of_conduct_eng.pdf

Someone asked me how come I don't move to Hong Kong?  Why should I?  This is my country, not the criminals who make war and bail out banks and torture and murder citizens and spy on me and search me in airports.  The judges, the politicians, the cops, the welfare queen big business captains. They are the ones who have to leave, not me.  Why would I leave.  They can go.  Then USA will improve.

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