Comes now a welcome call to create more Hong Kongs. Sadly the fellow has some profound misunderstandings, but not that cannot be overcome. He begins his talk with the effect of rules, so let me make a point about rules. Crises are in relation to rules. New rules are formed at times of crises. At whatever point we are in the freedom continuum, if rules are relaxed, if there is deregulation at crises points, things get better. If rules that precipitate crises beget more rules, thing get worse. Hong Kong, few rules, peace and prosperity. Pyongyang, the most rules, horror. When we face crises we have a choice, make things better or worse.
Now comes Paul Romer with a Ted Talk advocating charter cities like charter schools. We set up Hong Kong style polities around the world, wherever people ask for them. Exactly who "we" is is vague, but certainly Paul Romer is there to lend a hand.
What is missing is a set of rules that give choices not only to people but to leaders, avers Romer.
He cites Korea, where a common people embraced diametrically opposed sets of rules and yielded opposite results, North and South Korea, and certainly South Korea looks more attractive compared to North Korea. But that misses the point of where Korea would be if it was not so government intensive - both Koreas have local governments plus hegemons. Korea, even split in two, tells us nothing. Hegemons fog the picture.
I was in China before and after Deng Xiao-ping took Lee Kwan Yew's advice and copied Hong Kong in Shenzhen and 3 other cities, eventually going to twenty and more. I watched the changes as the iron control of the communists withdrew, and freedom flowered in its place, under the aegis of the communist party. In that event, the powers that be conscientiously decided to deregulate in the face of a crisis. Good things followed.
I also watched India attempt to compete with China in this regard, and as near as I can tell, in essence the residual rajah-ism and caste system has kept it from flowering. Here is the difference; India adopted the rule-intensive British Socialism regnant at the time of its liberation from the UK. As Romer suggests in the opening of his talk, rules matter, and India is burdened by a legacy of rules alien to India.
Rules are not universally applicable, for they flower in culturally dependent expression. And to this end, the fewer rules the better, for any majority will oppress a creative minority. Even worse when an alien hegemon (the rulesmakers) show up, for they cripple everyone. This is not limited to polities: India's greatest mathematician arrived at correct answers by means his British betters found inscrutable, and no doubt vice versa. But the fact of the matter is, there is such a thing as "Hindu mathematics" and "German mathematics" even in the pure sciences... how much more so in cultural learnings? What happens when we say "there are a set of universally applicable rules..." ? Hang on, whose rules?
Romer is rent seeking. "We've fouled our nest, with a little chutzpah, we can find new nests to lord over." How about we straighten out the USA first. Haven't we done enough harm?
Are those Hong Kong phosphorus bombs, or USA phosphorus bombs?
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
Now comes Paul Romer with a Ted Talk advocating charter cities like charter schools. We set up Hong Kong style polities around the world, wherever people ask for them. Exactly who "we" is is vague, but certainly Paul Romer is there to lend a hand.
What is missing is a set of rules that give choices not only to people but to leaders, avers Romer.
He cites Korea, where a common people embraced diametrically opposed sets of rules and yielded opposite results, North and South Korea, and certainly South Korea looks more attractive compared to North Korea. But that misses the point of where Korea would be if it was not so government intensive - both Koreas have local governments plus hegemons. Korea, even split in two, tells us nothing. Hegemons fog the picture.
I was in China before and after Deng Xiao-ping took Lee Kwan Yew's advice and copied Hong Kong in Shenzhen and 3 other cities, eventually going to twenty and more. I watched the changes as the iron control of the communists withdrew, and freedom flowered in its place, under the aegis of the communist party. In that event, the powers that be conscientiously decided to deregulate in the face of a crisis. Good things followed.
I also watched India attempt to compete with China in this regard, and as near as I can tell, in essence the residual rajah-ism and caste system has kept it from flowering. Here is the difference; India adopted the rule-intensive British Socialism regnant at the time of its liberation from the UK. As Romer suggests in the opening of his talk, rules matter, and India is burdened by a legacy of rules alien to India.
Rules are not universally applicable, for they flower in culturally dependent expression. And to this end, the fewer rules the better, for any majority will oppress a creative minority. Even worse when an alien hegemon (the rulesmakers) show up, for they cripple everyone. This is not limited to polities: India's greatest mathematician arrived at correct answers by means his British betters found inscrutable, and no doubt vice versa. But the fact of the matter is, there is such a thing as "Hindu mathematics" and "German mathematics" even in the pure sciences... how much more so in cultural learnings? What happens when we say "there are a set of universally applicable rules..." ? Hang on, whose rules?
When discussing rules, and lamenting a given president's dilemma on deregulation, Romer poses conflicting choices facing a president whose power allows him to set electricity rates, between those who want market forces in electricity and those who "... want the choice to continue consuming subsidized electric power." The mind boggles! "want?" "choice?' "continue consuming?" "subsidized?" How many internal contradictions can one pack into a single sentence?
There is a point in his talk where Romer cautions us against weak governments. "Rules can be bad because governments are weak... it is not only rules can be bad because governments are strong like North Korea."
This is where Romer's profound misunderstanding causes his argument to come crashing down. The Chinese Communist Party sponsors two of the weakest governments on earth. Obviously Hong Kong, under the Communist Party's one country, two systems policy. And the Red China itself, with an extremely small political party over a massive stretch of real estate. China is largely self-governing at very low levels. And what laws China has are few and far between, and apparently whimsically enforced. This makes for relatively peaceful and prosperous polities.
China is not like Somalia, which descended into chaos compliments of the various super-powers who imposed many regimes from outside, and eventually outright invaded. Somalia failed for having too much government. China is performing remarkably for having so little.
The miniscule UK could rule the waves because its practice was to share power and allow locals to thrive. Tho. Sowell notes from his research that Americans of some Africa ancestry come from either British or French sources. Those from British sources are wealthier, those from French are less so. France did not share power with locals. Relative freedom, lack of central rules is important.
The miniscule UK could rule the waves because its practice was to share power and allow locals to thrive. Tho. Sowell notes from his research that Americans of some Africa ancestry come from either British or French sources. Those from British sources are wealthier, those from French are less so. France did not share power with locals. Relative freedom, lack of central rules is important.
Romer shows us pictures of vast stretches of African coastline, empty expanses where new cities could be chartered from scratch. Why? Tunis would be an excellent location for a new Hong Kong. In fact the Tunisian government was in Hong Kong studying the city-state when their hyper-government martinets beat and robbed a fellow trying to feed his family by selling fruit, without a license. The Arab spring followed. Too late now.
Romer recommends Canada and Cuba get together and transform Guantanamo Bay into a new Hong Kong. Umm.. Paul... you mean that which USA maintains as a prison? Weren't you just talking of rules? If the USA had the ability to make a polity better than it was, Gurantanamo Bay would already be a new Hong Kong, and not a prison housing largely innocent Moslems. Irony, much?
Romer has the idea that these cities can delegate control of certain sectors to other nations... my guess is perhaps the British can be the police, the Germans the philosophers, the French the cooks, and the Italians the designers, and the Swedes the politicians? Is that not too much government? Will we not end up with British cooks, German cops, Italian politicians, French designers, Swedish philosophers? Romer says we can share our ideas with the benighted races. So, it is their fault, their circumstances? The fact USA has military presence in over 180 countries has no bearing on current events? Might a starting place for making the world a better place just bring USA troops home? Then see what happens?
That we can show these people how to make for good international rules... uggh... here again: Hong Kong thrives for its policies are unilateral. Chile is free to trade in any way it likes with Hong Kong, and Hong Kong requires no reciprocity. The test of a good policy, even no policy, is that it is effective even though it requires no reciprocity. The only reason a policy needs reciprocity is to assure the group targeted for annihilation by the policy cannot escape annihilation. You name the policy, and I will show you the group so targeted. All policies have winners and losers. Otherwise, why would the state need to back them up with violence?
Romer tells us we can finance the whole infrastructure of a charter city by the rising land values, such as Hong Kong and Singapore saw in their development. Oooops... Paul, no one is allowed to own land in Hong Kong. Rethink that key point.
The problem with Romer's argument is he proceeds from the "white man's burden" school of thought. Excellence comes from the white race. And to make his point, he cites a Chinese city. Irony, again.
The historical fact is every excellent polity is sheer accident. If we admire, Hong Kong, Sweden, Monaco, Andorra, Iceland, Singapore, Costa Rica, wherever, each is its own unique accident in history. Hong Kong was formed by Scotsmen who were tasked with creating a British base of operations in South China. These Scotsmen where of the same ilk as the Scotsmen who were forming the USA at the same time, and they were all informed by the laissez faire philosophy they imported from France, which had its genesis from studying the Spanish Scholastics who found it in the writings of the Moslems who were driven out of Spain, who had inherited it from the libraries of the heretical Christians the Moslems conquered, libraries of Greek and Roman classical authors, who had received it from the oriental sources and then fades away in antiquity.
Hong Kong and USA were based on the same premises at the same time. Hong Kong stayed the course, while USA changed. That both USA and Hong Kong host a diverse group of people, with many languages spoken, and are equal in economic power per capita is no coincidence. But that Hong Kong is a center of peace and prosperity while USA is the #1 source of terror in the world is the result of a change in rules in the USA, or more to the point, the addition of rules where before there were none.
Now, there is no doubt Hong Kong is completely in Chinese hands, and doing well, currently sans White Man's direction. This suggests there is something culturally-neutral in play, and I would suggest that is freedom. It is not rules, Romer's starting point, that matter, but freedom. Freedom is that ether in which people thrive, and polities emerge, the less rules the better, the more rules the worse.
Freedom is a fundamental human condition. Hong Kong has rules, but they are largely unknown outside of the voluntary associations that keep Hong Kong peaceful and prosperous. Freedom to agree to rules is the basis for effective rules. There is no State that can provide freedom, for a state must necessarily deny some freedom for the state to exist.
Hong Kong has exactly the same distribution of rogues and villains any other location on planet earth might hold, it is just in Hong Kong they have no means of gaining the leverage to do much evil before running into one of the voluntary associations that keep the others in check. That is how anarchy works, and why Hong Kong is the best example extent of anarchy in action.
On the other hand, in say rules-rich USA, if you have an abiding hatred of, say, people of some African heritage, your best bet is to seek employment with the government, where under the color of law you can do as much damage as you like, with impunity. Rules provide opportunities to very evil people.
Freedom existed before mankind. Mankind emerged from freedom, and we carry traces of pre-creation in our unique capacity for free will. Freedom is not unique to any race or culture. Look at Hong Kong. Look at history. Sure, freedom had some time with the white man, but it has moved on.
If anyone wants to see a new Hong Kong develop, Tunis might still be a good candidate. But is it for Tunisians to unilaterally advance to freedom. No one from the outside can bring "rules" that will effect progress.
Detroit is another excellent candidate, and time and again is showing it may happen, independent of the ruleskeepers, in spite of the ruleskeepers. If Detroit goes free, it will be in spite of the rulesbuilders. Until Detroit goes free, no one in USA should be making recommendations to the rest of the world.
Romer is rent seeking. "We've fouled our nest, with a little chutzpah, we can find new nests to lord over." How about we straighten out the USA first. Haven't we done enough harm?
Are those Hong Kong phosphorus bombs, or USA phosphorus bombs?
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
