Two nice articles last year by Nick Sallnow-Smith, former Chairman of the Lion Rock Institute. I like them, reposting but slightly clipped.
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2018-07-24 / Nick Sallnow-Smith
For the high summer months of July and August I want to
offer a pair of articles. The first entitled as above, the second will ask the
question “Is Hong Kong a Commune?” (Spoiler alert – the answer in both cases is
“no”!)
Now before you answer testily “of course not” to the
question I pose, let me offer some thoughts on why I believe many people
discuss our city as if it were a corporation. The first step in the erroneous
chain of reasoning is to treat Hong Kong as a single entity. It is commonplace
to read of Hong Kong’s “lack of competitiveness”; or that Hong Kong is “too
expensive”. Some businesses may not be competitive in their segment, some items
may be too expensive. Yet others may be very competitive and some very cheap.
Hong Kong is not a singularity. But the metaphor of the corporation goes beyond
this. Think of the many times you have read comments about Hong Kong’s
“workforce”. A company has a “workforce” whereby people are contracted to
provide a specific service for a salary. Hong Kong does not employ us. We have
entered into no contract with the state. Yet the Administration regularly
wrings its metaphorical hands about how to get more housewives/the elderly into
the “workforce”, as if the city has a contract to fill and does not have the
labour to complete it. The demographic debate is couched in the same terms.
“We” need to boost fertility so that the “workforce” does not age too rapidly.
Education policy is framed in the same way. Are our
universities producing the right graduates for “Hong Kong’s” purposes? But what
are those purposes? The unspoken assumption is that the city’s purposes are
somehow unitary and reflect a consensus. This is an error. In a free society,
each citizen can have purposes but the city cannot. If the Administration
attempts to impose unitary purposes on the rest of us, this is tantamount to a
totalitarian society. What each child wishes to study, what direction they wish
to follow in life, whether at my age I wish to work or not, whether a mother
wishes to take a paid job or not: these are all free choices (or should be).
Their aggregate effect should be what characterises Hong Kong, not a top down
imposed blueprint.
It grieves me when I see business chambers routinely
pleading with Government to come up with a “vision” for the future, with a
better “plan” for Hong Kong to make it “competitive”, to give it a “purpose”.
Perhaps because in their own businesses these questions make complete sense,
they are tempted to project onto public policy the same way of thinking. What
they miss is that if a monolithic top down “vision” is imposed on the city,
many businesses’ own visions will become much more difficult to achieve. If you
are in the IT sector and fail to win a subsidy while you competitor does, for
example….
The political consequence of this is that, rather than
making their own decisions about their lives, many citizens spend their time
and energy fighting over what the top down policy should be. How the Board of
Directors is selected becomes a huge issue, as it should be in a true
corporation. Questions of where the minimum wage should be set; how much the
MPF deduction should be; whether bus fares should rise; whether Uber/AirB&B
should be “permitted” , what should be taught in government schools and so on?
Political division and dissension about any top down policies of this sort is
inevitable.
In a real corporation, if you as shareholder do not like
the direction taken by the appointed Board, you can sell your shares and invest
elsewhere. In a city you cannot do so. You have no exit (unless you have money
and a foreign passport).
The metaphor of a corporation for a city is not only
wrong but dangerous. Instead of COHK (the Corporation of Hong Kong), let’s
please think of ourselves as COHK (the Community of Hong Kong).
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2018-06-26 / Nick Sallnow-Smith
You will have to be patient for a couple of paragraphs
before I arrive at explaining the title for my thoughts this month. My route to
it begins with a quick reprise of the difference between “natural law” and what
I will term “code law”, for the purposes of this piece.
By natural law, I mean those restrictions which have
arisen in virtually every human society, and without which a community could
not survive in the longer term: prohibitions against murder, theft and fraud.
At root, these rules are based on every free human being able to do with his
own body and personal possessions what he feels is in his best interests,
without interference from others. It is the root of freedom. Therefore the only
restriction on you as a free citizen is not to coerce others. In the words of
Leonard Reed: “anything peaceful”.
It would be a rare human being who would feel such
natural laws were “unjust”. Indeed that is why they are called, and feel,
“natural”. By contrast, many laws invented by legislators will regularly be
regarded as “unjust” by some, yet not by others (take for example those laws
here that make Uber illegal). Code law like this usually involves the state
coercing at least some in the community (in my example, Uber drivers) to favour
other groups. All taxes do this as well.
From a libertarian viewpoint, this is not acceptable and
indeed not “just”. However, at least this type of law can be clearly defined
(though it often is not) and therefore predictable. One can regret it but at
least manage one’s life around it. This typically applies to all regulations as
well as statutes (although in many sectors in Hong Kong interpreting the
meaning of the multitude of regulations can involve turning to expert
consultants to find out what you are permitted to do or not). They may be
regrettable but are at least predictable. Our daily lives as citizens are
constrained as to what we are “permitted to do” by our government but at least
if we stay within those boundaries we can relax. Or at least we could; no
longer I fear….
Life is made productive and enjoyable by making our own
contributions, not by spending time and energy blaming others for any social
outcomes that do not please us. My hope is that more of us might “conduct”
ourselves by focussing on the freedoms of the former rather than on limitations
of the latter.
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See also:
Lion Rock 24, Is everything under control?, August 23, 2018
Lion Rock 25, A Man, A Plan, A Canal, Panama, April 20, 2019
Lion Rock 26, Peter Wong as new Chairman of LRI, April 27, 2019
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