He begins by admitting to his tone-deafness on the issue and how he perhaps needed to have more understanding of a broad audience when speaking in a scholarly manner. He then puts out a claim that he has received many death and rape threats on him as well as his family, although he doesn’t substantiate the claim in any way, shape or form.
He then continues to spin interesting stories about what he means and that the context was completely misrepresented. He continues to explain how Muslims were actually some of the greatest abolitionists in the history of mankind and that a lot of the latter slavery in the Muslim world was misunderstood, especially much of that from the Ottoman Empire.
Read it for yourself, but I personally have a hard time taking someone seriously that says rape can actually be punished under Sharia as assault with only two witnesses as opposed to the four necessary to prove the charge of Hudud (fornication/adultery). It diminishes the rule of law in a civil society and still essentially makes women second-class citizens.
When upon returning from a vacation to visit my wife’s family in the Far East a friend of mine asked me what I saw in Hong Kong. I replied, “A shit load of Chinese people”, and assumed the matter was settled.
However, that friend then clarified that he was referring to what I witnessed about government and society from a libertarian perspective. Unfortunately for you, dear reader, that answer is much longer, and not nearly as pithy.
Economics 101
Ask any educated person about the economy of Hong Kong, and one of the things they are likely to bring up is the fabled commitment to laissez-faire capitalism, with a minimal social safety net. Your gallant author first encountered this when exchanging money at the airport. The HK notes came from multiple different banks. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has a legal arrangement with three different banks to issue their own notes, all of which are accepted as legal tender for government purposes. The HKMA also prints its own notes, which help to keep the system balanced. Banks are leery of overprinting in part due to their contract with the HKMA, and in part because if they were to do so, the government-issued currency might begin to drive their own out of circulation.
Both personal and corporate income taxes are exceptionally low, and there is no automatic withholding.
Interestingly, I saw very few police officers. There mostly seemed to be private security everywhere. There were entire days with not a single cop to be found. The ones I did see were mostly on motorcycles, or driving large Mercedes paddy-wagons.
The permitting process for businesses also appears remarkably cavalier, from an American perspective. Across the street from the apartment we stayed in, what was an empty storefront turned into, by the time we left, an open and fully functional retail store. I mentioned this to our host, and asked him about the process he went through when opening his own business. He replied that the entire effort amounts to one afternoon of paperwork, which took him about four hours to complete. Essentially, the government wants to know, 1) who you are, 2) what you’re selling, 3) who your co-owners and investors are, and 4) where to find you in case someone files a claim or complaint of some sort. Safety inspections and permitting of the sort we as Americans are used to is largely handled through the landlord-tenant contractual relationship. Please note that there are a bevy of laws governing worker safety, permissible employment conditions, etc., it’s just that the government seems more interested in investigating breeches of these laws and awarding compensation/assessing penalties after a violation has occurred, and less interested in preemptive inspections and permitting.
Landlords have a great deal of both responsibility and power due to the hands-off nature of local government, and the extreme lack of space. The latter ensures that prices remain high for their room, and the former means a lack of heaving zoning regulation. While I did notice some areas being more industrial than others, by and large there doesn’t appear to be much top-down instruction on what can be built where. Apartment blocks and stores are not only side-by-side everywhere, but are usually found in the same building. Many of the blocks had stores ranging from small general shops and restaurants to full-sized supermarkets taking up their bottom few stories.
Libertarian Problems
More worryingly from a libertarian perspective, is the government’s attempt to mitigate the land shortage with massive housing subsidies. I was told by our host that half of the apartment dwellers in Hong Kong have to get some sort of subsidy from the government to afford their apartments. This seems to be the largest government intervention in the marketplace.
There is a minimum wage law, but it was passed for the first time in 2010, and remains relatively low, at the rough equivalent of $4.19 USD/hr.
Taxis are heavily regulated. The color of the taxi determines which part of the city and region it is allowed to operate in. My trip was in 2012, and so predated widespread use of ride-sharing platforms. I would be interested to see how that has changed the landscape. Despite the odd geographic restrictions, the taxies were all extremely cheap by American standards.
There are increasingly strident pollution controls. This is another item that I asked about specifically, and was informed that up through the 80s, pollution was getting out of hand, and they began to pass laws on emissions and dumping waste into the bay. Our host seemed pleased about it, and told me that the city is a much better place to live now that there is not nearly as much smog and the water isn’t full of trash.
They also have a combination public/private health care system. Individuals largely purchase catastrophic insurance, and use cash for most smaller medical purchases. There are several designated hospitals heavily subsidized by the government who take in and treat the public for a minimal, token payment.
Drugs are still strictly illegal, and cigarettes have half their pack taken up with big health warnings and pictures of lung cancer. On the upside, you can walk down the street drinking beer, and as long as you aren’t drunk, it isn’t an issue. I was flabbergasted to find this out, because I hadn’t seen anyone doing it, and immediately purchased a beer so I could walk around drinking it. People still looked at me askance, as apparently it’s considered somewhat uncouth to drink in outside like that, instead of keeping it in the bar.
All in all, I was greatly concerned to hear that even a government and populace that embrace the minarchist concept could not bring themselves to embrace a free market in medical care or housing, still viewing both as “essential services” that must be provided to people whether they can afford it or not, and that no free market solution was found to the pollution issue.
In Closing…
While there are many fun stories, your intrepid author will leave you with two amusing anecdotes.
First, there are, at my best guess, one hundred billion 7-11s and Circle Ks in Hong Kong. Really, you can’t throw a rock without hitting at least two of them. They seem to not compete with themselves due to population density. However, everyone refers to the Circle K as the “O-K store”. I tried telling a few people that it is actually Circle K, but most don’t know the word “circle”, however they do recognize “OK” in English.
Finally, their beer is awful. It’s nothing but an endless procession of weak light lagers and pilsners. While in the 7-11 at the base of my apartment block, I was scanning the beer cooler when suddenly I saw a type of Guinness that I had never seen before, called Foreign Extra Stout. My face lit up, and when I turned to take the beer to the cashier, I noticed her sniggering. I knew already that this cashier spoke fairly good English, so I asked her why she had laughed at me. She explained that she was just watching my head scanning the rows of beer, waiting for me to find that one, which she knew I would purchase. Apparently the Chinaman has an inveterate hatred of bold flavors and dark beers, and won’t touch the Guinness, but they keep one stack of them for the white people who come in. I told her I was proud to live up to this particular stereotype!
In 2011, dystopian sci-fi television series “Outcasts” introduced us to the titular cast of colonists on the planet Carpathia in mankind’s penultimate bid for a second chance. The third episode treats viewers at home to the threat of a storm on Carpathia, beyond the likes of anything known to Earth, and a set of documents from one of Earth’s most brilliant researchers. Unfortunately, the colonists of Carpathia lack a researcher equally brilliant enough to decipher these documents in time to protect themselves from the storms.
Enter Tipper, a late-teens/early-twenties who arrived on Carpathia as a child. Former prodigy, vast IQ, and no interest whatsoever in being a productive little worker-bee for the colony, let alone bending his considerable brainpan to solving the puzzle of the research documents. His enormous talents led Earth-bound bureaucrats to give him a spot on the original colony ship escaping the imminent demise of Earth and everyone on it. As soon as their ship landed, Tipper apathetically settled down to drink, peddle illicits and DJ for the free radio station.
Not exactly what the bureaucrats sent him to accomplish, but humans, the little bastards, can be so contrary to bureaucratic desires.
That is what security team member Cass Cromwell concludes. Tipper is a lackadaisical ne’er-do-well wasting his genius because he’s an asshole with no finer feeling for the community. Of course. Simple, straightforward, fits Cass’ confirmation bias. It’s so easy. Tipper won’t work for the betterment of all because he is an asshole.
Would that life were truly that tidy.
Society is full of Cass Cromwells. The national conversation is dominated by people – left and right – who are certain they know with pinpoint precision why people are out there, doing things they wouldn’t do and thinkin’ different from them.
It’s because they’re assholes, see.
Illegal immigrants – assholes who want our jobs and defy our laws. Americans also defy our laws, to the tune of three felonies a day, but anyone who defies a law we respect (…at the moment…) is obviously an asshole lacking civic finer feeling.
People who have no problem with immigrants, illegal or otherwise – assholes. Definitely assholes. No doubt about it, they’re shortsighted bastards ready to feed us all to the sword with no thought for jobs or safety.
Folks who do have a problem with immigration are a diverse bunch with a diverse set of objections running the gamut of legal immigrants from this country as opposed to legal immigrants from that country; H1b visa applicants; foreign recipients of taxpayer largesse; and the border-hoppers common across our extensive and porous southern border. These immigration objectors, despite their wide range of issues, have one certain denominator. They are all assholes. Also, literal Nazis. Now that we’ve established the why, we merely need to ascertain the best way to deal with such fucking assholes.
Name the topic; abortion, Obama/Clinton/Trump, gay marriage or the lack thereof, school choice. Whatever you feel and believe is the clear and obvious right thing to do, and anyone who doesn’t see things your way is an asshole.
How incurious of us.
Humans don’t work that way. It’s far too simplistic. Infinite human variation is infinite; corralling everyone who dares to think something one doesn’t like under the easy explanation of “just an asshole” fails to account for an infinite diversity of human experience. It seeks no deeper understanding, asks no questions. You alone have the right of it and anyone who came to a different conclusion is stupid, blind, irrational and motivated by ill intent.
It’s quite a convenient answer. There is nothing left to do at this point except fight for dominance of your own position over all the assholes who hold different ones.
As solutions go, it isn’t one. Thus do we polarize further and further, calcifying our personal stance of utter rightness of being while failing to solve anything. Politics swings first to the left and then to the right, as constituents seek to find the best way to stop those assholes out there being different and standing in the way of their personal flavor of utopia. The national conversation devolves into dominance and power over others, command-and-control, forcing your rightness on those who disagree without a moment’s pause to ask why they disagree.
We have no dearth of certainty, we merely seem to have a paucity of working solutions. Perhaps it’s time we ask why.
The first place our nascent questions might lead us toward is the realization that virtually no one sees themselves as the asshole. Find one instance where someone held their position on abortion, school choice, or Hillary Clinton from pure spite and vinegar, merely to piss opponents off. Let us know if you find such a unicorn.
People arriving at their own conclusions after much research and brain sweat appear to consistently miss, by wide margins, that others have also read about the subject and come to completely different conclusions. Infinite human variety is infinite. While assholes indeed abound, few people hold their positions merely to be a dick about it. They thought things through, no more or less than others, and their conclusions were as sincere. We all see ourselves as the good guy, the hero of our eventual autobiography currently being written in our heads.
We are not each the good guy. This is readily apparent; much of the bad that happens in the world has, at its seedy little core, a fallible human convinced they were doing the right and sensible thing. And there is a great deal of bad going on.
Do we want to stop it? Or do we want to be proven right? Not merely mostly right, but perfectly and absolutely right, with no possibility of being wrong, such that anyone who fails to see our state of unqualified rightness can only do so through ignorance and ill intent.
Find the priority. One will soothe the ego, the other might actually work.
As Manichean worldviews go, crying “you asshole!” works about as well as the rest of them have – not very. With the vastness of human variables comes mankind’s great advantage; our innovation. New thought, new technology, fresh perspectives on old problems have solved issues that plagued man throughout the ages, from whether the Earth was flat to microbiology to how to reach the moon. None of us be perfect, but occasionally some of us luck upon a good idea or two. Flawed ideas, in need of refinement perhaps, but good ideas nonetheless.
Galileo can tell you what it’s like to be the guy with the good idea in the room full of certainty. Louis Pasteur had some uphill work in front of him as well. Consider briefly what your life might be like now if those people had thinner skins and were stopped by the mass certainty that their ideas were bugshit stupid and they personally were assholes.
It seems safe to say we have not solved our problems – immigration and borders, public education, the left-right dichotomy, abortion et cetera. If we had, they would not still be plaguing the life out of us. Solutions for these issues potentially exist, but first we’ll have to put our pride down and listen to all areas of thought on these issues. One of them might be a good idea – it doesn’t need to be yours. Not everything is about our personal sense of rightness and perfection.
It’s possible that the solution which works will be one of command-and-control dominance, except that those “solutions” so rarely are. Let’s concede that it isn’t outside the realm of possibility – infinite human variety is infinite, after all, there might exist one problem which mere proper control and force will solve. It’s possible, just not plausible.
So, let’s start talking. Further, let’s start listening. The good ideas are out there, waiting in the mass of humanity. Real solutions to real problems, and it’s unlikely that My Way Or The Highway is going to be it. Read a history book – hasn’t worked very well so far. The good ideas and the solutions generally look a bit more like Little From Column A, Little From Column B with generous dollops of Whoa Never Thought Of That.
Why did Tipper Malone reach colony utopia, a fresh new planet on which he would live with the full potential to bloom as his talents offered, have future high schools named after his many accomplishments and students pestered to memorize his every weighty thought – and choose to wallow in luxurious self-medicated idleness instead?
Cass Cromwell missed the answer, though it seemed obvious. Tipper stated the reason more than once.
Grainne, Catherine, Sinead and Aoife Malone. His sisters.
Tipper’s genius had been enough to save him, in the eyes of people controlling those life-and-death decisions. His genius had been enough to get the bureaucrats what they wanted, which was valuable people as colonists. It merely hadn’t been enough to get Tipper what he wanted. He wanted his sisters, not such amazing mental titans as he and left behind to die.
If his brilliant mind could not give him what he valued, if it hadn’t been enough to save his sisters, then what good was it? Thus, he rejected his gifts.
Cass Cromwell succeeded in temporarily browbeating Tipper into solving the puzzle of the documents. Cromwell failed miserably at gaining the full measure of Tipper’s talents for the colony. He never bothered to ask why they were being withheld – he didn’t need to ask why, since he was convinced he already knew. Tipper was just an asshole.
In truth, there was assholery to spare in the story, none of which succeeded in unlocking the solutions possible inside one brilliant mind. Everyone knew what they wanted, and when they didn’t get it then it was due to other people being assholes. None of the people full of expectations toward Tipper bothered to ask why they weren’t getting what they wanted. The best-laid plans did not work. They didn’t find the why.
