The article in the NY times reporting statements by Leung Chun-ying, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong, have been discussed in several Diaries over the past few days. The Diaries did not discuss, however, some additional facts reported by the Times and other newspapers that highlight the significance of Leung's comments.
Prior to Leung's outburst, the Chinese government met with the wealthy Hong Kong oligarchy to urge them to refrain from comments about Leung’s attempts to deal with the ongoing protests. Apparently the oligarchs are concerned that Leung was too autocratic - not to the students, but to them. In other words, Leung refused to do what the oligarchs wanted - an immediate crackdown on the protests. They also were worried that Leung was someone who exhibited “a streak of economic populism who might some day raise taxes to pay for greater social spending” — This in a Communist country no less.
Nevertheless, the oligarchs, perhaps in response to the government's pressure, have been strangely quiet during the protests, limiting their comments to a muted wish for the protestors to go home.
Leung for his part, as we all know, recently stated that he opposed fully open elections because the poor would predominate and skew “politics and policy towards poor people.” I am sure this pleased the oligarchs very much. Leung's statement may or may not been an attempt to mollify the oligarchs, but it probably did have the effect of prompting Li Ka-shing, Asia’s richest man, who makes most of his money off of the people of Hong Kong, to state in a letter, “I sincerely urge everyone not let today’s passion become tomorrow’s regret. I earnestly urge everyone to return home immediately to your families.”
It should be pointed out that Hong Kong has the highest discrepancy in income and wealth between the very rich and everyone else in all of Asia.
We should also remember that in democratic Athens, the oligarchs were fully prepared to betray democracy and their country to their enemies in order to install an autocratic government run by them. Oligarchs have no country other than the one that best protects their wealth and political power. What is occurring in Hong Kong and here in America seems to be simply a repeat of the Athenian experience, the abandonment of any commitment by the wealthy to the country or polity that enabled them to amass their wealth in the first place unless they can be assured power ultimately is exercised by and for them.
You can wave the flag all you want, but if you move your wealth to another country simply to increase your profits you’re no patriot.
An astute observer writing over 40 years ago wrote:
“…(A) cause of today's instability is that we now have a society in America, in Europe and in much of the world which is totally dominated by the two elements of sovereignty that are not included in the state structure: control of credit and banking and the corporation. These are free of political controls and social responsibility, and they have largely monopolized power in Western Civilization and in American society. They are ruthlessly going forward to eliminate land, labor, entrepreneurial-managerial skills, and everything else the economists once told us were the chief elements of production. The only element of production they are concerned with is the one they can control: capital.”
Carroll Quigley, Public Authority and the State in the Western Tradition: A Thousand Years of Growth, A.D. 976 - 1976”
_____________________
Todays Quote:
“Economics is a philosophy for supplying parasites with a operating system that provides the most efficient means of devouring its host.”
Note: Parasites usually do not kill their hosts because they have a natural intelligence that makes them too clever to do so. Humanity on the other hand has little natural intelligence left. Evolution has replaced it with symbolic intelligence that enabled it to master its environment by using and thinking with symbols. Humanity’s species intelligence is generally dictated by who has power over its symbols. Those with the most power over humanity’s symbols usually care more about maintaining that power than about the health of their species host.
Trenz Pruca