The Cost of Political "Excellence"

The Cost of Political "Excellence"

In the grand theater of governance, few things are as consistently revealing as the debate over executive compensation. The 2016 report on the remuneration of politically appointed officials in Hong Kong offers a masterclass in the human instinct to justify one’s own necessity through the language of market competitiveness.

The argument is familiar: to attract "top talent," the government must offer a compensation package that, while perhaps not matching the obscene heights of private sector CEOs, at least keeps pace with inflation and maintains a semblance of dignity when compared to their own subordinates. It is a compelling narrative. It frames the bureaucrat not merely as a public servant, but as a high-value asset in an competitive labor market.

Yet, there is a darker, more cynical reality at play. When we suggest that a public servant’s dedication is contingent upon a 12.4% adjustment to match the Consumer Price Index (Section C), we tacitly admit that the "honor" of public service has become a secondary motive, easily eroded by the slow, grinding reality of inflation. History is littered with regimes that collapsed not because of a lack of talent, but because the machinery of the state became so expensive to maintain that it lost touch with the very people it was meant to serve.

The report notes that these officials bear the burden of formulating policies and defending them before a demanding public. True, but the primary constraint in any effective organization is rarely the salary of those at the top—it is the alignment of their incentives with the welfare of the collective. When the primary concern of a review committee is how to "retain talent" by mimicking corporate pay structures, one must ask: are we building a government, or a corporation that sells policy?

The irony is that while the committee fretted over the "erosion of purchasing power" for officials, the public they serve often lives at the mercy of the very economic volatility that necessitates these adjustments. True leadership, as history has shown, is rarely found in those who need a committee to calculate their worth. It is found in those who treat the public trust as an endowment, not a salary package.

The Impossible Dream of a Stagnant Utopia

 

The Impossible Dream of a Stagnant Utopia

The Confucian scholars of the Han Dynasty were the original dreamers of the "stationary state." Confronted with the cold, cynical reality of Sang Hongyang’s managed economy, they retreated into the past, clutching the ghost of the "Well-Field System" (Jingtian system) like a holy relic. Their argument was elegantly simple: if inequality is the byproduct of land ownership, then abolish the market. If you make land a fixed, non-tradable resource, you stop the accumulation of wealth in its tracks. It is the ultimate "reset button" for a society obsessed with order.

It’s a seductive fantasy, isn't it? The belief that if we could just stop the movement of property—if we could ban the sale, restrict the purchase, and force everything into a perpetual state of "renting"—we could lock human nature into a cage of equality. They weren't just discussing real estate; they were attempting to engineer a society where ambition is rendered obsolete by regulation.

But history is a graveyard of systems that tried to outlaw human desire. The scholars’ obsession with "limiting purchases" and "prohibiting sales" is the eternal refrain of the bureaucrat who hates the chaos of the market. They looked at the soaring complexity of the Han economy and saw a threat to their moral balance, so they proposed turning the entire nation into a giant, state-managed rental property.

They weren't wrong about the symptoms—inequality is a destabilizing force—but they were catastrophically wrong about the cure. You cannot solve the problem of greed by simply changing the rules of the ledger. Whether you call it the Jingtian system or modern-day zoning restrictions and housing market interventions, the motive remains the same: the fear of what happens when people are allowed to trade.

We have spent three thousand years trying to design a system that captures the benefits of prosperity without the discomfort of the market. We are still at it. Every time we introduce a new policy to "restrict" or "control" the natural flow of assets, we are just echoing those ancient scholars. We are still trying to build a wall around reality, hoping that if we just make it hard enough for people to trade, we can finally stop the world from moving. Spoiler alert: it never works.

The Minister and the Empty Nest: A Lesson in Unintended Consequences

 

The Minister and the Empty Nest: A Lesson in Unintended Consequences

There is a delicious, almost poetic irony when the architect of a system finds himself crushed by its gears. James Cleverly, a man who once sat in the high halls of power, now finds himself joining the ranks of the "sovereign homeless." His landlord is selling up, fleeing the looming shadow of the Renters’ Rights Act, leaving the shadow housing minister to contemplate the cold reality of the private rental market from the outside looking in.

From an evolutionary perspective, the human animal is driven by two primary instincts: the acquisition of territory and the avoidance of risk. When a government attempts to "protect" the weak by stripping the "strong" (the property owners) of their control, they ignore the biological reality of the provider. A landlord is not a selfless altruist; they are a territorial creature seeking a return on their hunting grounds. If you make the territory too dangerous or the rules of engagement too restrictive, the creature simply abandons the nest.

History is a graveyard of "compassionate" legislation that achieved the exact opposite of its intent. By abolishing the "no-fault" eviction and tightening the noose of regulation, the state has signaled to the market that property ownership is no longer an asset, but a liability. The result? A mass exodus of providers, a plummeting supply of roofs, and a predictable spike in prices for the very people the law was meant to save.

Cleverly’s plight is a microcosm of the arrogance of central planning. Bureaucrats believe they can legislate away the darker corners of human self-interest, but self-interest is the most resilient force in nature. You can pass a law to make a tiger a vegetarian, but don’t be surprised when the tiger simply leaves the forest—leaving you alone with a very hungry, very homeless village.