How do I refute the libertarian argument that Hongkong, having the most free market in the world...

how is this a bad thing?

Kek, only for the bourgies. Rest live like shit.

This. As with every other city, everything that Hong Kong has comes from somewhere else. It is stupid to regard cities as isolated economies. Resources come from elsewhere, and often so does the labor inside the city.

Anyway, how "free" is Hong Kong's economy? Is capitalist freedom a tax bracket? Is it a complete lack of protection for workers? What is it that makes Hong Kong's market free?

they don't have the freest market in the world, they have state controlled industries
(finance was originally state owned and still has large state ownership for example)

Remind him people sleep in cages

No such thing as a free lunch. The only way a small area can grow and become rich is from taking resources and labor away from another areas at the cost of those other areas. I think any libertarian who isn't retarded knows this, they just think they'll be the one on the rich side.

Why don't they move to the main land where there's some god damn room to live?

Becuase they don't have the money to do so

It doesn't really answer the question, which is about economic growth and the rise of quality of life. The real answer comes from exploring the second reply to this thread, not the quasi-orientalists first one.

But doesn't a square metre in Hong Kong buy you an acre in buttfuck province on the mainland?

Yeah the migrant workers in HK all own the land they sleep on.

Hong Kong is still State Capitalism. It's very far from anything lolberts recommend, save for monetarist.

Hmmm……

Hong Kong doesn't have a free market. All of the supposed free market "miracles" of the 20th century were deliberately engineered by American and other western powers in order to provide a bulwark against communism.

Hong Kong is also reliant on the power of the UK and the Chinese to be prosperous. If it had to invest it's taxes in things like a massive military and enforcing it own trade deals the country would look a lot like other micro nations in the pacific.

Their economy relies heavily on state intervention.

This. The only reasons why places like Singapore or HK have grown so wealthy is because all they sucked all the developmental potential of a large geographic regions into one city. You basically can't recreate that kind of economic growth in an area larger than a single strategically-positioned city like HK.

I heard that 53% of Hong Kong lives in public housing actually

The "libertarian argument that Hongkong, having the most free market in the world, is a prime example for economic growth and rise of life quality" is entirely ahistorical.

In Nations and Nationalism(1990) Social Historian Eric Hobsbawm touches on Hong Kong and explains how it is such a unique national economy because it historically hasn't been much of national economy in the conventional sense. Rather, HK was a British colonial trading outpost for several decades. This meant that it became a hub for east Asian commerce, and more importantly, it's associated financial industry. The trade networks established by the British empire made HK an ideal place to do business in Finance and banking, for all east Asian trading ventures. Hobsbawm explains that this is how tremendous amounts of wealth has been historically "injected" into Hong Kong.

After the handover in 1997, Hong Kong remained one of the financial capitals of Asia, which has injected tremendous amounts of wealth into the city. Hong Kong has little to no agricultural or manufacturing industry, if you need a job in Hong Kong, you basically have to choose between banking and the service industry. What lolbertarians don't understand is that THIS A LEGACY OF THE BRITISH COLONIAL TRADE NETWORK WHICH WAS ESTABLISHED MUCH EARLIER THAN THE NEOLIBERAL REVOLUTION OF THE 70s.

Anyone who considers an expansive colonial trade network a success of the free market has no idea what they're talking about.

This simply isn't true. Firstly to "suck up wealth" from a region in that way you need to outcompete competitors in terms of your infrastructure and logistical capabilities, which in turn requires a high tier engineering workforce capable of constructing highly efficient ports and other transportation systems. Secondly, Singapore is has a ton of capital intensive manufacturing and research industries, relative to its size.

This is true however. Especially in regards to Singapore.

Singapore and other East Asian economies are true "mixed economies" in that the state plays a proactive role in both macro and micro policy in a systemstic way.

This is also true.

The "free market" has never existed, and will never exist. It's a fantasy of the lolbert mind.

Compete with who? Macao? And when did this competition occur? Hong Kong has been a city for millennia. Hong Kong is not the product of some competition between boom towns looking to attract a railroad. If was taken by the British during the Opium Wars and used it as a hub for their network of Pacific colonies. That is how its transportation infrastructure got built. There was no competition.

The fuck are you talking about? Singapore has outcompeted HK as a shipping hub in recent years. Look at the throughput numbers. Cities absolutely do compete for throughput.