Capitalist Solutions

Promoting capitalism as the only moral and practical social system for man!

Curing Mad Green Disease

By Simon Patkin

Businessmen can only win the war of ideas if they stop acting pragmatically and instead embrace the morality of capitalism

Some have warned of a conflict going on in Hong Kong that has the chance to rip the territory apart politically, economically and socially. Whilst people are taking to the streets, this is really a battle of ideas that has been brewing awhile. The trigger for the current stand off was the article 23 debates of two years ago, which brought many of the middle classes out to protest. Their demands were not support for mob rule through democracy but rather accountable government and free speech. The liberal left has since hijacked this movement to promote unrestricted democracy and the rights of water, trees and fish over human life. Unleashed they have already harmed our free market, including the humbling of the Hunghom developers and the cancellation of the REIT issue.

The Hunghom developers were forced to their knees because they ceded the moral ground to their antagonists. Indeed, many businessmen today have caught mad green disease. They blindly accept sacrifice to trees or the mob as good in theory, but reject it in the real world because it is seen as unworkable. They follow a philosophy of pragmatism, which is essentially the principle of not being principled. For them, this means trying to make money while pandering to the whims of the public -- no matter how irrational. But this is an arbitrary, unprincipled standard, because once a business starts to pander to the irrational, they put themselves down a slippery slope with no idea when to stop. Gradually they cede more and more and end up using their opponents’ ideas to guide their decisions. This is what happened to the Hunghom developers.

Objectively, the correct morality is one of principled, rational self-interest and businessmen must not cede this morality to anyone. The proper standard of moral value is not a tree, the state or the mob but rather individual human life, with each person having the right and responsibility to sustain their own life -- if they want to live. They have no right to the involuntary support of others. In addition, since our tool of survival is the use of reason, each individual must be free to use their own mind to sustain their own life.

One derivative moral principle is then that we must use our minds to reshape our environment so we can survive in it. If we leave the land and trees alone, we can’t build houses and places to work. If we leave fish and animals alone, we restrict our food supply, limit our clothing choices and leave the vulnerable open to attack from wild beasts.

Further, just as self-sacrifice is the ethical base of communism, fascism, socialism and environmentalism, the ethical basis for capitalism is rational self-interest. Capitalism is based on the ethical foundation that man must be free to use his mind to express his thoughts and to produce based on his own thinking. In this way, capitalism alone allows man to choose the values that he thinks will help sustain his life, to rationally create these goods or services and to keep the rewards from creating those values -- this is all the Hunghom developers wanted to do.

It is this system of morality that the state must protect by enshrining the right to life, liberty, property, free speech and the pursuit of happiness, without compromise and without balance. There is no place for mob rule or green theory here -- just limited accountable government. For companies this morality includes protecting the rights of their shareholders above trees and animals to maximize their profits, because these profits are meant to be rewards for capital risked.

Had the Hunghom developers accepted these ethics, they would have kept their moral right to re-develop intact. Had business systematically supported and promoted rational self-interest instead of donating to green groups then the redevelopment of Hunghom and the REIT issue might never have been issues. Rationality on all sides, not catering to the mob is the long-term answer to any threat to social, political or economic stability.

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