Sir John James Cowperthwaite will not be remembered by many. Most of the people who live now in Hong Kong, which he governed as Financial Secretary in the 1960's, will likely not recall him. But he deserves to have memorials built to him and posthumous international decorations awarded to him for a signal achievement for mankind.
He architected the greatest economic miracle in modern history. His wise, humane and benevolent policy of "positive non-interventionism" - low taxation, low regulation, low spending and free trade - saw Hong Kong rise in barely a generation from being a dirt poor, resource free, refugee-packed backwater to the 10th largest economy with the 4th largest stock market in the World. And he left a legacy that should be an instructive lodestar for us today.
His fundamental observation - that no centralized decision made by bureaucrats can ever be as wise, good or positive as that of a businessman (and that none of the businessman's mistakes can ever be counteracted by the state as well as he can). But, obviously, he must have felt the same about ordinary Hong Kongers (who he lived and worked with for 15 years before), too. After all, they were the sharp consumers whose everyday decisions enriched that businessman and of whom many were also aspiring entrepreneurs. In other words, a St. Andrews and Cambridge educated Scotsman bureaucrat of 50 realized that he did not understand the best interests of a bunch of mostly destitute, uneducated Asiatics better than they did. This was a miracle of tolerance and wisdom by the standards of any day. It is a moral and a fable that I wish more of our governors around the World would learn and apply.
My favourite aphorism of his that he offered as part of his advice for poor countries I paraphrase here: Abolish your Office of National Statistics. It only gives government an excuse for harmful intervention in the economy. Cowperthwaite, who my Wife calls the "Dr. Spock" of economic theory, thus offers us an economic blueprint and a warning for us at the same time. In that sense, The Hippocratic Oath should be repurposed and rephrased for would be governors,"Do no Harm that your People can do for themselves."
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