The meaning of life. The nature of man. God. MPF.
Yes, such is the hullabaloo over Hong Kong’s new mandatory provident fund scheme that even the philosophers are scratching their beards over it. FinanceAsia had the, um, pleasure of attending a discussion hosted by the Hong Kong Philosophy Cafe (Kowloon Branch) titled, “Does compulsory insurance violate human rights?”
Moderator Stephen Palmquist, an associate professor in religion and philosophy at Hong Kong Baptist University, kicked the chat off with an explanation for why “MPF” was left out of the title. “We didn’t want the press to show up.” Oops, well, never mind, no-one asked who we were and, as we had left our cameraman back at our office on Arbuthnot Road, no-one minded.
Then a fellow egghead, Simon, explained very clearly why, based on the philosophy of Ayn Rand’s Objectivity as written in “The Virtues of Selfishness”, MPF was a clear and horrible violation of human rights. He did this first by deconstructing the epistemological foundations and then concretizing his arguments and ... hm, FinanceAsia’s not so handy with the big words. Apparently, however, the MPFA is a creature of Stalinists. Did anyone mention this to managing director Rafael Hui?
Well, of course not everyone agreed. In fact, most of the fellow philosophers turned out to be a bit lefty. The majority of folk seemed prepared to let the government intervene in their wallet to prevent lots of impoverished grannies keeling over dead on Nathan Road.
One note of warning for Rafael and the rest of the gang: of the 14 highly intelligent, well-educated participants, only one of them had a clue how MPF actually works. And that’s only because FinanceAsia’s spent the past several months cramming our poor brain full of this stuff. It seems the education campaign has a way to go.
As for the philosophy club, FinanceAsia must confess we rather enjoyed ourselves. Nothing like a bit of intellectual cut and thrust over beer and cheap noodles. We may even go back for more next year. Interested parties can contact Palmquist at [email protected].
