I don't really care about Malaysia, LOL, but this is an interesting discussion.
The key question is whether the rules of HK or MY favour holders of capital, or not. This simply means that if citizenX has more capital than citizenY, then the rules IMPLY that citizenX's ability to earn income is greater than citizenY's. THAT is what capitalism refers to - it's fundamentally about the regulatory system surrounding property rights.
Consider as an alternative a game where citizenX and citizenY, despite having different capital bases (say X has a million currency units in the bank, and Y has ten thousand currency units), were equal in their available opportunities for earning future income. This might entail, for example:
- some sort of limitation on X's ability to charge interest on lending out capital, or
- some sort of limitation on X's ability to buy up a lot goods with inelastic demand curves (read: daily necessities), simply to sell them at a profit
- some sort of tax on any profit X makes, from her capital base (as opposed to say, from selling her employment time)
- some sort of welfare benefit for Y which equalises any gains X made on X's capital base (perhaps, funded by taxes paid by X on X's capital gains)
HELLO, all of these are exactly the type of regulations that govern each present day national economy! The question isn't 'can we make money here' - it's not a binary yes/no proposition, as the substrate is pretty complicated.
That being said, I don't know a lot about HK's fiscal and monetary policy. (Oops, buat bising aje.) But I do think Malaysia's is messy... and it's because it's messy that 'we can make shit tons of money, if we try'. I don't think the messiness is ideal, and I don't have a problem with people making money on available resources - I think however, Malaysia has a long way to go in ensuring that whatever the rules are, they are optimised to maximise the total wealth in the system, and also the minimum standards of living for all citizens, regardless of their health, age, race, and laziness.
