Another day, and up pops another travel industry scandal following a predictable pattern, with aggrieved mainland visitors complaining about shabby and unethical treatment at the hands of Hong Kong tour operators.
As the scandals mount, the body regulating this trade, the Travel Industry Council, scuttles around only managing to confirm its impotence and desperate desire to protect the interests of the trade above those of its customers.
The council is a perfect example of the Hong Kong government's almost aggressive intent to preserve the interests of service providers at the expense of customers, often known as the general public.
Government officials even go so far as to proudly proclaim an ideological motive behind this neglect, claiming that they are keen to preserve self-regulation in the interests of the free market. Even those of us who like free markets understand that no market is truly free, and the freedom to operate a business cannot be accompanied by carte blanche to rip off the public.
The reality in Hong Kong is that markets are far from free; government regulation tends towards the creation of monopolistic practices which, in every case, serve to undermine the public interest. The most flagrant of the government-controlled markets, free in name but almost ludicrously un-free in the way it operates, is the property market.
As all land in Hong Kong is owned by the state, the supply of land for development is entirely in the hands of the government. It exercises this power by holding land auctions and releasing prime sites for sale in a way that ensures only the major developers can buy these big plots. This, in the main, is designed to ensure that the property oligopoly is sustained.