> For the record, I'm not saying that Hong Kongers are wrong for protesting or wanting freedom. I'm just saying they'll fail, and the consequences won't be pretty.
You may be correct, you may not. I wonder if people said the same thing right up to the end of segregation, and other things. But that doesn't matter: might does not make right. Our predictions don't matter, our individual stances do.
> Finally, it is the act itself that matters. When instrumental reason is the sole guide to action, the acts it justifies are robbed of their inherent meanings and thus exist in an ethical vacuum. [..] the moral good of a moral act inheres in the act itself. That is why an act can itself ennoble or corrupt the person who performs it.
-- Joseph Weizenbaum
Everybody dies at some point, anyway. All wealth goes down the drain. What these people are changing, and what cannot be taken from them, is themselves. If the results will "not be pretty", there will be no end to songs about them in our lifetime and maybe that of our children and grandchildren -- the kind of songs that would excactly not get written about people with cushy finance jobs, not even once. This isn't meant as snark against you, it's a compliment for them.