Hong Kong is perhaps the best modern case study of relatively free capitalism in action. In just a quarter of a century, a poor country with few natural resources raised its standard of living above that of the UK, its colonial parent.

There's an old story that once, in a meeting, Milton Friedman was chastising Sir John Cowperthwaite, Hong Kong's Financial Secretary, for not collecting the economic statistics that Milton and other economists wanted. Cowperthwaite replied that the omission was intentional; he knew that if he collected the data, the bureaucrats back in the UK would see the numbers and expect him to do something about them.