Two groups had a rough week in Hong Kong and neither of them are bankers. Employers' groups are warning of mass sackings if the minimum allowable wage for domestic helpers goes up again, the same argument you hear every single year around this time. Meanwhile the government's promised crackdown on illegal ride-hail drivers is still just a promise, while the roughly 18,000 people who actually hold a taxi licence watch Uber cars roll past them outside every MTR station. One group gets told their raise will cost jobs. The other gets told enforcement is coming, eventually, again.

Here's the thing about both fights: the people doing the complaining are never the ones who'd actually eat the cost. A helper's wage floor moving from, say, HK$4,990 to HK$5,100 a month is real money to a family budgeting tight, but it is not what is squeezing anyone's finances citywide. And taxi owners holding those medallions, some worth over a million dollars each, are not hurting because Uber exists. They're hurting because the government spent a decade protecting the asset value of the licence plate instead of the guy actually driving twelve hours a day for it. Two different arguments, same trick: point down at the smallest number in the room and call it the problem.