The recent proposal by Selangor Menteri Besar Dr Khir Toyo to let the rich buy low-cost houses and then rent them out at affordable prices to the less fortunate boggles my mind.

How could someone, supposedly educated to be a dentist, could think that such a scheme could work? It is a scheme that smacks our faces with the stinging power of capitalism and profit. It has no respect for the forces of natural law.

It then occurred to me that this is not the first time a senior government leader has said such things.

The attempt to regulate CD/VCD prices, for example, is so senseless that no one dares to point out the obvious lest it makes the minister look foolish. Recently, I learned about how our government subsidised rice farmers but made a turn around and controlled prices for the benefit of Bernas, a supposedly privatised company.

Our government is filled with people who do not fundamentally understand economics and the forces of free market and capitalism. They think they do, but they don't.

Many of them have grown rich under the NEP which they think has not hurt anyone and hence they think that market forces, free markets and open competition is something that can be tamed. They have taken the rhetorical anti-western words of Mahathir literally and actually believe them.

It's no wonder, our system has been exploited by the elite and the well-connected. Such unsound fundamentals for the highest echelons of power are just made for ripe pickings.

All this is the result of lack of meritocracy in our system that is preoccupied with racial politics. I shudder to think how many of these people would fail Economics 101.