“The ‘private sector’ of the economy is, in fact, the voluntary sector…the ‘public sector’ is, in fact, the coercive sector.”
~ Henry Hazlitt, from Economics in One Lesson (1946)
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May 31, 2024 – Following Bonner’s critique of “capitalism” in the United States over the past two days, we check in with Joel Bowman on Javier Milei’s progress in the “greatest political experiment of our time” down under in the Pampas.
Absorbed in sequence, the three essays give us a good snapshot in time during the 2024 election year. Enjoy. ~~ Addison
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We, The Market
Joel Bowman, Notes From the End of the World
A dear friend sends an important update from Argentina…
“It’s a dark, bleak, libertarian, dystopian hellhole.”
Happily for us (as well as for all our amigos back home in Buenos Aires…) our mate has a healthy sense of humor. Inflation on the Pampas is coming down. Things are looking up. And El Presidente, Javier Milei, is chasing broken collectivist dreams with woke tear shooters.
Bottoms up!
Foreign investment is getting excited about Argentina, too. This week, Sr. Milei visited California, where in addition to giving an economics lecture at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, he met with Silicon Valley’s head honchos to inform them of “the enormous possibilities offered by a libertarian Argentina.”
Where the Money Is
The CEO’s of tech behemoths Google… Meta… OpenAI… Apple… overseeing trillion-, even multi-trillion dollar companies…meeting with a chainsaw-wielding anarcho-capitalist from the End of the World.
Interesting times we live in, no?
And here’s billionaire hedge fund giant, Stanley Druckenmiller, with an insight into the “greedy capitalist” mindset…
“The only free market leader in the world right now, bizarrely, is in Argentina of all places, Javier Milei. This is going to be an interesting experiment. This is a highly, highly intelligent leader who is taught in the school of Austrian Economics.”
An “interesting experiment,” huh?
Perhaps Mr. Druckenmiller has been perusing our pithy pages. As readers of these Notes well know, we’ve been following along with what we’ve called “The Greatest Political Experiment of Our Time.”
The story (so far) is that our sometimes home of Argentina is undergoing what future historians may come to call a “Renacimiento” (rebirth), throwing off the yoke of collectivism in favor of individualism, choosing cooperation over coercion, free markets over the dead weight of government.
Emerging from the Dark Ages of Peronism – a militant form of collectivist populism which hung over the country like the blade of a rusty guillotine for ~75 years – the long-suffering gente of Argentina recently did something no other modern democracy has managed to do… yet. That is to say, they voted to shrink the size of their putrefied administrative state.
So far, so good.
Already half the federal ministries have been given the motosierra treatment, including made-up nonsense like the “Ministry of Women, Gender and Diversity,” as well as state media (read: propaganda) outlets. Predictably, there’s been some temper tantrums and toddler meltdowns from those Milei refers to openly as “la casta,” (Argentina’s entrenched political cast), but among voters, the president enjoys overwhelming support.
According to Morning Consult Pro, among world leaders, President Milei ranks second in approval ratings, only behind India’s Narendra Modi. (Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. sits in 9th.)
“Mere Politics”
Of course, the experiment is about more than “mere” politics (from the Greek “politiká” or “affairs of the cities.”) This flirtation with full-blown libertarian thinking has the potential to reshape the very way we see the role of Man vs. State.
One of the key insights of Austrian School economics (of which Milei is both a keen student and lecturing professor), is that “the economy” cannot be reduced to a simple machine, to be tweaked and adjusted by a committee of eggheads who “know better” the hopes and dreams of billions of voluntary, freedom seeking individuals. Such was the false premise of collectivism throughout the entire 20th century: that “they, the leaders” knew better than “we, the people.”
No more.
It is “we, the free market” who knows best what’s in our own individual hearts and our minds. And it is “we, the free market” who will determine the brightest path for our very best future.
Speaking in Spain a couple of weeks ago, Milei condemned socialism as “an intellectual fraud and a horror in human terms.” He also promised to make Argentina “the country with the most economic freedom in the world.”
Old timers say capital flows where it’s treated best. Our guess is, people will soon follow. ~~ Joel Bowman
So it goes,
Addison Wiggin,
The Wiggin Sessions
P.S. You can continue to follow “the greatest political experiment of our time” with astute, on-site observations from Joel, here. Have a good weekend.
(How did we get here? An alternative view of the financial, economic, and political history of the United States from Demise of the Dollar through Financial Reckoning Day and on to Empire of Debt— all three books are available in their third post-pandemic editions.)
(Or… simply pre-order Empire of Debt: We Came, We Saw, We Borrowed, now available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble or if you prefer one of these sites:Bookshop.org; Books-A-Million; or Target.)
Please send your comments, reactions, opprobrium, vitriol and praise to: addison@greyswanfraternity.com
