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I submitted a transcript from Javier Milei's address at the 54th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, which I think explains a bit about what is happenin

by diggan 3y ago

I submitted a transcript from Javier Milei's address at the 54th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, which I think explains a bit about what is happening, and what is about to happen, from the eyes of the newly elected president who has pretty strong and "out of the ordinary" opinions and ideas. It got some upvotes, but sadly no discussions at all. Highly relevant when discussing Argentina at the moment though, but keep in mind this is just one extreme perspective, one side of the coin so to say: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39436291 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39436291 (https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/javiermileiworldeconomicforum54.htm https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/javiermileiworldec...)

robertlagrant 3y ago
I don't think it's that extreme of a perspective. I'm surprised that the perspective he's speaking against, which when implemented reliably causes citizen impoverishment and death should be spoken about more in those terms, I think.
- alchemist1e9 3y ago
  Exactly! We are driving our future off a cliff by allowing collectivism to return over libertarianism. For example his perspective would be very consistent with the perspectives of the founding fathers of the United States. The Founding Fathers would have widely agreed with the speech’s support for free-market capitalism and its critique of collectivism, socialism, and excessive state intervention. Advocating principles that promote economic freedom and prosperity would resonate with them as a reflection of their own efforts to create a government that promotes individual liberty and economic opportunity. celebration of the entrepreneur as a hero of prosperity and its warning against state overreach would likely find broad support among the Founding Fathers. They were, after all, establishing a new nation built on principles of liberty, property rights, and opposition to tyranny. The speech’s call for economic freedom and limited government intervention mirrors the Founding Fathers’ debates on the proper role and size of government. Many of the Founding Fathers, like Alexander Hamilton, would likely support the speech’s endorsement of free-market capitalism. The emphasis on economic freedom and the role of free enterprise in lifting people out of poverty would resonate with his and similar Founders’ views on economic development. Yet somehow this is generally considered the majority opinion today of his speech: > has pretty strong and "out of the ordinary" opinions and ideas
  - slibhb 3y ago
    That whole debate wouldn't have made sense to the founding fathers. Yes they were liberals, but "capitalism" wasn't coined until the 19th century. Milei is quite extreme when he claims that markets can't fail. He's trying to move Argentina in the right direction. I would have voted for him. But that's an extreme claim and is rejected by most economists.
    - alchemist1e9 3y ago
      I respectfully disagree in that perhaps some vocabulary would need altering to use words they were more familiar with, but free markets and free enterprise, along with property rights and low taxation was exactly their founding perspective. Regarding “most economists” it would depend on how broad you allow the claim of being an economist is a valid one. We have literal socialist and marxists claiming to be economists. That’s as absurd as creationists claiming to be evolutionarily biologists. Those are perspectives that are empirically proven to be rubbish yet due to human instinctual biases persist for long periods of time. Eventually collectivism, socialism, and marxism should be banished to the gutters of history, the only question is how much more pain and suffering will it take before human civilization decides to include proper social and economic science as part of core education curriculum, like evolution is taught in most places today.
      - slibhb 3y ago
        You're ranting about marxists...but the question is whether markets can fail. Milei says no. But there are plenty of examples of markets failing so, if we take that idea seriously, it reduces to something like "free markets have never been tried". What does that remind you of?
        alchemist1e9 3y ago
        Please provide the examples of market failures and I suspect on closer examination you will discover State failure, not market failures.
- notahacker 3y ago
  Perhaps, if you have never been to the West - the object of Milei's criticism - it is possible to believe that it is a world where people are impoverished and dying through evil collectivists providing welfare states. For everyone else, that's a perspective as extreme as his chainsaw stunts. Milei's bark is likely to prove more extreme than his bite, of course. He's already pointedly not abolishing the central bank and quietly mending relations with China.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    > where people are impoverished and dying through evil collectivists providing welfare states Your perspective is too non-collectivism skewed. The West is a mish-mash, but it's the bastion of economic liberalism and capitalism. Those are so effective that they can pay for all sorts of social policies without affecting the productivity too much of the people making the money. You should be thinking about the millions starved and killed in China or Russia or now Argentina when you think of the problems of collectivism. Thinking of somewhere like Sweden as a collectivist paradise is wrong - there are plenty of billionaires there. It's easy to pay for "free" stuff when there's plenty to go round, and the plenty is generally not provided by a collectivist state. There are plenty of people who think that eating the rich would pay for everything. They think billionaires actually have yearly billions in cash to pay for social entitlements, rather than one-off ownership of valuable companies. That's the worry that's being discussed.
    - notahacker 3y ago
      No, my perspective is based on actually reading the actual words of his actual speech which includes lines like "the main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism". He explicitly isn't saying anything about the Holodomor or the Great Leap Forward, and he is criticising the leaders of the United States, the EU, the UK and Sweden for being too "collectivist" (and suggesting that neoclassical economics is insufficiently supportive of capitalism because it concedes market distribution might not always be perfect!) The world doesn't lack defences of capitalism or criticisms of the USSR and Latin American socialism, nuanced and otherwise. But the perspective of equating the policy stance of the Biden or Macron or Sunak administration on welfare and regulation with Stalinism or Maoism or even Chavismo is the definition of extremism, and not even high-quality, evidence-based extremism.
larodi 3y ago
Interestingly Cowen and Tabarrok follow this topic closely on Marginal Revolution. also some interesting insights in the comments section there, which is mostly economics-oriented. https://marginalrevolution.com/?s=Argentina https://marginalrevolution.com/?s=Argentina (advise: skip all other random talk about AI, LLMs and ML stuff, you may easily get outraged)
kragen 3y ago
thanks, this is great
gausswho 3y ago
This speech has no legs to stand on. His key premise conflates the industrial revolution with a special definition of capitalism. Which for his ideology has perfect price discovery and a world where no large corporations collude with other. His main course is your usual slab of blaming socialism, sprinkled with side blame at feminists and environmentalists. I don't see anything worth reading here. It is deceptive with intent and fundamentally unhinged.
- diggan 3y ago
  I don't necessarily agree or disagree with Milei, I think my understand of the space and the country is too low to be able to do so. But I disagree with "I don't see anything worth reading here", even if it's unhinged and you fundamentally disagree with their point of view. He is the democratically elected president of a country in despair, and trying to understand what will happen to the country requires understanding the motivations behind the actions, which are laid bare in his speech, no matter how factual his points are.
  - gausswho 3y ago
    I half agree. It is helpful up to a point to know what demogogues might be hatching. But I don't agree that his words describe the actual sources of Argentine despair, even among those who voted for him.
WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> I think explains a bit about what is happening, and what is about to happen There is a lot of distance between promising economic changes and getting a positive outcome. His path seems to include a lot of reducing income to the government, privatization of government services and shuttering government branches that promote sciences, etc. I think he wants to recreate Alabama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Javier_Milei#Social_views https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Javier_...
- ImJamal 3y ago
  I'm sure a lot of Argentinians would love to live in a place as stable and prosperous as Alabama.
  - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
    I'd agree that Alabama can't thwart all of the prosperity it gains from being one of the weakest components of the largest economy in history. Without that massive, continuous boost, it seems difficult to imagine AL rising to even the worst assumptions of Argentina.
    - ImJamal 3y ago
      Compare the inflation rates between Alabama and Argentina. Alabama is significantly better. Compare the GDP per capita. Oh that is right, Alabama is better. Is there any spot where Argentina is more stable or prosperous than Alabama?
      - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
        Sure. Because even as the ~weakest part of the US, it's still part of the US and gets to ride that tide. Fully severed and deprived of any US privilege, it's leadership could quickly face any number of newsworthy options like mass die offs due to minimal health care and low vaccination rates, being overthrown by a Latin / South American interest or dying in a bloody coup because they couldn't muster enough resources to complete their 10000 Sweltering Gulags plan fast enough.

by diggan 3y ago

robertlagrant 3y ago

I don't think it's that extreme of a perspective. I'm surprised that the perspective he's speaking against, which when implemented reliably causes citizen impoverishment and death should be spoken about more in those terms, I think.

alchemist1e9 3y ago
Exactly! We are driving our future off a cliff by allowing collectivism to return over libertarianism. For example his perspective would be very consistent with the perspectives of the founding fathers of the United States. The Founding Fathers would have widely agreed with the speech’s support for free-market capitalism and its critique of collectivism, socialism, and excessive state intervention. Advocating principles that promote economic freedom and prosperity would resonate with them as a reflection of their own efforts to create a government that promotes individual liberty and economic opportunity. celebration of the entrepreneur as a hero of prosperity and its warning against state overreach would likely find broad support among the Founding Fathers. They were, after all, establishing a new nation built on principles of liberty, property rights, and opposition to tyranny. The speech’s call for economic freedom and limited government intervention mirrors the Founding Fathers’ debates on the proper role and size of government. Many of the Founding Fathers, like Alexander Hamilton, would likely support the speech’s endorsement of free-market capitalism. The emphasis on economic freedom and the role of free enterprise in lifting people out of poverty would resonate with his and similar Founders’ views on economic development. Yet somehow this is generally considered the majority opinion today of his speech: > has pretty strong and "out of the ordinary" opinions and ideas
- slibhb 3y ago
  That whole debate wouldn't have made sense to the founding fathers. Yes they were liberals, but "capitalism" wasn't coined until the 19th century. Milei is quite extreme when he claims that markets can't fail. He's trying to move Argentina in the right direction. I would have voted for him. But that's an extreme claim and is rejected by most economists.
  - alchemist1e9 3y ago
    I respectfully disagree in that perhaps some vocabulary would need altering to use words they were more familiar with, but free markets and free enterprise, along with property rights and low taxation was exactly their founding perspective. Regarding “most economists” it would depend on how broad you allow the claim of being an economist is a valid one. We have literal socialist and marxists claiming to be economists. That’s as absurd as creationists claiming to be evolutionarily biologists. Those are perspectives that are empirically proven to be rubbish yet due to human instinctual biases persist for long periods of time. Eventually collectivism, socialism, and marxism should be banished to the gutters of history, the only question is how much more pain and suffering will it take before human civilization decides to include proper social and economic science as part of core education curriculum, like evolution is taught in most places today.
    - slibhb 3y ago
      You're ranting about marxists...but the question is whether markets can fail. Milei says no. But there are plenty of examples of markets failing so, if we take that idea seriously, it reduces to something like "free markets have never been tried". What does that remind you of?
      - alchemist1e9 3y ago
        Please provide the examples of market failures and I suspect on closer examination you will discover State failure, not market failures.
notahacker 3y ago
Perhaps, if you have never been to the West - the object of Milei's criticism - it is possible to believe that it is a world where people are impoverished and dying through evil collectivists providing welfare states. For everyone else, that's a perspective as extreme as his chainsaw stunts. Milei's bark is likely to prove more extreme than his bite, of course. He's already pointedly not abolishing the central bank and quietly mending relations with China.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > where people are impoverished and dying through evil collectivists providing welfare states Your perspective is too non-collectivism skewed. The West is a mish-mash, but it's the bastion of economic liberalism and capitalism. Those are so effective that they can pay for all sorts of social policies without affecting the productivity too much of the people making the money. You should be thinking about the millions starved and killed in China or Russia or now Argentina when you think of the problems of collectivism. Thinking of somewhere like Sweden as a collectivist paradise is wrong - there are plenty of billionaires there. It's easy to pay for "free" stuff when there's plenty to go round, and the plenty is generally not provided by a collectivist state. There are plenty of people who think that eating the rich would pay for everything. They think billionaires actually have yearly billions in cash to pay for social entitlements, rather than one-off ownership of valuable companies. That's the worry that's being discussed.
  - notahacker 3y ago
    No, my perspective is based on actually reading the actual words of his actual speech which includes lines like "the main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism". He explicitly isn't saying anything about the Holodomor or the Great Leap Forward, and he is criticising the leaders of the United States, the EU, the UK and Sweden for being too "collectivist" (and suggesting that neoclassical economics is insufficiently supportive of capitalism because it concedes market distribution might not always be perfect!) The world doesn't lack defences of capitalism or criticisms of the USSR and Latin American socialism, nuanced and otherwise. But the perspective of equating the policy stance of the Biden or Macron or Sunak administration on welfare and regulation with Stalinism or Maoism or even Chavismo is the definition of extremism, and not even high-quality, evidence-based extremism.

larodi 3y ago

Interestingly Cowen and Tabarrok follow this topic closely on Marginal Revolution. also some interesting insights in the comments section there, which is mostly economics-oriented. https://marginalrevolution.com/?s=Argentina https://marginalrevolution.com/?s=Argentina (advise: skip all other random talk about AI, LLMs and ML stuff, you may easily get outraged)

kragen 3y ago

thanks, this is great

gausswho 3y ago

This speech has no legs to stand on. His key premise conflates the industrial revolution with a special definition of capitalism. Which for his ideology has perfect price discovery and a world where no large corporations collude with other. His main course is your usual slab of blaming socialism, sprinkled with side blame at feminists and environmentalists. I don't see anything worth reading here. It is deceptive with intent and fundamentally unhinged.

diggan 3y ago
I don't necessarily agree or disagree with Milei, I think my understand of the space and the country is too low to be able to do so. But I disagree with "I don't see anything worth reading here", even if it's unhinged and you fundamentally disagree with their point of view. He is the democratically elected president of a country in despair, and trying to understand what will happen to the country requires understanding the motivations behind the actions, which are laid bare in his speech, no matter how factual his points are.
- gausswho 3y ago
  I half agree. It is helpful up to a point to know what demogogues might be hatching. But I don't agree that his words describe the actual sources of Argentine despair, even among those who voted for him.

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago

> I think explains a bit about what is happening, and what is about to happen There is a lot of distance between promising economic changes and getting a positive outcome. His path seems to include a lot of reducing income to the government, privatization of government services and shuttering government branches that promote sciences, etc. I think he wants to recreate Alabama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Javier_Milei#Social_views https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Javier_...

ImJamal 3y ago
I'm sure a lot of Argentinians would love to live in a place as stable and prosperous as Alabama.
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  I'd agree that Alabama can't thwart all of the prosperity it gains from being one of the weakest components of the largest economy in history. Without that massive, continuous boost, it seems difficult to imagine AL rising to even the worst assumptions of Argentina.
  - ImJamal 3y ago
    Compare the inflation rates between Alabama and Argentina. Alabama is significantly better. Compare the GDP per capita. Oh that is right, Alabama is better. Is there any spot where Argentina is more stable or prosperous than Alabama?
    - WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
      Sure. Because even as the ~weakest part of the US, it's still part of the US and gets to ride that tide. Fully severed and deprived of any US privilege, it's leadership could quickly face any number of newsworthy options like mass die offs due to minimal health care and low vaccination rates, being overthrown by a Latin / South American interest or dying in a bloody coup because they couldn't muster enough resources to complete their 10000 Sweltering Gulags plan fast enough.