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It is the same path as Britain under Thatcher. Decades of socialist ruin followed by a financial bailout and a libertarian taking over to fix things up. At firs
by qcnguy 1y ago
It is the same path as Britain under Thatcher. Decades of socialist ruin followed by a financial bailout and a libertarian taking over to fix things up. At first there is pain. Inflation goes up, unemployment skyrockets. The economy is bent out of shape by the socialists and as it slowly moves back to its natural state there's lots of disruption along the way. But then the recovery continues as the bad decision making under socialism gets steadily unwound.
If Milei's story arc is anything like Thatcher's it ends with him being stabbed in the back by center-left "wets", who become overly responsive to the most emotional voters. The country doesn't revert to Peronism but does enter another period of slow long term decline as the singular personality who pulled it back from the brink exits the stage. The natural Argentinian socialist worldview reasserts itself as the lessons are never learned. We will have to see if Milei is able to build up a protege and natural successor. Trump seems to be doing it successfully with JD Vance, but so far Milei seems to have nobody waiting in the wings - just like Thatcher.
- soco 1y ago"at first there is pain" indeed and it stayed at that for the most, while a few chaps got richer.
- qcnguy 1y agoThe country got a lot richer after Thatcher. Some jobs went away permanently, because they were not trying to be globally competitive, but that wasn't Thatcher's fault. She just stopped them being fake jobs.
- AnimalMuppet 1y agoI am not convinced that Vance is Trump's "natural successor". First, I'm not sure we have really seen what Vance thinks (on any topic). He takes care to not openly contradict Trump's position, but here and there he hints that his own position may be different. Second, Vance doesn't have anything like Trump's charisma. He's much more wooden. He would have to hold the Trump coalition together through policy alone, and I'm not sure that can be done. (All right, he can also use nostalgia. I'm not sure that will be enough.)
- linhns 1y agoHe has that Peter Thiel tag, which is nuclear.
- actionfromafar 1y agoHe has the will to power.
- tim333 1y agoThat skips over some bits with Thatcher. She started well taking on the unions but overdid raising interest rates, wrecking much British industry and went kind of nutty in the end trying to push through the poll tax which 90% of the population hated and led to her being kicked out. I don't follow the details with Milei but I get the impression of something similar where he's starting well undoing dumb stuff but I'm not sure about trying to prop up the currency rather than just letting it float and having normal economics like most democratic counties. I think a lot of good governance comes down to undo stupid stuff and try not to do new stupid stuff.