Argentina elects libertarian president Javier Milei - Update: Netherlands

While I'm more inclined to agree with him on some things, he uses a lot of flowery generalizations to simplify and appeal. Both socialist and capitalist societies have been captured by borderless multinational corporations, and it's more a facade that any one state can withstand it through ideological principles (libertarianism, America First, China's efforts to make a socialist cocoon). We're a global world no matter how much isolationists believe otherwise.

I'd argue that it's not a fear of capitalism being evil, rather it's the fear of the winner-takes-all aspect at the higher levels of capitalism. Small and midsized businesses should be free of bureaucratic red tape and be privy to fair lending/credit. At some point however, size of growth distorts scale, and regional/national companies with more resources exploit scale to tilt the balance. Instead of supporting and consolidating too big to fail mega banks, we should have smaller regional sized lenders tailored to their bases and are more attuned to their economic health and conditions.

The issue is that Americans, Chinese, and even Euros feel the scales are already heavily tilted towards regulatory capture, but I've yet to see a nationstate willingly cede its authority because it admits the powers implied are corruptable. Another issue is that voters generally hate change through sacrifice, so reforms mostly follow outrage rather than on an enlightened whim. Politicians who promise more entitlements and more tax breaks survive longer than reform minded idealists. Milei will receive applause for being the newly elected winner, but they'll run him through the ringer if he doesn't play along or produce results his way.

Argentina's condition is much different than America or Europe's. They'll probably have better results from liberalization. Look at former Warsaw Pact, now NATO member states and how their economies were transformed with capitalist reforms. Bangladesh has also risen in wealth and prosperity as a result of microlending and removing socialist regulation. It's can still teeter back since they're heavily reliant on textile exports, but the point is that there are energetic individuals willing and able to become successful if the government isn't standing in their way. China's liberalization over the last 3 decades gave results in spite of the CCPs corruption and heavy handedness to steal the credit and work of others.

The lure of libertarian ideology is to frame it against the failings of the current system. But governments, the people and the areas they live in all have life cycles of their own. It's easier to ask more of younger populations to work their asses off for a better tomorrow. South Koreans, Chinese, and Taiwanese answered that call, but now their latest generation of workers doubt and rebel against the sustainably and viability of that grind. Shiny new buildings in China were once the envy of the world but are now met with skepticism over how much longer till it crumbles apart. Boomers used to be free lovin hippy culture warriors, now they're self proclaimed Bootstrappers who knew what the value of grit and hard work meant... America probably needs another trillion to reinvest into infrastructure like air and sea ports and maybe it can come up with a modern and profitable mass transit system for cities in our lifetimes.

Even our exploding debt is based on a budget where 2/3 of it is through entitlements. Is that a reason to become libertarian...to cut loose those obligations and reframe it as entitlements to a Privileged and Unproductive protected class?

Looking at Argentina's demographics, they don't seem to have our issues with "end stage capitalism" where the elderly and detoriating infrastructure are starting to take more than what they're putting back. This is happening in Europe, US, and East Asia where even if social security is not a burden, national debt hovers above and below their GDPs.

I'm not smart enough to guess whether libertarian principles unlock answers to those problems. Historically, age and demographic cycles are just as important as ideological shifts in governance.

I am certain that holding the mindset of free libertarian ideals is better than collectivism if only because the mindset of abundance trumps the mindset of scarcity in almost all situations. You have to have a lot of faith that your dictator is the reincarnation of Lee Kuan Yew for the mindset of scarcity to be remotely successful, though Singapore's case for survival through unity and compliance is more easily agreed upon than for larger countries.

 

Singapore is definitely not a libertarian state. It is one of the most heavily regulated states and internally operates much more like an actual
Socialist state with the state playing a major
role in the economy.

 

Yeah, the wording is confusing. I didn't mean Singapore is a libertarian haven, rather the example China points toward as the perfect planned economy with scarcity or survival as its rationale.

 

Both Singaporean leaders and the PRC have talked about Singapore as being guided by “Confucian values”.

The social contract as understood by Western Enlightenment philosophy is that governments are by the people and that governments function best with an engaged populace that through democratic means rules by consensus. Confucian values would say that the social contract is about a passive population that accepts the government’s rule but in return the government delivers prosperity. The key difference there is that in the western view it’s a bottom up process where the Confucian view it’s a top down process.

Singapore’s founders like Lee Kuan Yew were western educated and understood that Singapore had to have a modern face with a democratic structure and a liberal economy that could be easily integrated into the global economy for its long term success. In much of their rhetoric and practice though they governed like Confucians with essentially one party rule, political repression and the state playing a strong role in the economy. That they were guided by Confucian ethics kept them from doing things like building a cult of personality around Lee Kuan Yew or looting the country for their own enrichment.

The PRC under Deng up until Xi tried to follow a similar modern of a Confucian oligarchy that held political power but increased prosperity.