Thank You Very Much and Long Live Freedom, Damn It!

When dove hunting in Argentina, the lodge assigns you a local bird boy who knows the terrain and the local ranchers… and will generally keep you out of trouble. They also reload your shotgun with the speed of a ninja and, if you’re thirsty, offer a cold Quilmes beer. 

When I was this past weekend, I took Elvio up on his offer and cracked one open. As the conversation drifted from the brutal heat to the birds to politics, I asked what he thought of his new president.  

“Es loco,” he said with a shrug. “Completamente loco.”

Apart from the seemingly inexhaustible supply of birds, this is an interesting time to be in Argentina as the country embraces the recently elected Javier Milei, a self-styled anarcho-capitalist, to the presidency. 

Milei is a hard man to define. With his wild hair and lambchop sideburns, he looks like the lovechild of Austin Powers and Wolverine. 

He routinely revved chainsaws at his campaign rallies to make it unambiguously clear what he intended to do to the state once elected. 

And before getting into politics, he was best known as a tantric sex guru. I’m not sure I know what exactly a tantric sex guru is, but it sounds a lot more fun than any job I’ve ever had. 

So, I can’t say Elvio is wrong. Milei is definitely crazy. 

But you know what’s a lot crazier? 

And If You Think Milei is Crazy…

Presidents Trump and Biden racking up a combined $14 trillion in debt between them over the past seven years and the Federal Reserve effectively bankrolling it with manipulated interest rates. 

That’s crazy.

Even crazier is that, after being phenomenally screwed over by both of these clowns, we’re set to make them the presumptive nominees of their respective parties. 

It’s crazy that we now spend over a trillion dollars a year paying interest on our existing debts… debts that we’re adding to by the day. 

And it’s crazy that not a single person running for president at any point put forth a viable plan to balance the budget. 

Electing a chainsaw-wielding tantric sex guru to the presidency would seem downright sane by comparison.

It’s been a week since Milei delivered his now famous speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. If you haven’t read it yet, you need to, in its entirety. But here are a few gems, translated from the original Spanish.

The Western world is in danger, and it is in danger because those who are supposed to have to defend the values of the West are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism, and thereby to poverty…

I know to many it may sound ridiculous to suggest that the West has turned to socialism, but it’s only ridiculous if you only limit yourself to the traditional economic definition of socialism, which says that it’s an economic system where the state owns the means of production.

This definition, in my view, should be updated in the light of current circumstances. Today, states don’t need to directly control the means of production to control every aspect of the lives of individuals. With tools such as printing money, debt, subsidies, controlling the interest rate, price controls and regulations to correct the so-called market failures, they can control the lives and fates of millions of individuals. 

Milei ought to know. 

Argentina was a wealthy country a century ago. Yet now it seems to fall further and further behind the rest of the world with every passing year. 

As Milei continues,

It’s a reality that we Argentines know very well. We have lived through this, we have been through this, because as I said earlier, ever since we decided to abandon the model of freedom that had made us rich, we have been caught up in a downward spiral as part of which we are poorer and poorer, day by day. So, this is something we have lived through and we are here to warn you about what can happen if the countries in the Western world that became rich through the model of freedom stay on this path of servitude. 

The case of Argentina is an empirical demonstration that no matter how rich you may be or how much you may have in terms of natural resources or how skilled your population may be, or educated, or how many bars of gold you may have in the central bank, if measures are adopted that hinder the free functioning of markets, free competition, free price systems, if you hinder trade, if you attack private property, the only possible fate is poverty.

Well said, Presidente. 

A Rallying Cry

Milei saved the best for last, paying homage to the world’s entrepreneurs and offering a rallying cry for risk-takers everywhere:

I would like to leave a message for all businesspeople here and for those who are not here in person but are following from around the world. Do not be intimidated, either by the political caste or by parasites who live off the state. Do not surrender to a political class that only wants to stay in power and retain its privileges. 

You are social benefactors. You’re heroes. You’re the creators of the most extraordinary period of prosperity we’ve ever seen. Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral. If you make money, it’s because you offer a better product at a better price, thereby contributing to general well-being. 

Do not surrender to the advance of the state. The state is not the solution. The state is the problem itself. You are the true protagonists of this story, and rest assured that as from today, Argentina is your staunch unconditional ally. Thank you very much and long live freedom, damn it!

Long live freedom, damn it. 

It actually sounds better in the original Spanish: “Viva la libertad, carajo!”

But in any language, the sentiment is the same. 

The state is not the solution. It’s the problem. 

Along the same lines, the problems facing our country are not democrat problems or republican problems. They’re government problems. 

And the problems that aren’t specifically related to the government, such as the aging of our workforce, aren’t things the government can solve. The best thing it can do is simply get out of the way and let the private sector sort it out the best it can. 

Since election, Milei has halved the number of government ministries from 18 to nine and slashed the number of political appointees in the government by more than a third. 

Stop for a minute to consider how difficult that is to do. 

Every government department or agency has a vested interest in continuing to exist. There are employees, vendors, contracts… an entire ecosystem with friends and sponsors. 

Milei is slashing through it all. 

Unfortunately, I don’t see a lot of that happening closer to home. We’re not going to get meaningful reform from Biden or Trump… and if we get the third candidate my friend Louis Navellier expects by this summer, we’ll have a whole new set of problems. Watch this special presentation for the inside scoop.

In the meantime, we can live vicariously through the gauchos in Argentina. 

To life, liberty, and the pursuit of wealth… and viva la libertad, carajo!