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236

Argentina elects 'shock therapy' libertarian Javier Milei as president (www.reuters.com)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 103 points 11 months ago (10 children)

Javier Milei is:

Against abortion (except when mother's life is in danger)
Against sex-ed and wants to eliminate it (says it deforms people's minds)
Denies climate change (says it's an invention of socialism)
Anti-vax (But got vaxxed in Nov 2021 because otherwise he would not be able to work in other countries)
Wants to fuse the departments of Social Development, Health and Education into a single department of Human Capital.
In favor of Austrian school of economics - Wants to remove the central bank
Adopt the US dollar
Homosexuality is a personal choice and compares it to zoophilia
In favor of drug legalization and to opening up immigration as long as it doesn't cost the State.
In favor of people paying for sex
In favor of gun ownership without governmental limitations
Wants to freeze relationships with China, Russia, Brazil because they're communists.
Wants to align with the US, particularly Trump's party.
Against the Pope because he represents evil on Earth, and because it promotes communism which goes against the holy scriptures.
In favor of animal cloning
In favor of organ selling

Good luck Argentina

[–] [email protected] 43 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Sounds like he made his own conservatism, with hookers and blow?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

No, that sounds like traditional conservatism. Conservatism has no redeeming qualities, but they can buy good PR easily.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 11 months ago

Me: wow most of these not surprising but yeah they’re fucked.

Against the pope because communism is against scriptures: fucking lol what.

[–] HobbitFoot 18 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The anti-abortion one is the one I don't get. After all, why shouldn't a landlord be able to kick out a non-paying tenant?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 11 months ago (2 children)

If you cut a libertarian a fascist bleeds

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 11 months ago

That's. That's quite a platform.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago

Adopt the US dollar
In favor of drug legalization and to opening up immigration as long as it doesn’t cost the State.
In favor of people paying for sex
In favor of animal cloning

Good here? The rest is an interesting mix of outrageous and/or bizarre stuff.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Excuse me does he think zoophilia is a personal choice?

And yeah good luck Argentina. I’m sure you’ll have positive results from this

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I don't think they mean that as in "is up to the person but overall okay" but more so as in "is something that isn't determined by anything other than conscious decision making"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

His actual quote (translated to the best of my ability) is:

Homosexuality is fine, who am I to tell someone who can they have sex with? If they have consent I don't care if they want to have sex with an elephant. Good luck proving they had consent, but if they do I can't object.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Actually no, he does mean it in a sense such as: "the government shouldn't interfere in people's life projects. If you want to be with a man or a woman that's your right. Heck even if you wanted to be with an elefant that's fine with me as long as you have the elefant's consent"

Here's the actual source: https://youtube.com/shorts/FZp6zbQ-goE

Even the video caption misrepresents his words imho. You can turn on translated captions.

As I said in another post, Milei is in the bottom right quadrant of the political compass. It's a big mistake to directly compare him to neo conservatism.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (4 children)

What is the rationale behind switching to the US dollar? I sort of get why US libertarians are opposed to fiat currency (they don't want the Fed to have the power to interfere in markets), but Milei just wants to switch to a fiat currency that someone else controls? What makes him think that would end well for Argentina?

[–] [email protected] 20 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Argentina's runaway inflation is caused by the central bank printing money (to finance the government's out of control spending). The rationale for dollarization is to remove the ability for the government to do this. It's not an inherently crazy idea, since (i) there are smaller Latin American countries that use the dollar, and (ii) the dollar is already used de facto for many purposes in Argentina because of how debased the peso has been. But there are lots of practical problems; notably, Argentina simply does not own enough dollars in the entire country to keep the economy running normally if they switch (whatever "normally" means for an economy like theirs).

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Argentina’s runaway inflation is caused by the central bank printing money (to finance the government’s out of control spending)

Macroeconomists don't really agree that that issuing money in and of itself causes inflation, but it certainly can lead to it in some cases. Instead, if you issue money you need to spend it on something that increases the productivity of your economy, otherwise it can lead to waste and inflation down the line. You can actually use money issuing to fight inflation if you spend the money you issued on addressing the problem at hand - for example, the supply side problems we faced following the pandemic that caused the inflation we're at the tail end of right now.

By adopting the US dollar, Argentina would effectively give up monetary autonomy to the US central bank (so, just another central bank outside of their control). In fact, the US central bank could decide to issue money in a positive way as mentioned above, without any of that having a similarly positive impact on the countries that depend on the US dollar.

Money & Macro (PhD Joeri Schasfoort) has made multiple videos on the topic, but here are two (the first one short, the second one a deep dive) if you want to hear this side of the story told in greater depth:

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

You might be confusing debt issuance with money issuance.

Governments often issue debt to fund various kinds of spending. And despite concerns about debt levels, they can have a pretty fuzzy relationship with inflation; Japan has public debt of over 200% of GDP, and an underinflation problem.

But issuing money for the purposes of government spending -- the monetization of fiscal policy -- is almost always a bad idea, outside of wartime. The practice is behind every single episode of hyperinflation in economic history. And governments know this. Fiscal monetization is only resorted to by countries that have exhausted their ability to borrow; if cutting spending isn't politically feasible, the remaining resort is monetization. That's basically how you get to Argentina's situation.

As for giving up monetary autonomy, it is indeed a serious drawback to dollarization. But this is a second order problem compared to the kinds of problems facing Argentina, like findng a guy bleeding out after a road accident, and worrying about his obesity.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago

It's because every time the argentinian government needs to pay something, and don't have the cash to do that, they print some billions and pay it. By literally printing monopoly money in huge quantity, they're devaluing their currency every time they print a batch.

The rationale is that if they're using the us dollar, the inflation will stop because it's controlled externally

But by using the us dollar, every time the argentinian government needs to pay something and doesn't have the cash to do that, need to borrow some heavy debt (at insane interest rate given their history where they didn't repay previous debts)

And would need an huge quantity of them in a short time to exchange and dispose the pesos from people and banks

If it was as easy as "just don't print monopoly money" they would have solved it.

Maybe it would be easier to just stop printing money than officially switching to a different currency

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Politicians here don't hesitate on printing money to pay for things. Always have, and probably always will. He wants to take that possibility from their hands.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago

like zimbawee i think foir make a "stability" in the curency. (still worth nothing)

[+] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (4 children)

that's not really politics, it's about his personal council of cloned dogs. Argentinians do not realize how fucked they are going to get.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Nothing inherently. Nature even does it sometimes, although it's rare with larger complex organisms.

The problems with cloning arise when it happens in bulk. Instead of a single creature with a genetic abnormality or vulnerability to disease, you now have a whole population with those weaknesses. Look up monocultures or monocropping to read some horror stories. True cloning of e.g. livestock could take those issues to the extreme.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Milei is a whack job that makes Trump and Bolsonaro look like good, sane leaders.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Wow that's quite the spread of ideas!

Some of those I'm on board for.

Others make me wonder what stone he slimed out from under.

Doesn't matter. It's all words until he's I power and does / doesn't do anything.

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[–] [email protected] 60 points 11 months ago

I see Argentina decided they weren't fucked enough.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 11 months ago

Desperate people make poor but desperate choices. 150% inflation? Goddamn, people here are freaking out about 5%...

There was a thread a couple days ago about how do you see the world ending. It's stuff like this, situation will het worse and worse so people will turn to crazier and crazier solutions.

We're all in for an interesting next few decades.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Can someone explain me this? In Argentina, the majority of the workers are employed by government (crazy rate of employment by a government, I don't think they actually need all those people), but then the majority of the voters elect someone that plans to cut spending a lot, meaning most of those workers that voted him will be laid off.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago

Make Argentina Great Again.

Sad to see people fall for the same bullshit over and over.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Can we theorize a situation where an average Argentinian voter consciously chooses a short term crisis with the prospect of normalization over a lifetime stagnation and decay? Argentina's economy was shit for a long time, and maybe people's intent is to wreck things for a change?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

People forget accelerationists exist... I doubt Trump would have won without them.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I predict that Argentinians are going to like this even less in the long run than the stuff the Peronists have gotten up to

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (4 children)

I can get the annoyance with how the economy has been... but jeez, what is the real solution here? I can't see much of anything positive coming out of this.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Elect normal-ass people instead of batcrap loonies like milei or the peronists.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What options are in Argentina currently? I have almost zero knowledge of the political system there.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Juan Schiaretti was the most normal dude of the runner ups, but besides him being like 70, nobody knew who he even was in the Political Spectrum, just this elections have made him visible enough that he got a good amount of votes and good reputation

The others? Peronists (All the Blue colored Parties)

A Lizardman known as "Larreta" who's an Authoritarian and one of the most incompetent sons of bitches that has ever governed Buenos Aires and the other of his same Party "Patricia Bullrich" A LITERAL TERRORIST on the 70s and previously Security Minister, didnt do a great job, both of them in the Yellow Party

Lastly there was Milei... so yeah

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Let's all agree that, even Schiaretti being the most presidential candidate, none except for Milei has a political platform, or a plan. Larreta literally said "I'll comment on that once I'm president". And Bullrich made a poor joke of herself in the debates.

So yeah... Milei was the unlikely best candidate.

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I assume that, just like with trump, they won't admit that they were bamboozled and will just double down with the crazy.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago

clown world

[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago

Ugh. The way that generally centre-right economic policy wonks are celebrating Milei's election is grotesque.

I get that dollarization would probably be good for Argentina.

Even as a leftist, I'm open to the possibility that an anti-Peronist economic policy could save the country - I doubt they could survive another Peronist.

But Milei is the worst kind of MAGA wingnut. He's a talk-radio shock jock. It's like if they elected Tucker Carlson or Don Cherry into the casa rosada.

His one possibly-good policy idea doesn't overshadow that.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Look I understand, I really do.

When I was a kid, I was told to beware of clothes irons because they are hot.

But one day, curiosity got the better of me, and I touched the damn thing to see if it was hot. Hurt like hell, still have the scar to this day. But I don't touch hot surfaces anymore.

Go on Argentina, touch the iron :)

[–] [email protected] 10 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

It'll be a miracle if in the next year alone he doesn't completely obliterate what's left of Argentina's economy.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

He's a self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 months ago

Great, a walking oxymoron.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Time to bankrupt a country to pay off venture capital debts!

Worked out great for the last guy to acquiesce to American interests...

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

They will end up eating pebbles and screws.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Official results showed Milei with near 56% versus 44% for his rival, Peronist Economy Minister Sergio Massa, who conceded in a speech.

His plans include shutting the central bank, ditching the peso, and slashing spending, potentially painful reforms that resonated with voters angry at the economic malaise.

"Milei is the new thing, he's a bit of an unknown and it is a little scary, but it's time to turn over a new page," said 31-year-old restaurant worker Cristian as he voted on Sunday.

He will have to deal with the empty coffers of the government and central bank, a creaking $44 billion debt program with the International Monetary Fund, inflation nearing 150% and a dizzying array of capital controls.

"The election marks a profound rupture in the system of political representation in Argentina," said Julio Burdman, director of the consultancy Observatorio Electoral, ahead of the vote.

Supporters of Massa, 51, an experienced political wheeler-dealer, had sought to appeal to voter fears about Milei's volatile character and "chainsaw" plan to cut back the size of the state.

The original article contains 629 words, the summary contains 176 words. Saved 72%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Maybe this time it will be different. (Inset some weird emoji that denotes is won’t with a mix of sadness, regret, and ennui)

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