When you get out of an airplane in Cuba, the first thing you’ll see is the slogan ‘SOCIALISMO O MUERTE’ plastered in big red letters greeting the arrivals. Socialism or death.
If you live in a first world capitalist nation and you’ve ever been to Cuba or any deeply Socialist country in the world, I think you’d agree with me the appropriate slogan would rather be ‘Socialismo y muerte’ – Socialism and death. China for the last century, Vietnam, the Soviet Union, the GDR, North Korea and a barrage of African, South-American and other countries, just to mention a few, subscribe to greater or lesser extent to the ideology which gifts its followers with widespread poverty, atrocious mass housing, shortage of basic goods, weak economical structures, worthless currencies, inability to apply international leverage, political and religious persecutions, and the lowest standards of education, healthcare and quality of life.
Isn’t it amazing how after witnessing the suffering of hundreds of millions of people over recent history and the dire collapse of virtually all pure socialist regimes, people again and again flock back to this ideology cyclically, masked under different and often exciting new labels?
There is no single precedent that any such system has ever worked and brought prosperity to a populous. Nordic countries are often used as the paragon of socialism – that it can work. But are they really socialist? If you spend any time looking at the Nordic European nations, you will find that they are in fact centrist rather than socialist. While Nordic countries, particularly Sweden, did embrace socialist policies between the ’70s and the ’90s, the ‘good times’ did not arise until the past 30 years, when both conservative and social democratic-led governments heavily gravitated toward the center, focusing on strengthening social responsibility by increasing control over welfare systems, reducing generosity, and lowering taxes.
Nordic nations currently promote free trade and free enterprise, with several of them ranking high in the Index of Economic Freedom. The shift toward such centrist policies is reflected in electoral politics, where social democratic parties are winning elections but inevitably forming alliances with center parties. The success of Nordic countries is attributed to their advanced free market system, and their recent focus on centrist solutions rather than socialist ones.
Sure, capitalism, or even its milder centrist-influenced sisters proclaiming moderate need for government intervention, are not perfect – they are often accused of self-enriching and breeding corruption. The problem is, socialist regimes true to their definition are a hundred-fold as corrupt, nepotic and oligarchic as these regimes. I’d rather live in a free country with a strong economy, education and health system where I can get ahead on the fruits of my own labor and have some corrupt officials, than not having all these things and still having corrupt officials enriching themselves.
Widespread change occurs when the tipping point is hit – when people fear the repercussions of doing something (even just voting differently) less than the pain of doing nothing – the status quo. This very thing has just happened in Argentina, where a tipping point has occurred and manifested in the Austrian economist Javier Milei being voted as the first Libertarian president in history. Ever.
Though most left-minded people recoil at the sight of someone outspoken and rebellious like Milei in power, I believe it’s of utmost importance to take a step back, detach, ignore personal impulses and feelings, and to look beyond the personal character of a political candidate to see what he/she can bring to the table. Just as Donald Trump, Milei may seem ‘out of whack’ in his personality, but make no mistake – Milei is as serious as cancer, and his agenda makes Trump’s look like a few drunken scribbles on a napkin lying in the corner of a cheap watering hole.
Among Milei’s most radical points are the dissolution of the central bank, and using the US Dollar after ditching the Peso. I may be biased due to my inclination towards Austrian economics, but I believe Milei has laser-locked onto the causes of his countries runaway inflation like a fighter jet – worthless monetary policy run by worthless officials commanded by socialist agenda for decades (if not longer).
Milei is not some relic South American commander dancing to the tunes of neoclassical “Chicago Boy” economists as your old man might recall. He’s not the overambitious and morally bankrupt leader of a military coup. He’s an accomplished academic, not scared to voice his fiery opinion. Most of his writing is not accessible to the English-speaking world, but his recently published book chapter throws some light on his ideas:
“[…] whenever situations that do not match the mathematical structure arise, they are considered ‘market failures’, and that is where the government appears to correct those failures. However, to successfully solve this problem, it is assumed that the government knows the utility function of all individuals (preferences) for the past, the present, the future, the time preference rate and knows the state of the current technology and all future enhancements, along with their respective amortization rates. In short, to solve the problem in question, the government should be able to master a significant amount of information that, by definition, individuals themselves ignore or are not able to handle, which exposes that the idea of the welfare state acting on the market to correct failures is a contradiction.”
You can be sure that every central banker in any country of the world, along with any run-of-the-mill political puppets trying to appease the political left, will be trying to undermine this man. He will be watched, criticized and demonized. But again, as with Donald Trump, you don’t have to worry about losing your reputation if you have none to lose in the first place.
It’s by no means certain that Milei can win over the powers that be, even in his own country – he might even fail in his undertakings before he has begun. But should he be successful, his intended rug-pull of the socialist and neoclassical ideas in monetary policy and government interventionism is likely to be a catalyst for radical change in the world.
