Re: ping Adam

On 2024-11-21 11:51 AM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:

On 2024-11-20 11:06 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:

On 2024-11-20 3:41 PM, Adam H. Kerman wrote:

Rhino <no_offline_contact@example.com> wrote:

 

I'm 20 minutes into a long-form interview with Javier Millei,
the President of Argentina, and it seems to me that you would
find this very interesting. He's an economist and I know that's a
strong interest of yours. So far, he has talked about the various
economists he's studied to come to his current views, particularly
the Austrian School - Hayek, Von Mises, etc. - and some of their
Hispanic followers. Milton Friedman was also important to him. I'm
just at the point where he is starting to describe the state of the
Argentinian economy when he took office and the steps he took to get
it back on track. According to the introduction of the interviewer,
Lex Fridman, he will also discuss what else needs to be done to make
Argentina the most free country in the world.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NLzc9kobDk [2 hours]

 

He read von Mises and the other Austrian school economists by himself.
Fascinating. Just a little bit of political economy.

 

Thanks

 

He even has a special interest in Judaism which he mentions later in the
video but which I hadn't seen when I wrote the post.

 

He had converted a number of years ago.

 

If he mentioned that in the video, I missed it. But it sounds like you
already know this from some other source.

 I've had extensive discussions about him with a friend. He's not a
classical liberal nor is he a libertarian in the style of Milton
Friedman. He goes well beyond into that anarcho-capitalist philosophy
which opposes government doing anything.
 He's trying to be a practical politician but his reforms are going to
cause short and middle term disruption in the economy and will
definitely increase unemployment and its hard to see enough businesses
starting in the short run to absorb unemployment.
 They've long had laws on the books that make it nearly impossible to
fire people, something he addressed quickly. They have a bloated
patronage-riddle public seotor that employed around half the work force.
It's not like they are qualified to work for themselves in economically
useful activity.
 

Toward the end, he also reveals more of his personal side with his
boundless admiration of certain soccer players and his favourite band.
An interesting guy!

 

His party doesn't have a majority. Any changes he makes can be reversed.

 

Show me any political change that can't be reversed.

 That's not what I'm saying. There's a strong possibility that his
coalition government would fall long before his reforms demontrate
that economic growth is taking place.
 

Fair enough. It wouldn't be the first time an interesting idea was tried but then circumstances forced the experiment to end before "success" could be demonstrated conclusively. (I recall when the NDP government in Ontario implemented photo radar near the end of their only term in government but it was very unpopular so the government which followed scrapped it before there was enough data to show that it had actually made the roads "safer" - for some definition of "safer".) It seems entirely possible that Milei's experiment could meet a similar fate.
Still, the comments under the video from actual Argentinians are mostly very favourable.
--
Rhino