#453 – Javier Milei: President of Argentina – Freedom, Economics, and Corruption
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The following is a conversation with Javier Malle, the president of Argentina. He is a libertarian, a narco capitalist, and economist who campaigned with a chainsaw that symbolized his promise to slash the corrupt bureaucracy of the state. He stepped into the presidency 1 year ago, with the country on the brink of hyperinflation, deepened debt, and suffering from mass unemployment and poverty. He took this crisis head on, transforming one of Latin America's largest economies through pure free market principles. In just a few months in office, he already achieved Argentina's first fiscal surplu
Well, actually, I came to understand the ideas of freedom. As an economic growth specialist back in the years of 2013 to 2014, I could see that per capita GDP statistics over the last 2000 years of the Christian era essentially looked like a hockey stick, indicating that per capita GDP remained almost constant until around 1800, after which it accelerated sharply. In the same context of that phenomenal increase in productivity and per capita GDP, the population had multiplied sevenfold over the preceding 200 years. So, basically, in economics, that means you get increasing returns, and the pre
to read that ended up being truly fascinating. So from that, what is now today? And maybe you can talk about the evolution. Is your philosophy, economics philosophy? You've described yourself as an anarcho capitalist, market anarchists, libertarian. That's the ideal. And then maybe in practice in reality, you've said that you're more of a monarchist. So lay it all out. What's your economics philosophy today? Strictly speaking,
I am an anarcho capitalist. I despise the state government. I despise violence. Let us suppose we take the definition of liberalism. I usually use the definition of liberalism given by Alberto Venegas Lin Chico, which is very much in line with the definition of John Locke, which essentially matches the definition by Alberto Venegas Linch junior, who said that liberalism is the unrestricted respect for the life project of others based on the principle of nonaggression and in defense of the right to life, liberty, and property. So I frame all of the discussions within those terms, And the fact i
So you became president 11 months ago. Can you again describe some of the actions you took? For example, you cut half the number of government ministries, layoffs, removed price controls. It'll be interesting to lay out the first steps and what's next.
If you allow me, I will first give you a description of the situation we received. And based on that, I will tell you each of the things we did when, we first took office. Basically, what we found was that in the 1st week of December, inflation was rising at a rate of 1% per day, which means 3,000 700% annually. In the first half of December, it had accelerated to 7,500% annually. When you look at wholesale inflation in December of last year, it was 54%, which if annualized would equate to an inflation rate of 17,000 percent per year. And in addition, Argentina, for the previous 10 years had n
you can explain to me the metrics of poverty and unemployment. As you said, unemployment went down, real unemployment went down, real poverty went down. But even that aside, what have been the most painful impacts of these radical reforms? And how many of them are required in the short term to have a big positive impact in the long term? Let's
take it step by step. Alright? That is we in fact, we started to do things right. Therefore, we did not create poverty. The poverty was an inherited poverty. The point is th
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