It’s all very scary, this freedom thing.
Reporters for The Guardian characterize Javier Milei, the libertarian-leaning winner of Argentina’s recent presidential election, as “far-right” and “volatile” but the establishment socialist he defeated, finance minister Sergio Massa, as merely “centre-left.”
On either side of the Atlantic, any leftism this side of wholesale wealth-equalizing incineration of earth is always soberly centrist in the eyes of pro-socialist journalist-propagandists, no matter how much radical destruction of economy and lives it may wreak. But any even somewhat consistent rejection of socialism and embrace of freedom, markets, and individual responsibility is put down as “far-right” or “hard-right.”
“Victory for TV celebrity turned politician catapults South America’s second-largest economy into an unpredictable future” is the blurb heading The Guardian’s doom-pronouncing article. A gray devastated landscape is presumably much better, so long as predictable.
The establishment candidate, Massa, had “pulled out all the stops,” according to Liberty magazine’s Robert Miller.
As economy minister, Massa handed out the equivalent of $100 to all pensioners, and then eliminated income tax for 99% of all workers. As if that weren’t enough, days before the election government trucks delivered refrigerators, building materials, and mattresses to voters in poor neighborhoods. Posters for Milei and Bullrich were removed from slum districts; one message at a train station warned that under Milei or Bullrich fares would rise from $.16 to $1. Reports of threats from thugs intimidating voters and businesses about how to vote were numerous.
You can’t quite call getting rid of the income tax for many workers (at least until Massa had made it to the presidency, had he) a form of bribery or intimidation. Is being allowed to keep more of your own stuff a bribe? In fact, it seems like a spastic—even volatile—if insincere lurch in the direction the Argentine electorate was going, toward more freedom. But the rest of it sure sounds like bribery and intimidation.
We’ll see what happens now. As we noted in an earlier post, Milei has been critical of Argentina’s willingness to trade with China. He says: “People are not free in China, they can’t do what they want, and when they do it, they get killed. Would you trade with an assassin?” He has promised to eliminate the Argentine government’s ties to China. But his position is not without ambiguity.
The Chinese government, for its part, has congratulated Milei and says it’s eager to keep working with the Argentine government which, according to Milei, will no longer be working with the Chinese government.
Agence France Press reports:
China is “willing to work with Argentina to continue China-Argentina friendship”, [foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning] said, and “support respective development and revitalisation through win-win cooperation”.
Milei, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist”, pulled off a massive upset by ousting the populist Peronist coalition that has long dominated Argentine politics.
He had promised to cut ties with China, one of Argentina’s top trading partners, as well as with Brazil, saying that he would not “do business with communists”.
With most votes counted, Milei won 56% of the vote in the run-off election, Massa 44%. Massa has conceded.
