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Soriek  9mo ago (text post)   1604 thread views

Transnational Thursdays 26

This is a weekly thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or IR history. I usually start off with coverage of some current events from a mix of countries I follow personally and countries I think the forum lives in or might be interested in. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Argentina

Hardcore libertarian Javier Milei has won the Argentine presidential election.

I know relatively little about Argentine politics, but every story I read reflects a staggering level of economic mismanagement. In general I'm quite anti-libertarian but in Argentina's case I think the government really has been so bad for so long that taking a chainsaw to the state apparatus as Milei promises to do is probably an improvement.

I'm excited for this, but my natural cynicism tells me that he'll fail like everyone does, and that'll discredit libertarianism for a while again.

I'm finding the negative responses to Milei ironic. Sure, he's a loose cannon, but does Argentina really need another five years of Peronismo? Argentina was once richer than France, Germany and Spain, now it's poorer than Turkey and Mexico. It's heartening to finally see the Argentines reject the economic populism that has served them so poorly for decades.

Not only did he win, he won 56-44. It was expected to be a close call but instead it was a blowout. I'm excited to see the libertarians have a chance to actually put their ideas into practice. Socialism is so popular among young people in the west that I'm worried for the future when the boomers start to die off. It's good to know that people can be persuaded to throw the bums out if things get bad enough. Hopefully there's enough left there to salvage and build something resembling a functional economy.

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