Hans-Hermann Hoppe on Javier Milei

From the point of view of an anarcho-capitalism, which he claims is his philosophical conviction, he is of course a disaster.

~ Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "What to Make of Milei," LewRockwell.com, October 3, 2024

Javier Milei on the end of collectivism

We are facing an end of a cycle.  Collectivism and the moral posturing of the UOC Agenda have collided with reality and no longer have credible solutions to offer for the real problems of the world.  In fact, they never did.  If the 2030 Agenda has failed, as its own promoters acknowledge, the response should be to ask ourselves if it was not a poorly conceived program from the start, accept reality and change course.  One cannot insist on persisting in error, doubling down on an agenda that has always failed.

The same happens with ideas that come from the Left.  They design a model according to what they believe humans should do and when individuals freely act otherwise, they have no better solution than to restrict, repress and curtail their freedom.  We in Argentina have already seen with our own eyes what lies at the end of this path of envy and passions: poverty, ignorance, anarchy and the fatal absence of freedom.

~ Javier Milei, speech before United Nations General Assembly, September 25, 2024

The Economist conducts a 3-hour interview of Javier Milei

Mr Milei talks a good game.  He is steeped in neoliberal economics, as he displays in a three-hour interview with The Economist.  He wants to privatise all the sclerotic state companies, dollarise the economy and reduce the country’s deficit to zero in his first year.  His political and economic models, he says, are Australia, Israel, Ireland and New Zealand.  For years talk of free-market capitalism has been a guaranteed vote-loser in bloated, statist Argentina.  Past attempts to liberalise have all faltered.  Yet if Mr Milei wins the election next month the country could, in theory, become again a laboratory for exciting, dynamism-promoting ideas.

~ "Can Javier Milei’s radical libertarianism save Argentina? Our interview explores his wild economic ideas—and his authoritarian streak," The Economist, September 7, 2023

Manuel García Gojon on Javier Milei's influence in Latin America

Tho Bishop: Javier Milei is a self-professed Rothbardian who has had some very strong polling in recent months.  Some pundits have compared his populist style with that of Donald Trump and Brazil's Jair Bolsonaro.  Given that Argentina has had recurring monetary and economic issues, including the current period of prolonged inflation, do you think Milei's political rise is real, and is it a model for other Latin American countries?

Manuel García Gojon: Even if Milei does not win the election, his attempt will have a deep and lasting effect.  I would speculate the campaign to be even more significant than the 2012 Ron Paul campaign.

The core of Milei's support can be found in young men, regardless of socioeconomic background.  Over 40 percent of men 18 to 30 years of age support Milei as their first choice among four competitive candidates.

Even people whose main occupation is food delivery are saving up to buy books on Austrian economics and are conversant in the arguments behind Milei's plans to reduce government spending, loosen labor laws, end protectionist measures, and abolish the central bank...

The youth is generally rebelling against the progressive status quo, as is also occurring in some parts of continental Europe.  It is possible that this phenomenon will spread across Latin America, especially in countries where economic conditions are dire, but a figure with the specific combination of characteristics that Milei has might be a once-in-a-generation phenomenon.

Milei does not like to be perceived as a populist because of the negative connotation it carries, saying that people confuse being a populist with being popular.  What makes him particularly interesting from an Austrian point of view is that he is a late convert.  He was as neoclassical as they come for over two decades, and when he came into contact with the Austrian school in 2014, he had the intellectual humility to recognize that a lot of what he been teaching was wrong...

It does feel to me as if the present is pregnant with a significant paradigm shift in Latin America.  That is a positive beginning.

~ Manuel García Gojon, Q&A, The Austrian, July-August 2023