Javier Milei is the president of Argentina. He assumed office in December 2023, just over a year ago.
Milei has been open about his ideological beliefs, including his self-described anarcho-capitalist beliefs. Milei has taken inspiration from and praised Murray Rothbard.
To be fair, he seems to think of anarcho-capitalism as a theory to follow, but was not making any claims about eliminating the state when he was running for president. His policy proposals have sought to cut government in a lot of places, but not eliminate it entirely.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe is a writer and well-known advocate of anarcho-capitalism within the libertarian movement. He has been sharply critical of Milei.
Both men have exchanged name calling. Hoppe has referred to Milei as a showman and a clown. Milei referred to Hoppe as an idiot, or at least that seems to be the best translation from Spanish.
On Israel
Javier Milei has been a strong supporter of the Israeli state. He sees what the Israeli state is doing to the people of Gaza as self-defense as opposed to murder. On this, he is completely wrong. What Milei is saying about Israel is completely inconsistent with libertarianism.
There is obviously a deep history with Israel and the Palestinians, but nothing justifies the intentional mass murder of any innocent person, let alone tens of thousands of innocent people.
On the issue of Israel, I side with Hoppe. He is right to criticize Milei.
The good news is that Argentina is a relatively poor country and doesn’t have a lot of resources to fund or arm Israel the same way the United States government does. Milei’s views on Israel are close to meaningless except any possible influence he may have on a broader number of people.
I have heard some libertarians say that perhaps Milei has taken this pro-Israeli state position just so that he isn’t a target of the Western establishment, most particularly the U.S. government. It is always dangerous to oppose the U.S. regime, so he might just be saying what needs to be said so that they leave him alone.
I don’t really subscribe to this theory, although I can’t completely discount it. Still, I don’t think it justifies someone advocating for mass murder.
If Milei really was just saying this to keep the establishment off his back, he probably wouldn’t have said it as forcefully as he did. He could have just issued some boilerplate statement saying that his administration supports Israel’s right to defend itself and left it at that.
So, on this point, I think Hoppe’s criticism of Milei is fair, even though Argentina has almost no impact on the issue. Milei’s expressed views on Israel are not consistent with anarcho-capitalism or any form of libertarianism.
On Economic Reforms
When it comes to Milei’s policies within Argentina, Hoppe has also been a critic. I believe this is a mistake. Just because Milei is wrong on Israel, it doesn’t mean we should criticize him unfairly.
I don’t think anyone expected or should have expected Milei to try to eliminate government once taking office. He never campaigned in that way, and there is no way he could push through such an agenda. Milei is obviously just trying to cut government where it is politically possible and in ways that won’t make things substantially worse in the short run.
Any time you cut government jobs and government spending, there is going to be pain for certain people. But there was already great pain in Argentina from the rampant inflation. This interview from Tom Woods’ show celebrates the victories for liberty in Argentina.
In just over one year, Milei has made substantial cuts to government spending and regulation. These are real cuts. They aren’t like the phony cuts that come out of the United States where they will only increase a department budget by 2% instead of the baseline 4%, and therefore it somehow constitutes a cut.
Milei is producing real reform in Argentina by significantly reducing the price inflation rate, balancing the budget, and making an overall better climate for business. It is already having real and positive impacts for the people of Argentina.
I never expected Milei to eliminate the central bank, and I am cynical of whether that should even be the goal of a libertarian in such a position. He should continue to free up the market and allow competing forms of money.
It is easy to make perfect the enemy of the good. While I don’t excuse politicians who don’t actually cut government, I do sympathize with those who seek to bring greater liberty in an utterly corrupt system.
Compare the United States
Imagine being a libertarian elected to the presidency of the United States. You aren’t going to tear down the whole system overnight.
There are a lot of immediate changes you could make such as stopping wars and withdrawing troops from all over the world. You could pardon people who were convicted of federal crimes that were victimless crimes.
On the economic front, I believe it would be bad policy to just immediately announce the end of the central bank. What would happen to the dollar and the banking system overnight?
Most of our contracts are in dollars. Think about people’s paychecks and their mortgages and their other bills. Everything is in dollars. Ending the central bank overnight would cause complete chaos. You would almost instantaneously lose all political support because we would be thrown into chaos.
Markets can adjust quickly, but to do something like this overnight with little warning would surely cause chaos. What happens when your money isn’t in your checking account? How do the truckers get paid who deliver the food to our stores?
In the 2008 financial crisis, many libertarians just flippantly said that there should be no bailouts, including for the banks. But what about the banking customers?
We have the FDIC, which can’t cover the existing deposits through the Treasury without some kind of monetary inflation. I don’t believe the FDIC should exist, but we live in a world now where it does exist.
If there had been no bailouts in 2008, then major banks would have gone under. People would have gone to the ATM or submitted a payment for a bill, and the money wouldn’t have been there. To just flippantly say that there should have been zero bailouts does not address the ramifications.
If there had truly been no bailouts and no monetary inflation in 2008, everything would have been thrown into chaos. I don’t mean the chaos that was already happening in the stock market and housing. I mean that the entire currency system likely would have collapsed.
People can get mad about the bailouts, but they would have been a lot more upset if they couldn’t access their bank account. They would be even more upset if food wasn’t getting delivered to the grocery stores. I feel that this point was never adequately addressed by libertarians or others who insisted on zero bailouts.
Philosophy Versus Governance
This is not an excuse to all of the horrible politicians in history and out there now who have talked a good game about liberty but given us more government. These people should not be excused.
It is also not a call to abandon libertarian philosophy in any way. In fact, I believe we need to more often state our goals of what a libertarian society would look like.
I don’t want people advocating for school vouchers because they are a step in the right direction. Oftentimes, school vouchers just get the government involved in how private schools are run. If you are going to push school vouchers, you at least need to continually repeat that the ultimate goal should be eliminating the state from education.
At the same time, we shouldn’t be politically stupid and cause our own self destruction. If a libertarian actually gets elected on a libertarian platform, it would not be a good look to throw everything into chaos overnight by announcing the end of the central bank.
You start with the easy and significant cuts in government spending and government regulation. On bigger issues of the FDIC and the central bank, you need to free up the market, allow for competing currencies, and let the market push those things out of existence.
If Milei had governed as Hoppe has suggested he should, he probably would have lost immediate support, and it might have given libertarianism a bad name. You can’t take decades or centuries of statism and completely overturn it in one night, or even one year.
On economic policies, I think Milei should be praised for all of the good things he has done. We can criticize him where he is bad, which can include economic reforms that don’t necessarily achieve greater liberty. But just know that he is in a tough position, and we can’t just expect him to take a hammer to every government program immediately. He does have to retain the general support of the Argentinians to make lasting change in favor of liberty.