Is it possible to be a capitalist, a moral traditionalist, a defender of the integrity of nation-states, and an anti-isolationist all at the same time? Libertarian Argentine President Javier Milei is testing the proposition.
Few oppose the obvious positives of international economic integration, which sensibly legislated free trade made possible. Today, we can communicate instantly via print or voice with nearly anyone anywhere; even for someone of relatively modest means, it’s possible (albeit not cheap) to travel to the Himalayas or the Serengeti in a day, if not hours, and in optimal comfort. Emigration no longer means getting on a ship and never seeing mother, father, sister, and brother ever again; now you can save up and fly back to the old country for summer vacation. It has indeed become, after all, a very small world.
And yet disparities persist from country to country in things that should have topped the list of what to make uniform. Globalization hasn’t made your electric toothbrush compatible with the wall outlets where you’re staying.
Truth be told, globalism, a fundamental tenet of which seems to be undemocratically preventing nation-states from changing course and adopting non-globalist economic policies, isn’t a capitalist enterprise but a decidedly socialist one. The embrace of free trade need not include the absence of restrictions on private firms’ dealings with a power such as communist China, which is engaging in economic war with the free world. Large-scale economic interaction between nations doesn’t necessitate unfettered, unfiltered immigration.
Mr. Stein’s research leads him to judge that “a larger public sector” is required as compensation for “the dislocations wrought by globalization.” He concludes that “globalization makes redistribution more politically necessary,” although he said such presumably massive, socialistic wealth transfers would be “economically and politically problematic.”
So much for globalization serving the interests of those who reap the greatest benefits from the free market.
That last figure is a reference to the genocides carried out by totalitarian tyrants such as Josef Stalin in the Soviet Union and Mao Zedong in communist China.
Mr. Milei declared “free enterprise capitalism” to be “the only possible system to end world poverty but also ... the only morally desirable system to achieve this.” Recounting the history of the past two centuries, he noted that 95 percent of the world’s population was locked in extreme poverty up to the year 1800 and that in 2020, before the COVID-19 lockdowns, only 5 percent were in such economic misery.
“Social justice is not just,” he said, accusing its advocates of economic illiteracy and saying that they “start with the idea that the whole economy is a pie that can be shared differently.” The truth, he said, is that “that pie is not a given; it’s wealth that is generated.” The president described the market as “a discovery process in which the capitalist will find the right path” but that “collectivism, by inhibiting these discovery processes ... ends up binding the hands of entrepreneurs and prevents them from offering better goods and services at a better price.”
Mr. Milei extolled successful business people as “social benefactors who, far from appropriating the wealth of others, contribute to the general well-being.”
“Ultimately, a successful entrepreneur is a hero,” he said.
Mr. Milei even took aim at feminists and other social revolutionaries, mocking “the ridiculous and unnatural fight between man and woman” and environmentalists’ pitting “of humans against nature, claiming that we human beings damage the planet ... even going as far as advocating for population control mechanisms or the bloody abortion agenda.”
He also pointed to socialists adopting different names or guises, so that today “a good deal of the generally accepted political offers in most Western countries are collectivist variants” with labels identifying them as “neo-Keynesians, progressive, populist, nationalist, or globalist.”
“At bottom, there are no major differences,” Mr. Milei said. “They all say that the state should steer all aspects of the lives of individuals.”
At variance with even most conservative politicians, the Argentine leader actually called on successful business people to defy government.
“Do not be intimidated either by the political class or by parasites who live off the state,” he encouraged them. “Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral. If you make money, it’s because you offer a better product at a better price, thereby contributing to general well-being. Do not surrender to the advance of the state.”
Obviously, Mr. Milei has taken a page from former U.S. President Donald Trump’s book in not refraining from using the most combative of rhetoric, but unlike President Trump, he has fully embraced uncompromising principles of economic freedom, traditional morality, and foreign policy realism that one would imagine Ronald Reagan himself would have promoted with the same minimum of subtlety if, like Mr. Milei, he thought he could get away with it.
