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Javier Milei's January 17, 2024 Speech

Substack and most of the internet is buzzing with praise for the newly elected Argentinian president Javier Milei's January 17, 2024 Speech at Davos! Hooray and mazel tovs for capitalism, freedom, liberty, individual rights and liberties, etc.! Boos and obloquys galore for socialism, collectivism, etc.! Some examples:

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The President of Argentina's Rallying Cry for Libertarianism

Javier Milei's 2024 Speech at Davos

Buckle in, this is a speech for the history books. Summary quotes and the transcript are below the video.

Summary quotes such as:

1: "Today I am here to tell you that the western world is in danger, and it's in danger because those who are supposed to defend the values of the west are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism, and thereby to poverty."

2: "Unfortunately, in recent decades, motivated by some well meaning individuals willing to help others, and others motivated by the desire to belong to a privileged class, the main leaders of the western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism."

3: "We are here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world, rather they are the root cause."

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Wall Street Journal Opinion, January 18

Argentina’s Milei Gives the Davos Crowd a Spine Transplant

He warns the elites what can happen if the West stays on today’s socialist ‘path of servitude.’

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Elon Musk praises Javier Milei's World Economic Forum speech — and gets his Grok AI to make his annual dig at Davos

Tom Carter, Business Insider

Jan 18, 2024, 1:11 PM CET

Elon Musk seems to be a fan of Argentine president Javier Milei.

• Elon Musk posted a link to Argentine President Javier Milei's World Economic Forum speech on X.

• Musk also used his artificial-intelligence chatbot, Grok, to "roast" the WEF chief Klaus Schwab.

• Musk is a longtime critic of the Davos event and has engaged with conspiracy theories about the WEF.

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FOX News:

Argentina's Milei warns WEF to reject socialism, says 'Western world is in danger'

Milei stared down the globalist confab and called on them to embrace 'free enterprise capitalism' in order to end to world poverty

By Michael Dorgan Fox News January 17, 2024 6:45pm EST

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Such unanimity raised the levels of my salience detector with, at first a little suspicion, then increasing to an imperative to examine the man and his speech, and the whole affair in much greater detail.

Often, it seems to me, that the loudest cheerleaders for Capitalism are precisely those who are sitting pretty with their stocks and bonds, patents, rental properties, media holdings, yachts and ranches,... the rentier capitalists.

It has been said: It is difficult to get someone to believe something if his salary depends on his not believing it. Likewise, how to convince a rentier capitalist that his mode of living is not part of the solution, but part of the problem?

Searching further afield with mounting skepticism we can find some doubts about Milei and what said:

Milei, speaking to the entire WEF audience, pronounced the world’s greatest threat was — not climate change — not world war — not racism — but collectivism and socialism. In other words, the new President gave the WEF crowd a dose of unfettered capitalism as the prescription for everything that currently ails the world.

Now remember — Milei wasn’t on the WEF’s platform by accident. They invited Milei to speak. Think about that. [and I suspect he was invited to say what he did]

...Now, I don’t trust anything that Klaus and his cronies are up to, so I’m not suggesting that the organization’s goals have magically changed, or the little switch on the back of Klaus’s skull has flipped from “Evil” setting to “Good.” But the globalist organization’s tactics are definitely shifting, which in turn hints that its old tactics weren’t working.

I'd totally go along with that! Whatever Too-Klaus-For-Comfort and his WEF Young Leaders (Trudeau, Zelenesky, Milei, Macron, et al.) are cooking up, I'm with Groucho when he says, "Whatever it is, I'm against it!"

A more complete critique of Milei's viewpoint:

President Javier Milei – “Planting Ideas of Freedom” but is he just Rebuilding Trust For the WEF?

...is Javier Milei just another puppet working to rebuild trust in the World Economic Forum (WEF)? Economist Milei was introduced by the WEF founder, Klaus Schwab, as the “freely elected” president of Argentina, ... the Argentinian president went on to delineate the differences between Capitalism and Socialism and said he wanted “to plant the ideas of freedom in a forum that is contaminated by the 2030 socialist agenda.” and warned about collectivism to a room full of collectivists.

The Milei speech showed his ideology as being as anti-WEF, anti-socialism, and anti-authoritarian as it would be possible to be, therefore his philosophy has excited a lot of people who are possibly hoping that we, at last, have someone who is rubbing shoulders with the WEF “elite” but acting as a voice for the people.

Without being guilty of collectivism ourselves, or paranoid for that matter, we must not forget that Milei is a WEF graduate and is on the list of Schwabs Global Young Leaders, therefore we cannot help but have our suspicions about the man who, after all, has been welcomed at Davos.

The World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) called him a “Fascistic candidate” and said Milei is “a TV personality promoted by the corporate media whose choleric outbursts against the “left” and the working class have been directed for years at cultivating a social base for massive austerity and fascist reaction.”

Elsewhere on the internet:

Javier Milei’s Shock Therapy Would Be a Disaster for Working-Class Argentinians

Argentina’s new president, Javier Milei, has issued a decree with over 350 reforms tearing up labor rights and privatizing industries. The “shock therapy” plan marks a dangerous expansion of the president’s powers — but it also faces fierce opposition.

Javier Milei implements shock therapy in Argentina The Economist

December 13, 2023 - His government plans to cut spending by 3% of GDP. Will society tolerate it?

Javier Milei: New president tells Argentina 'shock treatment' looms - BBC

December 11, 2023 - Argentina's new far-right president has vowed to deliver economic "shock treatment" in his first speech after formally taking office. Javier Milei warned Argentines "there is no money" and recommitted to a programme of harsh austerity measures. The populist outsider won a surprise election victory in November with radical pledges to overhaul the South American nation's ailing economy.

Why Javier Milei’s chainsaw economics for Argentina won the IMF’s backing

Telegraph U.K. : Washington is embracing the President’s radical reforms – perhaps others should listen

Milei’s Shock Therapy Already Leaves Investors Craving More - Bloomberg

December 13, 2023 - Just two days after taking office, Javier Milei’s government announced 10 new measures to pull Argentina’s economy out of its funk. It may prove too little for investors who have been sending the country’s assets rallying on the firebrand president’s promises.

Argentina’s ‘shock treatment’ begins as Javier Milei devalues peso

December 13, 2023 - THE TIMES. President sets out plan to weaken currency by more than 50% against the dollar

Argentina elects 'shock therapy' libertarian Javier Milei as president

CNBC - Milei is pledging economic shock therapy including shutting the central bank, ditching the peso, and slashing spending. Milei will have to deal with a $44 billion debt program with the International Monetary Fund, inflation nearing 150% and a dizzying array of capital controls. Javier Milei ...

Javier Milei prepares shock therapy to cure Argentina’s sickly economy

FINANCIAL TIMES: Insurgent libertarian has big plans but must work around his lack of congressional majority to deliver radical policies

Protests begin over Javier Milei’s ‘shock therapy’ in Argentina | Semafor

1 month ago - Thousands of Argentines are expected to protest on the streets of Buenos Aires Wednesday in the first major test for newly inaugurated President Javier Milei. The demonstrators have expressed frustration over Milei’s “shock therapy” economic plan that devalued the peso by half in an effort ...

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All this sounds a lot like Milton Friedman's disaster capitalism that was inflicted on several nations a few decades ago, with disastrous results for all excepting the rentier capitalists, the "free trade" advocates, all described in Naomi Klein's 2007 book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

So Milei is about to impoverish many in the name of the few, and this is promoting liberty, equality, democracy...? It may well be promoting "Capitalism" — correctly understood — but he says that "those who are supposed to defend the values of the west are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism, and thereby to poverty."

And just what are these "western values" the West holds so dear and important?

And is it true that Capitalism leads to (trickle-down?) wealth for everyone while Socialism leads to Poverty?

And are politicians, and especially KS/WEF New World Leaders promoting Socialism? That's odd...they all seems to be Staunch Capitalists to me. And what they really want:

audio clip by Tears for Fears - Everybody Wants to Rule the World

Maybe what we need in order to understand just who espouses what and why is a rogue politician suddenly inspired to give us the low-down:

Film clip from Bulworth, a film by and starring Warren Beatty and Halle Berry, 1998

So what can we enter on the pro and con score card for Capitalism?

I'll leave it to Capitalism's many cheerleaders to list its great benefits and achievements. Our textbooks are full of them, as was Samuelson, the textbook used for my course in economics many years ago. A textbook whose promoted ideas about Capitalism have collapsed, one by one over the years (at least for me).

Realistically then, what has Capitalism brought us?

It is Capitalism that has brought us COVID and its NewTechnology miracle cure, with further applications of "miracle mRNA treatments" to follow for every possible human "condition" that could be designated as something that needed to be cured, prevented, eliminated, or even promoted.

It is Capitalism that has filled the seas, our food and water supply with microplastics.

It is Capitalism that has invented and unleashed the pesticides, herbicides, fungicides that are killing and maiming the living planet.

It is Capitalism that has, through several onslaughts, eroded the natural world, produced a great extinction event for insects, amphibians, and other species, laid waste to the rainforests, the rivers and lakes, leveled mountains in search of "resources"......

It is Capitalism that brought us the sub-prime mortgage debacle which put so many out of their homes to live in poverty in the streets of our cities, and nearly brought capitalism itself to an ignominious, if entirely merited collapse.

It is Capitalism, yes Capitalism that is ultimately responsible for increasing greenhouse gases that are slowly raising global temperatures.

It is Capitalism's unrestricted profit that allows BigBusiness to buy out government, politicians, oversight agencies, to buy science itself .

No, no! you say, all those things are the result of Crony Capitalism, not the Entrepreneurial Capitalism, the Industrial Capitalism that has brought us all our modern miracles. But is crony capitalism a separate subspecies from the entrepreneurial variety that is good, the crony variety bad? Or is crony capitalism the natural and inevitable evolutionary product of the former? Crony capitalism, melt-down, end-stage capitalism, finance capitalism as described by Pr. Michael Hudson, (read an excerpt from his book, The Destiny of Civilization here) is the trap we are caught in, the hole we have dug for ourselves (and are still digging), the dead end that will not end peaceably or profitably.

So how nasty and destructive is "socialism"? I'm with Senator Bulworth, but let's start with one set of industries that should, morally and for the best practical results, truly benefit all individuals, all of humanity, the "health industry" and all its subsidiaries. And here we have proofs from around the world. The more that health care is "socialized", the greater the health of its citizens. Now don't ask me to "prove" that, just go and look for the evidence from disinterested parties that the statement is false. Then, according to Pr. Hudson, we should seriously think about socialist solutions for banking, insurance... In my view, it is criminal to allow "investors", rentier capitalists, to profit from the provision of basic, human necessities. So there.... am I a Socialist, a Communist...?

Let us call what K&Co, the WEFists want to install by its correct name: it’s not Socialism, not even crony capitalism, it is neo-feudalism.

No prize for seeing who in the photo is a WEFist.

Of all the -isms available for us to believe in, my preference in the midst of these confused times and absurd political landscape is for...

Skepticism.