Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…I have noticed this. I think two reasons. One is that Argentina is regarded, even today, by many as the heart of polo culture and horse culture globally. People say Florida and Provincia de Buenos Aires are the main places to be. But a lot of this also, Tyler, as I was saying earlier — everything or almost everything in Argentina ends up being about past glory and past wealth. And the Jockey Club is really one of those places still left in the city where you can look around and squint a little bit, imagine it’s 1920 and this is still the “Paris of South America.” It’s not the only place that’s like that. Actually, the city itself looks good. It looks better than it did when I covered Argentina’s economic meltdown in my first job out of college, more than 20 years ago. But the economy today — speaking of things that are cyclical — you’ve got inflation above 270 percent. It doesn’t take long, even at the Jockey Club, to realize that not all is well in the country right now. I agree with your nostalgia point, but as I’m sure you know, there are so many very good startups from Argentina, though they may leave the country, go to Brazil, go to Mexico. Why is there this mix of creativity and nostalgia? I’m not sure they’re mutually exclusive. I would frame it slightly differently. The intellectual capital and firepower that you see in Argentina is still very strong. I’ve always believed, as someone who’s probably spent too many hours of my life thinking about Argentine decline, cultural and intellectual capital erodes less quickly than economic capital. You still see these amazing centers of excellence in Buenos Aires. What these entrepreneurs will tell you — the founders of these companies that you mentioned, like Mercado Libre or Globant, that have really become world beaters on the global stage . . . Mercado Libre, at this point, is one of the biggest e-commerce companies in the entire world and competes with Amazon. What these founders will tell you is that, actually, starting their businesses in such an uncertain macroeconomic environment has made them incredibly lean, disciplined, and ready to go out into the world and dominate. The idea being that if you can make it in Argentina, where conditions can dramatically change from one day to the next, almost like the weather, then you can survive damn near anything. That has been one reason why a lot of these companies have had so much success on the global stage. You look around Spanish-speaking Latin America, and the big tech giants, the ones that really dominate — with some exceptions — they tend to be Argentine.…

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