Javier Milei: prediction

Transcript context

…The following is a conversation with Javier Milei, the president of Argentina. He is a libertarian, anarcho-capitalist, and economist, who campaigned with a chainsaw that symbolized his promise to slash the corrupt bureaucracy of the state. He stepped into the presidency one year ago, with a country on the brink of hyperinflation, deepened debt and suffering from mass unemployment and poverty. He took this crisis head on, transforming one of Latin America’s largest economies through pure free market principles. In just a few months in office, he already achieved Argentina’s first fiscal surplus in 16 years, and not just avoided the hyperinflation but brought inflation down to its lowest in three years. We discuss all of this in detail, both the successes and the challenges. His depth of knowledge of economic principles, metrics and data was truly impressive and refreshing to hear from a world leader. But even bigger than the economic transformation of Argentina, Javier represents the universal fight against government corruption and the fight for freedom, economic freedom, political freedom, and freedom of speech. He has many critics, many of whom a part of the corrupt establishment he’s seeking to dismantle, but many are simply Argentinian citizens, scared of the pain his radical policies may bring, at least in the short term. But whether one disagrees with his methods or not, no one can deny that his presidency marks one of the most ambitious attempts at economic transformation in modern history, and that Javier Milei is truly a force of nature, combining the rigor of an economist with the passion of a revolutionary in the fight for freedom of a nation he loves. Argentina is one of my favorite countries, so I sincerely hope he succeeds. This interview was conducted with the President speaking Spanish and me speaking English with an interpreter simultaneously translating. We make the episode available overdubbed and subtitled in both English and Spanish, thanks to our great friends at ElevenLabs. If you’re watching on YouTube, you can switch between English and Spanish by clicking the gear icon, selecting audio track, and then choosing the language. Same with the captions. If you’re watching on X, I’ll post both Spanish and English versions separately. If you’re watching on Spotify or listening elsewhere, I’ll probably only post the English version. This is a first time for me doing something like this in a foreign language. It was challenging, but illuminating. I hope to talking to many world leaders for two to three hours in this way, including Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Vladimir Putin, Narendra Modi, and Xi Jinping. I want to explore who they are, how they think, and how they hope to help their country and humanity flourish. This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here’s Javier Milei. When did you first understand the value of freedom, especially economic freedom? Well, actually, I came to understand the ideas of freedom as an economic growth specialist back in the years of 2013 to 2014. I could see that per capita GDP statistics over the last 2,000 years of the Christian era essentially looked like a hockey stick, indicating that per capita GDP remained almost constant until around 1800, after which it accelerated sharply. In the same context of that phenomenal increase in productivity and per capita GDP, the population had multiplied sevenfold over the preceding 200 years. So basically, in economics, that means you get increasing returns, and the presence of increasing returns implies the existence of monopolies, concentrated structures, and according to traditional neoclassical economic theory, the presence of monopolies and concentrated structures is not a good thing. But at the same time, one could see that living standards had increased tremendously and that middle-income people ended up living far better than emperors did in the Roman era, and the population had gone from having 95% of people in extreme poverty to less than 10%. And in that context, the question was, how it could be that something that had lifted so many people out of poverty, that had improved human conditions so much, could be something bad for economic theory, meaning something was not right. So in that context, I remember that one of the people who worked on my team suggested I read an article by Murray Newton Rothbard called Monopoly and Competition. I remember reading it like it was today, and after reading it carefully, I said, “Everything I’ve taught about market structure in the last 20 years in courses on microeconomics is wrong.” This caused a very strong internal commotion in me. So I called this person who used work with me, and they recommended a place to buy Austrian School of Economics books, and I remember I bought at least 20 or 30 books, which I went to pick up one Saturday afternoon. And when I visited the bookstore, I was fascinated by all the stuff they had there. So I went back the next day and I started calculating how much money I needed to pay for my dog’s food. That’s my four-legged child, and how much I needed to spend on the taxi fare and food. And then with what I have left, I spent all of it on more books. And then I started to read very intensively, and I remember for example, the experience of reading Human Action by Mises, and this was a book that I didn’t know about. And I remember that on the following weekend, I started to read this book right from the first page, and I didn’t stop until I finished it, and that was a true revolution in my head. And having the chance to read Austrian authors like Rothbard, Mises, Hayek, Hoppe and Jesus Huerta de Soto, or others like Juan Ramon Rallo, Philipp Bagus and Walter Block, for example. on in my head. And having the chance to read Austrian authors like Rothbard, Mises, Hayek, Hoppe and Jesus Huerta de Soto, or others like Juan Ramon Rallo, Philipp Bagus and Walter Block, for example. That was very inspirational, and at one point I got the opportunity to read related to the works of Alberto Benegas Lynch [foreign language 00:07:38], and I also had the pleasure and honor to meet him. And today we are actually friends. So that paved the way for me to approach the ideas of freedom. And another book that was a very significant influence and impact on me was the Principles of Political Economics by Menger. It was truly eye-opening, or let’s say, for reading Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, these were things that really challenged all of my former thinking. I had a vague idea and poor about the Austrian School. The only thing I had read about the Austrian School until then had been Money and Time, a very good book by Garrison. But now that I understand a little bit more about Austrian economics, I know that it was rather poor. This doesn’t mean that the book isn’t good, but there were a whole lot of things to read that ended up being truly fascinating.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.