 So let's just get right into the speech and make some observations about both the style and substance of what he's saying. So we'll first run his opening statement. Today I am present to inform you that the Western world is facing a significant threat. It is in danger because those who are supposed to defend the values of the Western world are co-opted by a worldview that inevitably leads to socialism and consequently to poverty and economic deprivation. Unfortunately... Like you said, this and I should have mentioned this at the top, we are running a, these clips are actually an AI translated version of Millet that is meant to approximate the tenor of Millet's voice. So some clever person ran the transcript through one of these AI voice generators and created this AI approximation of Millet's voice and that it actually syncs his mouth to either word. So this is a weird 2024 thing that we're doing here. I just wanted to disclaim that as loudly and forcefully as possible and mention that as always, we will link to our sources and the original transcript that you can watch. But we did check and it's accurate with the transcript that the WF posted. But we just thought for audio and video purposes, this would be like the best way to consume this. That aside, his opener there really is, like you said, Marcos, consistent with the message we've heard over and over again, which is that this is kind of an existential battle between individualism and collectivism in all its forms. Anyone want to put a way in there before we continue? No, I just wanted to say, I think, if I'm not mistaken, I think Millet was photographed as he was entering the plane that took him to Davos with a copy of individualism and economic order by Friedrich Hayek. So I think that tells you about the spirit that he wanted to convey with that speech and he did. Absolutely. Liz, anything else for you want to keep going? Let's go. I need more Millet. All right. All right, let's go. In recent decades, motivated by some well-intentioned desires to help others and others by the desire to belong to a privileged caste, the main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism. We are here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world, but rather they are their cause. Trust me, there is no one better than us Argentines to provide testimony on these two issues. And we embrace freedom in 1860. In 35 years, we became the world's first dominant power. In 35 years, we became the first world power. While when we embraced collectivism over the past 100 years, we saw how our citizens began to systematically impoverish themselves until they fell to the 140th position in the world, 40 in the world. But before we can have this discussion, it would be important for us to first look at the data that supports why free market capitalism is not only a possible system to end world poverty, but also the only morally desirable system to achieve it. Okay, so he's saying that the arc of Argentina's history there is sort of a case study in what happens when you embrace and turn away from free market capitalism. Would you be able to flesh out a little bit of that political and economic history for us? Marcus, just give us the last like 200 years of like your country. Take a second. In like two minutes, right? Yeah, thank you. Well, but Mille's right in that Argentina is sadly a remarkable example of what happens when you steer away from capitalism and free markets. Argentina back in the late 19th century was among the top economies of the world. It was second only to the US in terms of the countries that received the most immigrants, millions and millions of Europeans basically, but also people from Asia came to Argentina during that time among them my own ancestors from Italy and the ancestors of basically all of us who live here today, because this was a country where you could thrive, where you could just buy a piece of land and work your way towards the middle class and get yourself a home and buy yourself a home, get a stable job and be able to save. And this is because Argentina was a country that was open to the world where trade, international trade was very important. This was a country where restrictions to economic activities were low. There wasn't a lot of corporatism. The role of the state was very limited. Public spending was not super high. We had no central bank, we had no inflation and we just basically welcomed anyone who would wanna come to Argentina and live here peacefully. Beginning in the great... Stick out to me about Argentina's origin story is it seems like on the note that you're hitting there, there also have been for a long time these little ethnic enclaves. With so much immigration comes, yes, some amount of assimilation and becoming Argentine, but also at the same time, sometimes little communities of expats and there are still these little towns in Argentina where people speak entirely Italian or entirely German or entirely French or what have you. And I think there's an interesting, correct me at any point if I'm wrong, but I think that that's a really interesting thing. And then also Argentina used to be pretty like natural resource rich, right? With a lot of agriculture and just like so much to export. Is that correct? Correct, okay. That's correct. In terms of assimilation, I would say that you having towns where people speak a language different than Spanish, that's not something that you will find today. You could find that at the beginning of the 20th century for sure. And you can find towns today where the last names of everyone will be German or Italian or Spanish and you will see that correct or Weismilla, you know, like Zach's or you will find architecture that is entirely Bavarian. That's actually Bichet and El Belgrano where the Oktoberfest is held, of course. You will find ethnic enclaves like that, but the country, but people assimilated pretty well. I wouldn't say that there were, you know, communities that were left out or that decided to stay out on purpose, but they assimilated pretty well. But the main problem begins with the Great Depression and then in the 1940s with the rise of fascism because if you think about it, Argentina is the only country in the world where 80 years after the downfall of Nazism and fascism, there is still a very popular fascist party because Juan Perón was a general in the army, in the Argentinian army. He studied under Mussolini. He traveled to Italy while he was president and basically put in place the same corporatist model, fascist model to manage the country's economy, right? And so this is the time where free enterprise capitalism started to be left out basically. And this is a time where the government stepped in and this is a time where public spending rose, where taxation rose, where many people started fleeing and capital started fleeing. This was a trend that was opposite what had happened in the past say 60 or 70 years. Suddenly, people wanted to leave the country and not come in. Argentina stopped receiving immigration basically and we started having a succession of governments one after the other who would fight because they claimed that the prior one had not been as leftist as the new one, right? Because even the opposition embraced this Peronist model because Peronism was so popular and it was popular because Perón basically handed out all of the money that the country had, until there was none left. And of course, there was also no incentives for generating wealth, because if you're just going to confiscate it the way he did with nationalizations and confiscations and measures like that. Well, of course, no one's gonna, no one's gonna wanna give you anything in the future. So yeah, this is how Argentina started falling in the indices of economic freedom, but also in terms of GDP per capita, for example, because at the beginning of the 20th century, Argentina was very similar to Australia and Canada. These are two countries that are also small in terms of population. They're also huge in terms of the land that they have, but the trajectories have been very, very different. Australia and Canada are part of the first world, if you will, today. They're rich nations. They have their problems, but they're nowhere as similar as Argentina where we have a poverty rate of about 50%. So Argentina is indeed a perfect example of what happens when you basically abandon capitalism and liberalism in the old sense. And so I'm glad that Millay talked about this at Davos. Hey, thanks for watching that clip from our new show, Just Asking Questions. You can watch another clip here or the full episode here. New episodes drop every week, so subscribe to Reason TV's YouTube channel to get notified when that happens or to the Just Asking Questions podcast on Apple, Spotify, or any other podcatcher. See you next week.