 Hello and welcome to the recent live stream, which we are pre taping today for scheduling issues. I'm Zach Weissmuller. And today we're going to be discussing the unexpectedly strong showing by Javier Millay in Argentina's presidential open primary election last week in which he was the top vote getter with 30% ahead of the 28% for the center right party, 27% for the center left party, although we can talk more about those particular labels in a minute and how accurate they are or are not in this context. But Millay is the figurehead for la libertad avanza party, which roughly translates to liberty advancing or freedom forward, and has described himself as a libertarian and an Austrian economist and anarcho capitalist. His opponents and many in the media have described him in quite different terms. But we're here today to sort all that out. Joining me today to discuss the assent of Millay and libertarianism in Argentina, and Latin America more broadly will be Gloria Alvarez. She's wrapping up another call but she's going to jump in here in a minute. She's an author and a radio and TV host in Guatemala who has declared that she's running for president on a libertarian platform there. Also here right now is Eduardo Marti, an Argentine economist who founded and ran junior achievement Argentina for decades to help create young entrepreneurs in the country. He currently runs the foundation for intellectual responsibility and supports Millay's candidacy for presidency. Thank you for being here Eduardo. My pleasure. Thank you for asking me. Great. Well, first, let's get this out of the way. For everybody who has noticed. Yes. Millay and reasons own Nik Gillespie do share a certain fashion sense and hairstyle, although we got a little bit messier hair with Millay. He mentions in an interview that he never combs his hair. Instead, he gets out of the shower drives it with a towel and then lets the invisible hand comb it for him. So, you know, Millay is a he's a character. He's an interesting, you know, politics society's got this kind of wild, almost jester like bad boy jester persona from what I can tell. And we're going to play a bunch of clips that have been circulating on social media of him so that you can get a sense of all that. But before we get into it. David, do you have any thoughts on the presentation and image of Javier Millay? How has he perceived like based on his media appearances? How has he perceived in Argentina? I think your description is very accurate. He's a bad boy, a wild guy, but he's seen as El Vengador. I don't know if you remember the Charles Bronson series where justice guy that is not part of the law comes to society to do justice in a context where our politicians in Argentina have managed themselves to destroy the country for decades. So the hyperinflation process that we are suffering right now is over 120% a year and the incredible poverty in a country that produces food for 400 million people took people to a position where they cannot believe how a potential rich country become poor and the kind of suffering they are under. So right now a guy who comes and tells you that the problem of Argentina is a cast, a group of politicians that is just robbing them and he's just creating all these bad conditions related to manipulation of the currency. Taxes, we have more than 160 taxes, debt. The country is always borrowing money and begging for money to different institutions around the world. So that whole created a sense of decadence and people are tired. A suffering hunger are in very, very poor situations. So when a young guy comes and explains with pretty good arguments that the situation is caused by big government and that government is not the solution, but is the institution that is creating this bad performance of the country. So he become very popular. And he does it in a very funny way. He's very aggressive speaking, but he's knowledgeable, compared with some other politicians like Trump or Bolsonaro or some other ones in the right in Europe. He read a lot. He read Moura Rodbar, he read Ludwig von Mises, he read Hayek, he read Milton Friedman. So excuse me, I just came from Iceland and I took a cold, just taking a look to the country. So Mille has become a very popular guy and his style is like a rock star, the way he speaks. And he knows how to argue. He's tough arguing and he doesn't have any problem with personal issues. And if you try to attack him on a dominant arguments, he knows how to answer. So he's a good polemist and the type of measures he's suggesting to implement in the country are the ones that any libertarian, any Austrian economist in some ways, some objective people also would be happy with. In some other areas, not, not so much. He's a little bit more conservative, but the general, the average is pretty good for our standard is fantastic and incredible, like incredible talk coming to the country. So let's see if he can do it. First, he needs to gain the presidency. Yeah, well, let's talk a little bit more about the beliefs of Javier Millais, because he does have very strong beliefs, you know, you mentioned him in the context of Trump, Bolsonaro, Orban. There's a tendency to kind of like lump all these people together, which I think is a mistake and part of what we're going to disentangle a little bit here. I watched a 2019 TEDx talk that Millais gave, which was really an ode to capitalism. We're going to play a bit of that, and then discuss Millais intellectual framework a bit more. It'll be subtitled in Spanish and for the audio only podcast, I will overdub this in English. But here's Javier Millais at TEDx in 2019. My love story, my love story with the ideas of freedom. And it has three chapters, because as you're studying and deepening this, romance is emerging in different ways. The first thing that fell in love with capitalism and freedom was basically that it's a machine to get people out of poverty, that it's the machine of prosperity, that it's the machine of well-being. But of course, when one advances in this idea, it's with detractors, detractors that accuse the system of being unfair. So the second moment of romance starts when one starts to start studying if the system is fair or not. And one that discovers that it's not only fair, but it's also the only system that's fair. There's rational sounding Millais, and he sounds very much like a libertarian economist there. We'll get to some of the spicier stuff soon. But Eduardo is a fellow Argentine libertarian economist. What can you tell us about Millais' economic ideas? Well, at the beginning he was an econometric economist. So he believed in planned models and just studying statistics. You can foresee what the future would be. So he was working for corporations trying to give them some kind of sense of where the markets were going. But without a solid base of understanding, I don't know, Israel, Kirchner, or the good economists explaining Hayek that what is the dispersed knowledge in the economy. So he didn't have too much knowledge related to it. But once he started to study Mises Hayek, Rodbert, in Argentina, Venegas Lynch, that he was the promoter of Austrian economics. So he, little by little, started to believe in the market processes and he started to buy them. So it's true what he's saying in his TED Talk, what he's saying that he really learned how the markets operate. And also he started to realize how capitalism transformed the world in the last two or three centuries. But when he saw that, he saw the effects of the Industrial Revolution and he started to realize that the type of life we live today are a consequence of changing ideas. And a little bit of John Locke, a little bit of Jefferson, a little bit of Benjamin Franklin, a little bit of John Adams, and Alexis de Tocqueville. I don't think he really read them in deep, but he got that feeling. And after that, Argentina has been a fascist and socialist country for several decades. Suddenly he discovered that the idea that necessity creates rights, the idea of social justice, the idea that the world is fixed and when you make money is at the expense of somebody else. He started to discover that all those ideas are wrong. I don't know how deep his knowledge is related to these justice issues, but I really think that he has the proper sense of life. He became little by little a kind of individualist. He's still a little bit altruistic, a little bit mystic in some approaches, but the sense of life is individualistic. If you ask him how to interpret and defend property rights, he can do it. If you ask him about your right to look for your own happiness, he knows how to justify that. So I think that compared with some other politicians, he's a strong leader understanding some issues. His character is too strong for my pleasure. The way he speaks, he looks like Benito Mussolini, but still the way he approaches subjects is pretty good. Let me interrupt here to say goodbye to this gentleman. Thank you for coming. Stay in touch. Sorry, I'm back. That was spoken like a true unapologetic objectivist. You think that some of his thinking is a little too mystical, not enough grounded in the philosophy of objectivism. And I know he does have a religious aspect to him, which we can talk a little bit more about in a second as it pertains to his social policy. But I'm curious with his interest in Mises and Hayek and the Austrian school, do you have any idea how he came upon those? Like, is there a school in Argentina that stresses the Austrian school or did he just kind of... Argentina was a liberal, libertarian country until 1926 that all Alberti and Sarmiento, the main promoters of liberalism in Argentina, disappeared and his ideas were forgotten. So in the 30s, we had a coup d'etat of military fascist militarists, very proprussian and the idea of nationalism. Remember that Argentina is the eighth biggest country on earth, a very big country, bigger than Mexico. And in 1890, we had, I don't know, two million inhabitants. So Argentina, after the liberal constitution of 1853 and some good presidents, liberal, libertarian presidents, attracted millions of immigrants from Italy, from Spain, from France, from Germany. And suddenly a country like Argentina went from two millions to eight millions in a period of 30 years. So in Buenos Aires, you had papers of all different languages and from three men that you're speaking in the streets of Buenos Aires, two spoke different languages, but Spanish. So that arises a very nationalistic feeling, the idea of we need a kind of Putin feeling and the autocrats in Russia that become very nationalistic, the flag, and started to develop that kind of feelings. And they were very attracted to fascism, Benito Mussolini's idea, with so many Italians, also immigrants, and also the church. When the church lost power in Argentina, after they were always in control of the state, or at least very influential, when liberalism entered into Argentina, the church started to lose power. So that created an alliance between nationalism and the church, what we call the nacionalismo catolico. That happened in the 30s. If you study Argentina, from the 30s to the 40s, you will find the creation of the central bank, the income tax, a regulatory hoon tax for grains and anything related to exports and imports, full of regulations, increased taxes, the whole decade of the 30s, not around the world, but in Argentina specifically, destroying all the liberal institutions. That created Perón. Perón was an admirer of Benito Mussolini, was a kind of fascist dictatorship. And when he was withdrawn by a revolution in 1955, the whole country was infected by the Peronist virus. We had become a kind of collectivist country, half communist, half fascist, but not liberals at all. And that's what's now known as Peronism, that kind of combination you're describing of the two, where it's a collectivist ideology that kind of mixes the two authoritarian ideologies of the 20th century together. And if you add the big component of the Catholic Church, that after the reforms in Europe, and after secularizing versions of governments around all Europe, they took refuge where? In Spain, maybe Portugal, and Latin America. So the whole idea is that you need to be covert if you want to enter into heaven. And the idea that make money is a sin, or the idea that you need to sacrifice for your fellow men, and that the common good should be superior to your individual good, and social justice, and redistribution of wealth. All that was being forced forward by the Church. You see Fidel Castro, you see all the revolutions in Latin America, forward by the Church. And you see right now our Pope, Mr. Bergoglio, he is around all dictatorships in Latin America. He doesn't speak bad of Maduro, he doesn't speak bad of Ortega. He's a very good friend of the president of Mexico and his socialist policies. He was a peronist. He is a peronist. So he's in favor of Cristina Kirchner. So these are all the concepts that we hear Millet railing against. And I am going to take this opportunity to add Gloria to the stream because she just popped in. Hi, Gloria. You're Mike's muted. So just there you go. Hello, Eduardo. Hello, Gloria. How are you? So we just, to open up the stream, we played a clip of Millet giving a TED talk in 2019 where he was extolling the virtues of capitalism as an engine of prosperity and welfare, lifting all boats. He sounded very much like a libertarian economist giving a lecture. That's the kind of buttoned-down version of Millet. The way that he's been portrayed here by the U.S. media is I just pulled it together a little montage of headlines. Argentinian far-right outsider Javier Millet post shock win in primary election in Argentina. A new Trump rises. Far-right populist Javier Millet is the biggest vote-getter in Argentina's presidential primary. New York Times far-right libertarian, so they did describe as libertarian, but a far-right libertarian wins Argentina's presidential primary. And then I just want to dig into the New York Times description of his policy positions here for a second. He says that they say that besides his ideas about the currency and the central bank, which is something we're going to get to later because that's central to the Millet candidacy, I think. They say he has proposed drastically lowering taxes and cutting public spending, including charging people to use the public health care system, closing or privatizing all state-owned enterprises and eliminating health education and environmental ministries. That all sounds to me like fairly straightforward libertarian policy. The Spanish newspaper El País had a rundown of some of his positions on social issues, but marriage between people of the same sex. For me, marriage is a contract between private individuals, says Millet. As lived is a personal choice. Drug legalization. They say that Millet is in favor of drug legalization because consumption is an individual action. They say the same thing here about gender identity. Millet's kind of spicy statement here is, do you want to perceive yourself as a cougar? Do it. It doesn't matter to me as long as you don't make me pay the bill. Don't impose it on me from the state. He wants to deregulate the legal arms market, which means allowing legal firearms ownership. He says he's not an advocate of the Argentine military dictatorship, although he is taking a look at what Bukele is doing in El Salvador that may or may not be of interest to him. I should also mention here that he supports a referendum to undo Argentina's recent abortion rights law, so he's anti-abortion. He's also trying to wage some of the same gender studies, schools fights that are raging here in the U.S. And the last thing here is he's expressed a natural alliance with figures like Trump and Brazil's Bolsonaro because he says there he's on the side of anyone against communism and socialism. But I was saying earlier to Eduardo that I don't think it's particularly illuminating to say that Trump equals Bolsonaro, equals Orban, equals Millet, especially because Millet, while we may have some criticisms of him, does look different from the rest. But Gloria, what is your overall reaction to the kind of far-right characterization of Javier Millet? Well, I think and I agree with Eduardo that it is important to understand Argentinian history in order to understand the massive ignorance that there is, especially in Latin America, of what the libertarian movement portrays. For example, myself, I was graduated from Universidad Francisco Marroquín UFM. I did an internship at the Cago Institute. I've dedicated my life for the libertarian principles and to diffuse them, not only in Latin America, but elsewhere in the world. And now I have people saying that I am not a libertarian because I don't want the state getting involved in issues like abortion, gay marriage, drug legalization, opening borders, not only to products but also to people. They tell me that I have become a Marxist because of this. Well, if I can fall into the category of Marxist because the understanding of what libertarianism is in Latin America is so vague. Of course, you're going to have confusion all over the planet on what Javier Millet portrays, right? Personally, let's go every subject that you touch because I think that if we start focusing on policies instead of focusing on individuals, we dismantle the populism that there is. I don't like analyzing politicians as dogmatic messias. I like analyzing policies to see how the policies are more or less libertarian. I think the more that we do that, the less fanatism and dogmatism we're going to have. I think we're in a world that highly needs that for the Putin's, the Bolsonaro's, the Trump's, but also the Chavez, the Ortegas, the Evo Morales, the Lulas of the world. We have people going blindly after people, after leaders instead of going very strict after policies. When Javier Millet says to you that gay marriage is something he doesn't believe because he doesn't believe that the state should regulate marriage, I say, well, then what's the proposal going to be? Is a straight marriage going to be something from the past? Is he going to take away the state in every marriage? I don't think so, right? But it's a really nice way of saying, I'm not going to touch the issue. So advancing in sexual liberty and liberty to love whoever you want to love in Latin America, I think is a huge one. And also differentiating that from using the state to educate people and indoctrinate people in things that you don't want kids to be indoctrinated. That's why the state shouldn't get involved in education because if the state is Nazi, your kids are going to be Nazis. If the state is communist, etc. And if you go out to drugs, when he says, well, everybody is allowed to consume whatever they want to consume. That's okay. But drugs are not only about consumption. It's also about who is producing them. And we know as a fact that the drug cartels from Colombia to FARC to Mexico, all the cartels have finance, socialism of the 21st century, right? It is one of the pillars. And we as libertarians in the region have been saying for decades that unless Latin America legalizes, decriminalizes the production of these substances, we are not going to have transparent politics because it's a super highway of financing all these leaders without any accountability, without any transparency. So when he says everybody can consume whatever the hell they want, he's also like retrieving himself as a libertarian into taking action in these issues, right? Now, when you go to Argentina, people are super concerned about inflation, about wages. So they tell you, you know what? I don't care about the gaze. I don't care about the drugs. I just want my money to be a healthy money. I just want to do business in a healthy way. I want my savings to be, you know, guaranteed. And I understand that because Argentina has one of the worst inflations that you can have. And when the economy, you know, it's pushing ahead, then of course, that you're going to be okay. So that's where we need to ask ourselves, if Javier Millet comes to power, is he going to have a Congress that will support him into opening up to the markets? Because Argentina currently is one of the worst countries in the world in the index of economic freedom. So you need to maybe dollarize it, to open up to new currencies, including cryptocurrencies, which are big in Argentina, but they are illegal. There are two different prices of dollars in Argentina. The black market one and the one that the government uses. So even in economy, we have to ask ourselves, what is he going to be capable of doing? Now, regarding abortion, it is true that nowadays Argentinians, conservative Argentinians that support Javier Millet and other leaders like him have paid more than 30,000 abortions yearly with their taxes, since abortion was something that started to be a state introduced or managed in 2021 from the policy of 2020, December 2020, right? So you're talking about 30,000 abortions yearly and uprising. So when he says that he's going to take that back, he could also have the stance of a libertarian, which are not understood in Latin America, because you can be a libertarian and be against the state, paying for abortions, but taking away the state so that the market offers them. Unless we as libertarians communicate properly what are the libertarian ideas, Javier Millet and other leaders will be portrayed by the media as super far right. Now, the last issue that I want to discuss, supporting Trump, Orban, Bolsonaro and Putin has become a one deal package in Latin America. And we have been called not true libertarians when we, and I mean, we like me, Antonela Marty, the Libertarian Party of Spain, or even objectivists in Enron Center Latin America where Maria Eduardo sister, it works, when you say, wait a minute, I don't think that Trump is having libertarian stance or Bolsonaro, you get crucified in social media, and people tell you that unless you are with them, you are not a true libertarian. So I think that we have to understand what is it that, you know, differentiates Javier Millet from a Ronald Reagan Christian, a free market guy from like a true libertarian. And the only way of doing that is analyzing what libertarian policy needs. But so when I look at that list of his stances on social policies, I would agree with you that, you know, the abortion issue is a big wedge. I mean, that's a wedge even within the American libertarian movement. There's there's division on that topic. I think you're saying that, at the very least, a libertarian could, or, you know, you think that the correct libertarian position would be no state funding for abortion, but allow people to, you know, make their own decisions there. Is that less according to the encyclopedia of libertarianism, which is already from 2011 30% of libertarians are pro life, what we would call anti abortion. 70% are pro choice, right, which I think it's also as Anne Rand accurately say, you can have a pro life statement for abortion. But even in the pro life libertarians, they do not agree that you should criminalize women and put them in jail because abortion should be considered a crime. There are interviews where Javier Millay and people who support me have said that we should use the state and the machinery of the state to criminalize women who go under abortion. How does that enter the umbrella of libertarianism, even by anarcho capitalist. I say to them, how is it that you don't want a state, but you're going to have a private police that is going to persecute women and their uterus, like, how is that going to work, you know, and they don't have a straight answer, but they want to make abortion something that the state criminalizes. And then just so I understand on these other topics where he seemingly is in alignment with libertarian philosophy on drug use or sexuality. You're saying that, you know, he's saying he's okay with drug use, but not offering a policy like we need to end the prohibition of drug sales in Argentina or in the case of gay marriage. He's, you know, saying people can do whatever they want, but he's not actually advancing like a equal protection for gay couples in Argentina. I just want to make sure I'm understanding your point. Is that a correct summation? Absolutely. It's like, you know, if libertarianism is all about individual rights equal for everybody, right now in Latin America, the lesbian, gay, trans, they do not have equal rights in markets. For example, you cannot, if you're not married, you don't have the benefits that straight couple have in order to have inheritance in order to go to a cell phone company and get a family package for all your family. If you're talking about two lesbians, they don't get those benefits in the market. You know what I mean? So those are things that marriage gives you individual rights for straight people that right now the LGBT community does not have. I think that as a libertarian, you can move forward to that, even if you say that marriage shouldn't be something that the state should regulate. Okay, but let's be equal to everybody. And then your libertarian platform should be, let's get, let's get rid of straight marriage and let's make marriage something that only the market does. But then what happens? You cannot, you can have a celebration of a gay wedding, but you cannot use, you know, lawyers or anything to protect your rights. That's the thing in Latin America. The same with prostitution. Javier Milay can say, well, there's the sexual market. You can do whatever you want. But if you don't decriminalize prostitution, prostitution keeps being something that the black market operates in criminalization. It's like if in the United States, during the prohibition, you would have a candidate saying, hell, people can drink whatever alcohol they want to, but he's not willing to end the prohibition. What do you think of that critique, Eduardo? And after this, we're going to bring in a couple more Milay clips so that our audience can really get a sense of the kind of rhetoric that he uses to advance his ideas. But what do you think of Gloria's critique of Milay's, you know, social positions that maybe he kind of throws a bone to libertarians, but he's not actually advancing policies that are going to increase social freedom in Argentina? I think that Gloria is 100% right. Need a perfect description of the way Javier thinks. I'm pretty optimistic. I think he was a kind of middle of the road, a little bit collectivist, and he started to understand the benefits of individualism and liberalism five years ago. And he's smart. He's very passionate. And in order for him to become popular also and learn, he became very close to people like Nicolas Marquez or Mr. Vlaje or Mr. Venegas Lynch. Venegas Lynch was friend of Leonardo Reed, the founder of Foundation for Economic Education and was the guy who created the Center for Studies on Liberty in Argentina. He was printing the Freeman. He was the first one in printing economics in one lesson, human action, socialism. So he was the liberal in Argentina. The father of what is right now become the hero of the libertarians in Buenos Aires, Alberto Venegas Lynch. He is an ocean economist and he's very consistent. And he knows how to articulate knowledge very well, but he has been a little bit conservative regarding drugs, regarding all social issues and regarding also the abortion. But I think that have year little by little, not because of principles, because he didn't have the time to learn deep principles, I think. But because of his smells, I think his sense of life is conservative, but he's becoming more an individualist. Regarding abortion, for example, his last declaration, his last speech says that, OK, I will not penalize abortion. I'm not in favor of that, but I want to stop financing abortions. And that would become a little bit very consistent with the libertarian ideas. I don't know if maybe his next declaration is going to say the same, but it seems that he's running little by little a way of conservatives. But at the same time, I'm afraid that that can also happen with economic principles. The idea of closing the central bank, that for me is a great idea, the idea of reducing all taxes. We had 167 taxes, and he suggested to stay with six or seven taxes to reduce the size of government to 20 percent of the PBI expenditures. So all that, he has been very aggressive, very consistent. But, for example, his last declaration, he said that he doesn't want to keep financing the cognizant, the science research. And the whole country went after him saying, you are going to stop financing research in science and culture, things that are so important. This is a broken country with people making, I don't know, $3,000 a year. So with people searching in the garbage to eat, you have 45-50 percent of people in poverty. So a good president would come and say, we are going to cut all expenditures. We will have a healthy money and a very, very short budget. So we are trying to advise Javier that if you really gain the presidency, just to act on principle, just a very small government, very consistent, not enter into those social issues that Gloria describes so well. He's a guy who's suffering his infancy a lot. He was being beaten by his parents, and he's full of, I don't know, emotions that overflowed him. But politics is, of course, maybe one day we'll have Gloria's president of Guatemala influencing all that in America, and I bet that happens one day. I will be there shortly. And I think that's really possible, because little by little we grow. I don't know if we'll be able to see it, but we have expectations. But for the moment, if you compare me, Lei, with, I don't know, Patricia Bullridge, or the candidate for the Cristina Christian, Mr. Massa, you see a guy with a different sense of life. I resent also some of his conservative positions, and I think that, of course, they are not going to help him in his position. But compare what we had in the past is something. I think that that emotion and passion that you're talking about is partly what has caught interest of a lot of international watchers, a lot of people here in the US. His rhetoric has caught the interest of Americans, I think in part, because he's speaking in a kind of bombastic style that taps into the kind of us versus them tribalism that's on the rise here. I want to take a quick look at a rant he went on against leftists, who he says have ruined Argentina's economy. You can't even give a millimeter to the south of shit. You can't even give a millimeter to the south of shit. All the collectivists, those who put that idea... What do you mean you put it in shit? Because they're shit. But if you think differently, they're going to annihilate you. That's the point. You can't give a millimeter to the south. Because you give him a millimeter and he takes it to destroy you. You can't negotiate with the south. Don't negotiate. Don't negotiate with that shit. Don't negotiate because they're going to kill you. And since we're doing so much better than that, since we're pushing them into the cultural battle, we're pushing them up because we're not only winning in the productive, we're superior morally, we're superior aesthetically, we're better at everything and it hurts, it hurts. So, since they can't fight with the legitimate tools, they're pushing the state to repress the apparatus, putting torres de guita to make us shit. And still they can't. They can't. You had to lower the note. You had to lower the note. You understand me? They're losing. They're desperate. They're losing the cultural battle. The south of shit. For the first time, they see themselves cornered. The south of shit. It's an intense captivating clip. Do you agree with his sentiment that in Argentina, you can't negotiate with the leftist coalition because they'll use the state apparatus to squelch that debate and take everything away from you? Can I go? Yeah, go ahead. I absolutely agree. If you see it all over Latin America, when the left doesn't win in the elections, they completely destroy the country. We have seen it in Chile. We have seen it in Colombia. We've seen it also in Brazil with the support to Lula. So the left is obsessed with ruling from democracy when they win or by making a lot of, by making the violence in the streets. I also agree with how Millet communicates because he's engaging for decades. We have seen libertarians saying, well, yeah, we have the right ideas, but no passion at all. And here comes a guy with a lot of passion. But that's also a thing that it's different. And in how it's perceived because, for example, if you go to the videos that I recently made in Guatemala's election that was two days ago, like in this video, right, where I go to vote and I say both of my options are socialists and they are crap, both of them. In a language that is very confrontative, maybe not in the same decibels as Javier Millet. Now, if you go to the comments of Javier Millet's interventions, because he is a man, he's portrayed as what a leader, what an impelling way to communicate. Now, when a libertarian woman does that, it's like you need to go to the psychiatrists, you're insane, you get portrayed as why are you communicating in such a passionate way? It's not seen the same way, you know? With men, it is a product. Yeah, with women, it's like you are a crazy witch, which I think it's not, you know, it's not fair. And people should ask, why do I allow this in Javier Millet but not in Gloria Alvarez or whatever other women are out there, you know, spreading the ideas of liberty, like in Ladies of Liberty, that's one thing. Now, there are other things that I want to take out from that message. Cultural battle. Cultural battle has become like this buzzword in politics. Now, I think that libertarians worldwide, and here I go again, let's go back to the ideas. Does the battle, is the battle about culture? Can you battle a culture? Because if we understand what culture is, it's a dynamic process, an evolutionary process, where spontaneous order as Hayek used to say just happens. So you cannot battle a culture. Cultures are dynamic. In my understanding of what I've studied about libertarianism, the battle is about ideas. You can battle with ideas. And if you have the better ideas in a peaceful society, you can demonstrate that your ideas are better. Now, the fact that we are adopting terms like cultural battle worries me, because this is exactly what the Nazis or the fascists did. They want to state, to implement a culture by law, a culture of hatred. And then he says, we are morally superior than the, than the, than the shitty socialists. I agree that libertarianism is morally superior. Hell, objectivism is morally superior because it tells you that individuals are not animals of sacrifice. To the state or the church. Now libertarians, I can say are morally superior because they, you know, defend the individual. When Javier Millay adopts conservatism, religious states, and he talks about a moral superiority, I am worried if he's going to use the state in order to implement one kind of culture. So what are we talking about there? And he even says we are aesthetically superior because he says that people in the libertarian movement are more pretty than all these women in the Marxist collectivist that are not even like shaving their legs or whatever. And I'm like, yeah, okay, yeah, the market makes us prettier, but those are libertarian stance. So then again, I think now that Javier Millay is taking international protagonism, we have a massive opportunity to educate people in the United States and in Latin America of what libertarianism is about. So if he governs and when he governs, we can be very, very accurate because what I'm worried, what I really don't want it to happen is that if he comes to govern government and he betrays liberty, people will blame liberty instead of blaming him, which is what happened with Pinochet. It's been a headache for libertarians all over the region to take ourselves away from that Pinochet dictatorship, which was a capitalist dictatorship. And as Mario Vargas Llosa said, there is no such thing as a good dictatorship and a bad dictatorship. All are bad. So I am very worried that if libertarians don't take this opportunity worldwide, if he comes into power and liberty is betrayed, people will blame neoliberalism, capitalism, when they are not the ones to be blamed. I think you're absolutely right about that and I hope that doesn't happen. It is interesting to hear him frame liberty or freedom in moral and aesthetic terms because this goes back to the TED talk we played at the beginning, he touches on that and he says, you know, when you look at a free society, you look at the kind of architecture and so forth that it produces, it's superior to what planned economies produce. Therefore, it's aesthetically superior. So it's a very, it's an interesting argument that I don't think is made very often by libertarians and it might be something worth thinking about, but to Gloria's point, Eduardo, you know, this fear that, you know, that if he comes to power, he'll be the next Pinochet and, you know, he's made these friendly comments towards Bolsonaro, though he's also said he doesn't support, you know, Bolsonaro's kind of whitewashing of torture and so forth. But are you worried about that? Are you worried that that could come to bear if he wins the presidency, that he's going to embrace authoritarian tactics? Have you seen anything that indicates that that's a concern? I don't think that he will implement authoritarian tactics. It can always be the temptation there, but I think that probably his sense of life, that's my impression, is still better than his rhetoric in some ways. When you push him, when you push him and you point out his contradictions, he retreats, I think, a little bit and he's cautious. So I think that his concept of freedom in general, the idea that do what you want, but don't bother me, don't step on me, that idea is in his mind. So in general, I don't think he will be tempted to implement politics that go to conculcate freedom. I think that he will be a little bit absorbed by the general climate, a kind of osmosis. Borges, that has been a very famous writer in Argentina, used to say that freedom is the space, a soul needs. So if your soul is not very well developed, you will ask for a big government to take care of your responsibilities. Argentina is in the middle of it, like most of Latin America. So some guys have become a little bit individualistic and you see people responsible for themselves that they understand that to be happy is their own responsibility and to develop your ego and your... it's up to you. And I think that there is another half, that still they are little childs that asking, we're putting all the responsibility of the government. I think that in that way, Javier is closer than us than the rest of the people. So maybe because I want to be optimistic, I'm going to vote him for him and I really expect that we can have some influence on him. The risk of failure is always there and he will be under attack. Right now, he's under attack. In this moment, we are just having a conversation in a neighborhood 10 minutes away from here, Recoleta, downtown Buenos Aires, they are just attacking supermarkets because of the hyperinflation, etc. And because as a kind of reaction for the possibility of having Javier Millet as president, they try to create a climate of revolution. If this guy comes into the presidency, we will make a fire of the city of the cities in Argentina. So that climate for not to allow him to reform or take economic measures is here already. So it's going to be a very tough battle not only to try to transform a decadent country into a prosperous economy, but also, as Gloria said, the risk of just a guy becoming conservative and try instead of just forward liberties to be cautious about them. I think I'm optimistic. I think there are better percentages in our side. You know, that's disturbing to hear that action is unfolding on the street in the wake of the primary right now. And I think we should move the final portion of the conversation here to a discussion of those issues that kind of are motivating people to get out on the streets. The issues that kind of led to Millet's rise, which I think are largely the economy, the central bank, and the way that the political class, or I think as you put it, the caste that is the way Millet frames it. I've pulled one more clip that I think will take us into that discussion, which is Millet, again, directing a lot of passion and anger with very heated rhetoric, but in a direction that I think a lot of libertarians would agree is warranted at corrupt political elites. So let's take a look at this and discuss. Let's see. I think the great Argentine problem is a cultural problem. This is a society that is infected with socialism. And what you have to achieve is to get the socialism out of people's heads. And the main promoters of these ideas are the politicians. The politicians are a sort of sociopaths who want to make us believe that we are invalid mental, invalid in every sense, because we can't live if it's not for them. In reality, those who can't live if it's us, they are. That is, if the country will separate between those we produce from one side and the other side is the shit of the politicians, the unionists, all this set of parasites. They sink, they die. We separate Argentina in the north and Argentina in the south. Those of us who are willing to work we go to the poorest part of the country. Even when they stay with everyone, they sink these rats, because they don't help at all. Instead, those of us who work and we know how to make a living. You know what? We are good people, good people who work and we don't live by voting for envy, hatred, resentment, theft, yes, the same treatment against the law, which is that immundity of social justice, which is the most unfair thing that exists. Because it implies stealing from a person the fruit of their work to give it to someone who wants to give it to me. But where did they come from? So, you know what? They want to stay in this country. You know what? They want to identify the enemy. The enemy is the politicians. We have to go against the politicians. They are our enemies. They are the ones who sink us in poverty. They are the only ones who have progressed with this version of social justice and the redistribution of income. The real redistribution of income was from what we work to the parasites of the politicians. Let's see, why liberalism was born? To get out of the prison cell of the monarchs. So, it can't be that in a country if it goes better to the parasites of the politicians than the type it produces, that is, it can't go better if it's a parasite of the politicians that doesn't produce anything and that when it does something the only thing it does is harm. Because one of the things that happens every time the state intervenes is generated what is called the failure of the state. So, look at this. The plans against poverty make it worse. Look at the Argentine case. I mean, the person who first shared that clip with me commented that it almost seems ripped from the pages of an Iran novel. I want to start with Gloria this time, but Eduardo, you can share any thoughts too. Just what are your reactions to Millet's message there? I absolutely agree. Actually, I have said the same thing in different words in many forums because in Latin America the majority of people do not understand that the government doesn't produce wealth. There is a misconception that the government is sort of like a magic spaceship where money is magically created and the politicians grant you with resources and money that magically they possess. People do not get the basic idea that every cent that the government has is because they have taken even violently from the people who produced it. So, if you don't understand that the politicians are your employees and you think that they are the kings that grant you rights and grant you resources, of course you blindly obey to whatever they are going to say. And of course the politicians are going to have a cognition mentality because that cognition mentality is the one that grants them all the powers to control the economy. It is really rare to have a politician that is going to have a free market approach. So, I absolutely agree. And about politicians being sociopaths, I've said this multiple times. I think that we need to have not only analyze our politicians by their resume but we should also have them for what Eduardo said, emotional intelligence tests, psychological tests because I believe that Latin America has been governed by narcissists and sociopaths. And I always say when people tell me because of the way that I express myself, they say, oh you have mental problems and I'm like, yeah, I have no problem to be tested in psychology tests or MRI or whatever but just please make it very neutral because if you put me with conservative shrinks or with socialist shrinks, of course they're going to declare me crazy, right? But I do believe that emotional intelligence is something that the world needs in their leaders. And not only in Latin America, worldwide is something that is highly needed. A mandatory psych evaluation to run for office would I think really clear out what I'm saying in the class of politicians around the globe. But Eduardo, what I noticed in that clip is that he's talking in terms of class warfare but instead of kind of traditional Marxist class warfare it's the political class versus the rest of the working versus the productive class. What do you think of that framing that he's putting forward is that a good message for Argentina and is it resonating? I think that it's good that people become reluctant they develop a reluctant attitude towards politicians. I think that's always good. I think that the real problem is again in the mind of the people, ideas I think that if you read Laurie Sanata for example Laurie Sanata is a Bolognese that writes about the influence of the church in Latin America and how we developed those socialist redistributive ideas social justice, the idea that necessity creates rights from a specific spectrum of people that are in favor of altruism, sacrifices big government and that you need to sacrifice yourself for the common good. That idea is there we always will have politicians just instrumenting those ideas. The real fight, the big fight is in the minds of philosophers and that's why we approach in general objectivism or if you read Stephen Hicks explaining post-modernism and that idea of you have all the post-modernism Germans and the French came from Hegel to Marx, Heidegger Fichte Nietzsche and the French Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard Marcuse you read all that influence and that influence really was terrible in Latin America the church profit from that so you create a guilty complex where the society they don't have the instruments to defend themselves so the politicians appear and they make you feel guilty and we need you are not going to you are being a selfish guy you are not going to give up your fortune in order to improve society and if you have that kind of mentality and the guys in the church are the good guys in anyone trying to make money for your own family you become a selfish son of a bitch so therefore it's very difficult to fight that fight so politicians are the result of this kind of mentality that with princes like Gloria fighting all around Latin America just spreading out good principles and some good intellectuals we are trying to give the fight but I think you need to give that fight also in the states it's not completed yet you had very good intellectuals but you see in the universities you still have in Harvard, in Berkeley and different universities some leftist intellectuals the American sense of life is very individualistic that's why you keep progressing but isn't a fight that is involving all of us I think politicians are good for us to put our eye in politicians and try to control them in that way very simple way I think Millay is giving a service to the country with all the shortcomings we mentioned here but in general I think that has been a step forward for the country that has been so bad treated for the last decade let's take a look quickly at the degree to which this message is starting to catch on in Argentina this is from a public polling source in Argentina and as always we link all the sources in the description and the page at reason.com but this yellow line the gold line is going up from 2020 to 2021 to 2022 at the expense of the two competing parties obviously we know what happened in 2023 last week when he overtook them this breaks down the support for Javier Millay by political affiliation and you see a stark divide obviously the libertarians in strong support of Javier Millay upwards of 80% support when you go to the center right party which is the fourth row down that's hovering around 40% and then the left party sharp drop off below 20% and then no support measurable support whatsoever among the socialists left also perhaps unsurprising but in that kind of situation where there's such stark division polarization and fracturing and say Millay wins he's only going to win with a maybe not even a majority maybe a slim majority under those circumstances where he still has to govern and a coalition government how optimistic are you that he can get these rather aggressive agenda items through in Argentina go ahead go ahead Gloria so I don't know how things are going to be on ground when people ask me for example about my 15 proposals and the ones that I need the approval of the Congress my strategy would be once enough this if people have elected you because of these proposals which I've divided in non-negotiable and 10 that are negotiable for people to choose 5 if I start being blocked with one of those 5 I would just go back to the people who voted for me and elected me and be like hey guys I need your support because these politicians are not letting me advance on the things that I promise you now I would have the attitude of Margarita like I am not here to please everybody I am here to do the right job and if the other politicians and the other coalitions do not let the ideas of liberty advance in a constitutional case I would just quit and leave office because otherwise you start compromising and compromising until your government is another mediocre right wing government that doesn't do anything for the region like we've seen with Macri, with Duque with Piñera and then when the left comes back people say you see neoliberalism doesn't work and it's like no, you didn't let these ideas to be implemented in the first place and that's I think my concern more than others that if this project and libertarians around the world do not take this opportunity to really communicate to people what libertarianism is about if Javier Milay gets blocked people won't blame Javier Milay they will blame libertarianism and then again we will have ideas of trying to take the real good ideas out of that misconception What does seem to be driving to a large degree the Milay phenomenon is this extreme inflationary situation that Argentina is facing you mentioned the top of Duarte triple digit inflation this is an article I pulled up from Daniel Reisbeck at Cato Institute Argentina should dollarize pronto and that's also central to Milay's platform that basically shut down the central bank convert to dollars allow people to use cryptocurrency more easily and down at the bottom of this you'll see that everyone across the board seems to rank inflation as the country's worst problem 59% among the leftist coalition 67% among the center right opposition I assume much much higher among the libertarians I have one last clip that I'm going to play to kick off this discussion about central banking and Milay's plan to dollarize the economy where Milay is laying it all out so let's listen to what he has to say and then Eduardo I'd like to have you react to the plan that he's put forward let's say to have the exclusivity to be able to submit that is the forced course that this is the key why? because the forced course is what allows politicians to steal you from the inflationary tax Bitcoin has an algorithm and one day it will reach a certain candidate and there's nothing more and it can compete with other currencies in fact it competes against Ethereum and it competes against others but what's the problem? the problem is that the states won't want to give you the forced course because of the forced course they steal you from the inflationary tax so the Bitcoin is the natural reaction in front of the staff that are the central banks and that the money will be private again and the counter is that the politicians and thieves won't let you go against the forced course what happens when you have that economy with high inflation and the problem of the staff is more clear then you can even discuss as we said before directly eliminate the central bank so first of all I'll just say that he demonstrates a better understanding more competent understanding of Bitcoin than just about any politician that I've heard talk about it with the issue of the central bank that's really the kind of first order of business for him would be to shut down the central bank and dollarize the economy just in case our listeners are not clear on what that means it means that US dollars would be the accepted currency in Argentina it's something that's been done in other countries Panama, El Salvador I believe Ecuador so what do you think about that aspect of Millet's plan? Well first of all I would say that central bank was created in 1935 with the idea of lender of last resort and what they really did the politicians in Argentina they have been financing the government at the expense of the middle class and the poor class in Argentina we had an average rate of inflation of over 50% a year since 1935 we cut 13 zeros to our money and we still this year we will have to cut another two because one dollar right now is 700 pesos three months ago was half of it so the inflation rate we are just in the process of the third or fourth hyperinflation process in Argentina so the idea of closing the central bank is very attractive because it has been used to promote government to allow our politicians to build I don't know the palais of Versages all around to buy planes and to live a very good life what Javier is proposing is the idea of just dollarizing the economy I think if you are going to impose another currency I would suggest that go back to gold like Murray Robert suggested just in the mystery of banking why dollar a currency that is suffering 7-8% of inflation per year and also is in the hands of some other politicians that maybe they are not so corrupted as ours but they are always tempted to print money and you see by the current deficits you run in the state so I think what is important is to eliminate the course of our social the idea that you really need to use this money and it lays in favor of that so it is in favor of 100% reserve banking not to allow secondary the issue of secondary money to the banks and I think that is going to work of course it is going to be tough just to get out of inflation to a healthy currency it is going to take time, it is not going to be made in one or two years it is going to be a reaction of the public and of course it is going to be boycotted so the situation is going to be tough but Argentina cannot leave another year with this hyperinflationary process where 50% of the population cannot eat in a country like Ukraine it is like Brazil we produce food and we are very good producers of food so it is inevitable I think the closing I think that because of all the situations you will see Javier Milay as our next president let's see if he is allowed to govern and let's see if he has the courage and he has the character to implement the good measures and I hope that the social aspects conservative aspects of Javier he restricts himself to push legislation to collectivist legislation I hope that he really leaves that part of the side and we can enjoy it after 80 years or 90 years of collectivism a good government for Argentinians, we deserve it I think that is time for us to live a little bit of quiet and peace Could you give us a sense of just what it is like living under those economic conditions I mean both the hyperinflation Americans for the first time in my lifetime experienced some inflation that we could feel year-over-year in recent years but it is nothing like what is going on in Argentina and your GDP from 2010 to 2021 there was no economic growth so what is it like today living under those conditions when you go to a supermarket they instead of giving you a price you need to scan because they are changing the prices of time this month they say the inflation rate will be 25% so if the prices are not available people selling items they don't know what is going to be the cost of rebuying the item for the public so sometimes they stop selling you and you start to see that the merchandise all the commerce goes down so you see a situation where you don't have credit I sold Terrain I am in a country club near here in Buenos Aires and let's suppose that you sell it for 300,000 so they bring the money to you to the place you have to count 300,000 box right there you don't transfer through banks you need to use cash and of course you can be robbed so anytime you do a transaction the whole transaction you don't have credit if you want to buy a house you need to buy the house cash of course that's impossible and of course the whole commerce is resented by that it's a chaos like in Atlas Rack when you see that lights went down and things shrink and people are unhappy and everybody walks like this and you cannot see a future and people are just nervous all the time they become manga crying starts so we need to stop that also there is no certainty in prices you know last year when I was there if you go to any store nothing has a fixed price for example if you want to buy this cup it's all about are you going to pay it in cash in 6 payments, 12 payments is it going to be with a check, is it going to be with a credit card is it going to be with a debit card and depending on that the cup can cost you $1, $2, $3, $10, $20 so imagine that multiplied by everything in the economy there's no certainty whatsoever you cannot plan anything in that uncertainty yeah and I mean that's sounds like just a horrific the uncertainty day to day uncertainty is just one of the worst things for just human prosperity human flourishing to not be able to know just something as basic as how much money you're going to spend and budget for that week the heavier malaise rhetoric will if he wins will match the reality and some sort of market mechanisms and discipline will be able to turn this around for Argentina I do want to wrap up by zooming out of Argentina for a moment with Gloria this I want to talk about this dynamic of socialism rising, causing economic destruction paving the way for the kinds of reactions that you have expressed concern about manifesting as right wing military dictatorships which then kind of begins the cycle over again it seems to happen continually all over Latin America and I assume it's a cycle you're trying to break what do you think the key to breaking it is and how optimistic are you that it can be done I do believe the answer is embracing individual liberties and economic liberties as one like Anne Rand said many decades ago conservatism and obituary they're far right in Latin America is mercantilist they don't want free markets they don't want to discuss drug cartel use to finance socialism of the 21st century they don't want to talk about open borders they don't want freedoms period they just want to have their private property protected in ways that were very similar to the southern economy of the united states previous to the civil war let's understand that right and I believe that that's not the way that's why young people go to the left wing because the left wing has disguised themselves as feminist LGBT environmentalist all these flags that of course they don't defend in reality right but young people are attracted to that my country after three right wing governments that have been an absolute disaster masters of corruption from Moto Pérez Molina, Jimmy Morales and Yamate finally because of three really bad right wing governments now we have socialists with Movimiento Semilla and I've been saying that as Anne Rand conservatism and obituary guys you know it's going to happen to us and people are like no no the left wing is not going to govern Guatemala until now it does so I believe that that's the only way embracing libertarian ideas and I believe that what Javier Mila is doing in Argentina it's a massive opportunity for libertarianism worldwide to really make a stance on what is it that we believe right and defending those ideas that Javier did in road to serve them from the Nazis and the fascists and the communists all equally you know not not just in one side yeah and it's you know he's got quite the task ahead of him if he does win because of all we've mentioned with the violence that Eduardo has said is already pouring out into the streets so you know it's not going to be for the faint of heart Eduardo I want to ask you know the general election is scheduled for October 22 of this year and Mila is going to face off against one candidate from each of the two other major parties and he has to either win 45% of the vote on the first round or 40% of the vote if he beats them both by at least 10 points otherwise there'll be a runoff how likely do you think it is at this point Mila can pull it off I believe with Victor Hugo that when an idea has come the time for an idea to run to impose itself I think that it happens and I think we have been fighting the fight for freedom for decades so little by little through the university etc I don't a strong group of intellectuals reacted to that and I think that right now it's a small group but it has had enough influence to allow the appearance of a politician like a volcanos that really is leading this fight with shortcomings as we mentioned before but I think it's a very good opportunity to allow Argentinians to live a better life so I think that one third, one third, one third election I think that he's going to win I trust that he's going to win and then we have two more elections the first one would be for the presidential election but if none of them get 45% of the votes or at least 10% difference the last two will run in the last one in November I think that will be a melee against probably Bullridge or Massa and I think he's going to win he's going to be the next president of course all the casta politica is just just creating a climate of destitution saying that we are going to do what happened with Castillo and Peru because we have the congress and we have the but I don't think that's going to happen I think that melee will become a kind of a mix of Buquele with I don't know let's see let's see but I'm pretty optimistic I think that he will change things he will be able to he has a personality he's a young man like Gloria is a young lady they still have the energy and the courage to go against all odds so I think that's going to be the beginning of a change in Latin America with the intelligence we have to back them and give them arguments and help if he does pull it off what are your obviously there's a lot of work to be done as we've laid out in the stream but what is your best hope for the immediate future of Argentina well I think that if we the first thing is to analyze the budget to reduce it immediately in a 10% the monetary fund the international monetary they request a reduction of the budget to four or five points I think that they should reduce 20 or 30 you need to reduce the bureaucracy the ministries all the activities the government does to close secretaries to close and I think it's going to do that in several aspects the monetary reform the labor reform we have a fascist system that gives a lot of privileges to the unions he promised to change that too and if he cuts a budget he does a monetary reform he opens the economy we have all the empresarios a word that Gloria created and spread out all around Latin America the empresarios in Argentina they are big mafia groups and also always putting a lot of pressure on any president they don't want to open the economy I think that he will do his best to for that happens and in Argentina it's going to be very very important to reduce in taxes also the eliminating regulations I think that we are helping with a group of guys in the education aspects to see if we can change indoctrination coming from the states in all public state universities and we are just helping to organize low projects to change that too so there is a lot to be done I think that the pressures are incredible and you only have four years so let's see what he can do for me is after many that he was a parent of his government he is the first opportunity in the last 20 years to see that maybe we have the hope that something will change so I am supporting him with my eyes open as Gloria said trying to correct what I think is wrong and trying to push what I think is right but it's a good opportunity for Argentina and I think that also will have some influence on the rest of Latin America let's see we will certainly be watching over here and hopefully bringing you back on to get some updates as the election unfolds and other libertarian movements see gain traction in Latin America before we go Gloria is there anywhere that people should look for you or support the work that you're doing in Guatemala I need as much help I can get from all the libertarians around the world to communicate what libertarianism is all about you can find me on tiktok, facebook, twitter, instagram, youtube, telegram as Gloria Alvarez and I think this is a great opportunity to spread our ideas and present them as a coherent offer for a region that is highly disappointed with what has governed us so thank you very much for this space Zach and Eduardo it was such a pleasure to share with you and talk about this I think that this is as I say something that is challenging for us as a movement to be watching what's going to happen so thank you very much thank you both of you for the videos so we can promote it in our countries absolutely this will thank you for everyone who tuned in we will be back here next thursday at 1pm as always we will