 Let's talk a little bit more about the beliefs of Javier Millay because he does have very strong beliefs. 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 Millay gave, which was really an ode to capitalism. We're going to play a bit of that and then discuss Millay's 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 Millay at TEDx in 2019. It's three chapters because in the middle one is studying and deepening this, the novel 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 to prosperity, that it's the machine to well-being. But of course, when one advances in this idea, it's with detractors, detractors that accuse the system of being unfair. So that's the button down, rational sounding Millay, 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 Millay's economic ideas? Well, at the beginning, he was an econometrist. 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, Israeli 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, Benegas 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. So when he saw that, what 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 that 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 become 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. He's in favor of, 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. The way that he's been portrayed here by the US media is, I just pulled it together a little montage of headlines. Argentinian far-right outsider Javier Malay posts shock win in primary election in Argentina. A new Trump rises, far-right populist Javier Malay 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. 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 Malay candidacy, I think, but 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 Malay. Homosexuality. Sexuality as lived is a personal choice. Drug legalization. They say that Malay is in favor of drug legalization because consumption is an individual action. They say the same thing here about gender identity. Malay'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 markets, 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. He's anti-abortion. He's also trying to wage some of the same gender studies, schools fights that are raging here in the US. The last thing here is he's expressed a natural alliance with figures like Trump and Brazil's Bolsonaro because he's on the side of anyone against communism and socialism. I was saying earlier to Eduardo that I don't think it's particularly illuminating to say that Trump equals Bolsonaro, equals Orban, equals Malay, especially because Malay, while we may have some criticisms of him, does look different from the rest. Gloria, what is your overall reaction to the far-right characterization of Javier Malay? 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. 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. 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 Malay portrays. 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 messiahs. 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 and 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 Malay 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, you know, 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, it's, 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's 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 another 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, Antonella Marti, 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, 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 the abortion issue is a big wedge, I mean that's a wedge even within the American Libertarian movement. There's division on that topic. I think you're saying that at the very least, a libertarian could, or you think that the correct libertarian position would be no state funding for abortion, but allow people to 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, which I think is also, as Anne Rand accurately said, 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 him 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? How is that going to work? 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 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 saying people can do whatever they want, but he's not actually advancing an 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 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, if you're not married, you don't have the benefits that straight couples 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 rid of straight marriage and let's make marriage something that only the market does. But then what happens? You can have a celebration of a gay wedding, but you cannot use lawyers or anything to protect your rights. That is 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 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 percent 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. 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, okay, I will not penalize abortion. I'm not in favor of that, but I want to stop financing abortions, and that's going to 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% 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% 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, and not enter into those social issues that Gloria described 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 I, you know, politics is, of course, maybe one day we have Gloria expressing of what a money influencing all that, 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 they have expectations. But for the moment, if you compare me, Lei, with, I don't know, Patricia Bullridge or the candidate for the Cristina Quixote and 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 going, they are not going to help him to his position. But compare what we had in the past is something.