this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
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[–] MamboGator@lemmy.world 258 points 11 months ago (9 children)

Argentina is about to become the latest case study that libertarians refuse to acknowledge when you tell them their policies don't work.

[–] Goferking0@ttrpg.network 67 points 11 months ago (11 children)

Nah it's not that it's libertarianism failing it's just that idiots version of it failing

What they'll say when it fails or next time someone else tries to implement their ideals

[–] Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world 43 points 11 months ago (6 children)

then immediately turn around and mock communists for saying something similar.

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[–] jaybone@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago (4 children)

But what will Lemmy communists say when you point out USSR and China?

[–] force@lemmy.world 11 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

To be fair USSR after communism was leagues better than USSR before communism ever could have been. But it's not exactly proving much pointing out that an extremely unequal authoritarian regime is worse than a more equal but still authoritarian regime.

I don't think the comparison works anyway because this is a true example of exactly what most libertarians have wet dreams of, while with communism people try to use e.g. the USSR and PRC to discredit leftism as a whole (especially socialism) even though any leftist worth their salt would realize authoritarianism is bad and creates a dangerous hierarchy, which is why Marx and Engels specified their ideologies to be democratic.

[–] MamboGator@lemmy.world 7 points 11 months ago

Libertarian and communist aren't the only political options if your education didn't top out at ninth grade.

I measure a country's success by the quantity of weapons they produce

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[–] AbidanYre@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago

He just didn't libertarian hard enough.

[–] TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Nah it’s not that it’s libertarianism failing it’s just that idiots version of it failing

That's what Communists always say, the only one they worship is Lenin cuz he didn't have time to do anything anyway.

He had time to build the gulags

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[–] DeadHorseX@lemmy.world 39 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (10 children)

I'm not a libertarian, I'm a social democrat.

The last century has been a total and unmitigated disaster for Argentina. The two options Argentinians had in this election were:

  1. More of the same by the guy who oversaw inflation reaching 160% (100% chance of things getting worse)
  2. A total wild card (99.9% chance of things getting worse)

Unsurprisingly, they went for the latter. I don't think anti-libertarians get to gloat in this context, given it's the Argentinian establishment which has overseen one of the most remarkable examples of total state-collapse and economic failure in modern history.

[–] NoSpiritAnimal@lemmy.world 19 points 11 months ago (3 children)

This makes a lot of sense if you pretend he didn't say or promise anything during the campaign.

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[–] Pipoca@lemmy.world 17 points 11 months ago

The calculation shouldn't be "chance of things getting worse", but "expected value of how much worse it'll get".

[–] ragica@lemmy.ml 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I don't actually know anything. But casually to me it looked like a choice between 160% chance of it getting worse and a 300% chance of getting worse. And it's not very surprising at all in these circumstances many go for the latter for all sorts of reasons (and delusions). But I don't actually know anything.

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[–] kromem@lemmy.world 5 points 11 months ago
  1. More of the same by the guy who oversaw inflation reaching 160% (100% chance of things getting worse)
  2. A total wild card (99.9% chance of things getting much worse)

FTFY

[–] Eldritch@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

That's bad math. Yes, if you put the same people in office. There's nearly 100% chance that they will continue doing what they have been doing. Good or bad. But if you put a lunatic with a grudge against reality in office. Who is aligned, or would align himself with the people who caused the problem before. You have 150% chance that things will get worse.

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[–] AeonFelis@lemmy.world 11 points 11 months ago (2 children)

What's the previous case study?

[–] prole@sh.itjust.works 32 points 11 months ago

This is a good one: https://newrepublic.com/article/159662/libertarian-walks-into-bear-book-review-free-town-project

The book is called, "A Libertarian Walks into a Bear."

[–] rambaroo@lemmy.world 28 points 11 months ago

Look up Kansas Ave Oklahoma. It got so bad for them they had to cut school to 4 days per week and that was before the pandemic.

[–] Bakkoda@sh.itjust.works 6 points 11 months ago

Lol what policies? Everyone for themselves?

[–] Subverb@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Who is John Galt? Looks like we're about to find out.

[–] kromem@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

It's the key ideological problem with the book. Rand was right that people do not inherently owe anyone else the fruits of their labor, but wrong about who was holding the world on their shoulders. It wasn't the handful of elite, but the masses without whom the elite would be living in caves and running from bears.

Who is John Galt? We the people are.

And yes, throughout history pretty much every authoritarian regime ultimately collapses or sends their country back decades in progress by not knowing that lesson.

Yet it never seems to actually be learned.

[–] hpca01@programming.dev 2 points 11 months ago

They'll come out of the woods and start claiming he wasn't a true libertarian.

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[–] TheDoozer@lemmy.world 115 points 11 months ago (3 children)

From everything I've heard about the election in Argentina, it was the meeting of "Anything is better than this" and "it can always get worse." The former won, and proved the latter correct.

[–] MarcoPOLO@sh.itjust.works 14 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Argentina needs shock therapy to realize milei is a dumbass

[–] loutr@sh.itjust.works 9 points 11 months ago (1 children)

That's what I thought about the US and Trump, yet here we are...

[–] EnderMB@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

We had the same in the UK with Brexit and Boris. We assumed that because everything is shit, backing people looking to do drastic changes that experts agreed was horrific was worth it. It wasn't, and now people are even poorer...

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[–] JustMy2c@lemm.ee 7 points 11 months ago

No, the current policies are just getting reality and practice closer together.

IRL their money was ALREADY devalued soooooo much, he didn't do anything to change that, just adjusted it to reality.

Subsidies on imported oil is CRAZY for a bankrupt country. YOU GUYS HAVE NOT UNDERSTOOD WHAT IT'S LIKE TO HAVE DECADES OF 100% OR MORE INFLATION PER YEAR.

[–] Maruki_Hurakami@lemm.ee 2 points 11 months ago

Perfect summary

[–] RedditWanderer@lemmy.world 99 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Milei — who has been described as an anarchocapitalist — set out to reduce the government’s involvement and oversight in many aspects of Argentina’s economy, including announcing that he would privatize many state-owned companies, would decrease labor protections and remove regulations that limit the amount of agricultural and productive land that can be owned by foreign companies.

Argentina going full GOP

[–] test113@lemmy.world 38 points 11 months ago (1 children)

RIP Argentina. I don't know the situation that led to this, but man, that sounds real, real bad for the average Argentine people.

[–] DeadHorseX@lemmy.world 22 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Here's one bit of context. Under the other candidate, the one this guy Milei ran against, who was the economic minister of the previous government, in September inflation reached 124%.

In case you were wondering why Milei won.

You also need to know the bigger history of Argentina's last century of economic decline.

Argentina is taught as a case study in undergraduate economics courses in 'how not to manage an economy'.

The Economist have a good video on the current crisis (Why is Argentina’s economy such a mess? ) and this one about the broader trend since the 1900s/10s.

[–] test113@lemmy.world 4 points 11 months ago (2 children)

Thank you for the information sir!

Holy yes, that's a whole lot to unpack here. I understand the situation a bit better now. What a shitty choice for an election xd

On the plus side, I understand the Argentinean memes now that pop up then and there—their game is on point. (South American/Latin American meme culture, in general, is on top of things and much more represented among all age groups.) Kudos to them, still keeping humor alive despite the situation.

[–] DeadHorseX@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago

Yeah it's a nasty choice. I legit think it was: guy who already screwed the economy (100% chance of things getting worse), guy who's madder than a box of badgers but wants to try something different (99.9% chance of things getting worse), so let's hope for that 0.01%.

[–] OhmsLawn@lemmy.world 2 points 11 months ago

To amplify,

Economics Explained

Patrick Boyle

I've been tangentially following Argentina for a couple of decades, lived there for a few months in 05. I started out really passionate about the situation there. These days , all I can do is shake my head.

[–] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 13 points 11 months ago

Argentinian should just bear it for a bit until multinational corporations swoop in and buy various assets dirt-cheap. Imagine all the future profits! /s

[–] qevlarr@lemmy.world 39 points 11 months ago

Fuck around and find out. I'm so sorry for everyone who was duped by libertarians pretending they will do anything for regular people and not just the wealthy shareholders, everyone who was held back by economic sanctions in a war against 'muh socialism', and all those who saw the obvious coming but were dragged into it by the other rubes. This is going to suck. I hope the protests will work

[–] Dio@lemy.lol 34 points 11 months ago (1 children)
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[–] Maggoty@lemmy.world 31 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Oh joy. Skyrocketing rent combined with plummeting wages.

This isn't going to destroy their economy at all...

[–] Fades@lemmy.world 28 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

That’s a right wing populist figure for you.

[–] intelshill@lemmy.ca 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Can this guy step down yet?

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[–] JustMy2c@lemm.ee 3 points 11 months ago

Protests of FREE LOADING PROFITEERS, yeah.

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