Milei lays it on the line at Davos - and the elite sneer

 

Daniel Hannan analyzes Argentine president Javier Milei's presentation at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and the audience's reactions.

While the WEF does not have a unified party line, delegates at its smugfest have a great deal in common. They like regulations, which are designed by and for people like them and which, though they are dressed up as being about consumer protection or greenery, end up keeping out the competition.

They approve of government task-forces and advisory agencies – indeed, they meet in Davos partly to lobby each other for jobs on such bodies. They love supranational institutions, and regard sovereignty as dangerous, atavistic and, worst of all, low-status. In short, they want a world run by sensible, educated, moderate sorts like themselves, with minimal interference from national electorates.

Milei spent 40 minutes telling them how, in theory and in practice, state intervention tends to make people poorer.

. . .

Because he dislikes state interference, Milei is dismissed as a loon. He is “radical” (New York Times), “extreme” (El País), “populist” (Le Monde), “far-Right” (BBC). Yet the classical liberalism he espouses is as undoctrinaire as any world-view can be ... People call Milei an ideologue, but he wants to have less control. His reforms, which have mobilised Argentina’s Peronist establishment against him, mainly involve politicians surrendering their privileges.

He wants to give up the power to set prices, incomes and rents; to end state ownership of commercial companies; to let sports tickets be resold; to allow foreign airlines to compete on Argentine routes; to scrap tariffs and export controls; to permit driverless cars; to cut taxes; to abolish the central bank.

. . .

I have spent time with Milei. He comes across in private as he does in public: clever, demotic, mercurial, driven, eccentric. I worry about his ability to withstand the Peronist backlash. But I have no doubt that, if he is allowed to implement his programme, he will reverse a century of decline in Argentina.

The fact that the guardians of correct opinion in Europe see him as beyond the pale tells you everything you need to know about why their countries are not doing better.

There's more at the link.

The old proverb tells us that "The best government is that which governs least".  That applies to national, regional and local governments, and also to the governing bodies of institutions such as universities, etc.  I think it's not coincidence that the most economically overstretched, vulnerable and corrupt state governments are also those with the biggest bureaucracies.  The biggest, most expensive education systems we are bloated with staff and rules and regulations, and spend tens of thousands of dollars per year on each of their students - but have growing failure rates and academic incompetence to show for it.  The return on investment simply isn't there.

A more recent example would be COVID-19.  How many billions of dollars have been spent on hurriedly developed "vaccines" that aren't vaccines at all, in the classical definition of a vaccine, and which not only don't work, but are medically proven to bring with them a vastly increased rate of injuries and illness among the vaccinated?  Notice who's still pushing the vaxxes?  It's the medical establishment, tied to the political establishment with bonds of money and influence and power.  The more government interferes, the greater the problems it causes;  and the more government-funded organizations interfere, the greater the power they funnel back into government's hands.

As for the real, urgent problems of the world that the WEF is supposedly addressing at Davos?  This headline caught my attention:

WEF Declares War on Coffee:

'No More Than 2 or 3 Cups Each Per Year'

Oh, really?  This is supposed to solve the problems of the world - drinking (much) less coffee?

One wishes they'd listen to President Milei . . . but I suppose that's as likely as the WEF delegates giving up their own coffee for climate's sake.  It's us, the plebs of the world, whom they want to give up coffee.  We can't seriously expect them to do so!  They're important!  They need their coffee to help them decide how we need to be ruled today!

Peter