By John Livingston
May 28, 2024

Javier Milei is a rock star.

As a teen, the president of Argentina performed in a Rolling Stones cover band.

Today, he loads enormous venues like Buenos Aires’ renowned 80,400-seat Luna Park, having progressed into a powerful political force, blending the magnetism of a charismatic leader with the financial ideologies of a popular free-market supporter.

Other than that, Milei, a former economics teacher himself, is more free-market than Friedman, in theory, a minimum of.

He is a dedicated follower of the widely known Austrian financial expert Ludwig von Mises, who strongly believes in free-market principles.

Milei has released a brand-new book entitled “Capitalism, Socialism, and the Neoclassical Trap” as a tribute to Mises’ influential work “Human Action,” which commemorates its 75th anniversary this year. The Buenos Aires International Book Fair due to his decreases in government arts funding, Milei presented his book at Luna Park.

Outfitted in a long leather jacket yet wearing a tie, his collared shirt untucked, Milei was a nerd gone wild, belting out a hard-rock number called “Panic Show” by a band named La Renga before launching into an econ lecture.

While it may seem disappointing, Milei’s method of political economy is highly rooted in “anarcho-capitalism,” and it is acquiring supporters even among Argentinians who have actually traditionally counted on their federal government’s various aids.

Reporters for The Guardian spoke to one business person at Milei’s May 23 rock concert/book launch/political rally who called the president’s slashing of transportation aids “directly destructive to my activity” yet who still believed “we must finish the economic cleanup– we can’t keep living a lie.”

Milei’s election in 2023 scrambled the conventional wisdom of North American pundits, who assumed populism had to be hostile to free-market principles.

Yet here was an ardent capitalist ascending to power in the land of Juan and Evita Peron, a duo whose big-government economic nationalism was presumed to be a blueprint for the populist right.

For his part, Milei makes obvious of his affection for Donald Trump– for what he calls Trump’s “fight versus socialism”– and posed with him for a photo op at CPAC last February.

Milei’s not the only evidence that populism and libertarianism can be allies instead of enemies. 

The Libertarian Party shocked a lot of libertarians who are against populism by welcoming Trump as a speaker at their nationwide convention. Could this be a scenario where outsiders are joining?

Milei and Trump represent a repudiation of the old management class in their nations.

Those leaders were Peronists in Argentina; here, they were Clinton Democrats and Bush Republicans.

Outsiders attacking the political facility might be expected to have a similar attitude– a rock ‘n’ roll attitude of defiance, ready to shock and offend.

Nevertheless, a more profound link exists in between unlimited economic systems and opposition to mainstream governance.

The uprising versus taxes that began with California’s Proposition 13 in 1978 foreshadowed Reagan’s triumph in the 1980 election, marking the start of the Reagan transformation rooted in free-market ideals.

Although lots of intellectuals who now connect themselves to populist causes find economics to be a “miserable science”– one that casts doubt on their power to conserve the nation through policy brainpower– free-market economics recommends numerous excellent reasons that voters turn populist.

The phenomenon of inflation has the result of aligning the ideologies of free-market supporters with the user-friendly actions of populist citizens.

According to Milei, as stated in a current Time interview, inflation is equivalent to a sneaky burglary of one’s funds. In essence, flooding the market with recently printed currency is a kind of deceptiveness, similar to counterfeiting or deceptive activity, which ultimately lessens the value of individuals’ money.

Some individuals who have lost financial support still support Milei, similar to how certain populist voters in the U.S. are not looking for handouts. They want fairness, not a brand-new government program.

The expression “No tax without representation” exemplifies populist aspect of libertarianism and the libertarian element of populism.

The American Revolution wasn’t practically high taxes– which weren’t high by today’s standards.

It had to do with the reality that the taxing authority came from an elite that wasn’t accountable to the people.

The American colonists didn’t hate King George III, not initially.

But they demanded control over their own financial destiny, for much better or even worse.