The president of Argentina, Javier Milei, spoke at the World Economic Forum meeting at Davos with some clarity:
"The Western world is in danger. It is in danger, because those who are supposed to have to defend the values of the West are coopted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism, and thereby to poverty...." he said.
"The main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism. We're here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world. Rather, they are the root cause," he went on. "...Free enterprise capitalism is not just the only possible system to end world poverty, but also that it's the only morally desirable system to achieve this."
"They say that capitalism is evil because it's individualistic and that collectivism is good because it is altruistic, of course with the money of others, so they therefore advocate for social justice," he said. "The problem is that social justice is not just, and it doesn't contribute either to the general well-being. Quite on the contrary, it's an intrinsically unfair idea, because it's violent. It's unjust because the state is financed through tax, and taxes are collected coercively....Which means that the state is financed through coercion and that the higher the tax burden, the higher the coercion and the lower the freedom."
He goes on to cite Israel Kirzner, the great Austrian-school economist and Orthodox Jewish rabbi who teaches at NYU, about the "market discovery process."
"If the state punishes capitalists when they are successful and gets in the way of the discovery process, they will destroy their incentives, and the consequence is they will produce less, the pie will be smaller, and this will harm society as a whole," he said.
"Collectivism, by inhibiting these discovery processes...ends up binding the hands of entrepreneurs and prevents them from offering better goods and services at a better price," he said.
Milei criticizes what he calls "neoclassical economic theory," with its call for regulations to address market failures. "The market is a mechanism for social cooperation where you voluntarily exchange ownership rights. Therefore, based on this definition, talking about a market failure, is an oxymoron. There are no market failures. If transactions are voluntary, the only context in which there can be a market failure, is if there is coercion. And the only one that is able to coerce generally is the state, which holds a monopoly on violence. Consequently, if someone considers that there is a market failure, I would suggest that they check to see if there is state intervention involved."
Milei describes himself as a libertarian and also makes a brief swipe at what he calls "the bloody abortion agenda."
"We have come here today to invite the rest of the countries in the Western World to get back on the path of prosperity, economic freedom, limited government, and unlimited respect for private property, essential elements for economic growth," he said.
He had a message for businesspeople. "Do not be intimidated...You are social benefactors. You are heroes...Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral. If you make money, it is because you offer a better product at a better price, thereby contributing to general well-being. Do not surrender to the advance of the state. The state is not the solution. The state is the problem itself. You are the true protagonists of this story ... Long live freedom, dammit!"