The famous Oxford liberal thinker Isaiah Berlin liked to quote the Greek poet Archilochus, from the 7th century BC, who, in one of the few fragments that have been preserved, states: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows only one and great”, to thus divide the eminent people into two groups. One, the hedgehogs, is made up of those who, like Javier Milei, subordinate absolutely everything to a key idea. On the other hand, foxes are more interested in details than anything else and tend to adapt without problems to the prevailing codes in the places where they are.
This is one reason why, feeling overwhelmed by the socioeconomic disaster that, thanks to the myopia that characterizes them, they themselves had contributed to causing, so many members of the national political class have been willing to leave it in the hands of a character who , just a couple of years ago, was taken for an extravagant eccentric with outlandish ideas. However, although many are aware that Milei is right when he insists that public spending must be reduced and resigned to months, perhaps years, of Spartan austerity, with few exceptions they cannot help but try to take advantage of the circumstances for their own benefit. To the frustration of the hard core of the government that wants to act more quickly because, he insists, hyperinflation is lurking, the political foxes continue to delay taking measures that he believes are essential.
Many politicians who question Milei’s impetuosity, in addition to the nac&pop reactionaries and their temporary friends from unionism who want to prolong as long as possible a status quo that is clearly unsustainable, say they feel offended when official spokespersons accuse them of defending their own businesses or, in other words, Milei’s words, of seeking bribes. They swear that what worries them most is the well-being of the people that the libertarian wants to sacrifice for the sake of an ideological project. It is difficult for those who think this way to take seriously the gigantic crisis that was generated by decades of fiscal irresponsibility that culminated with the crazy management of Sergio Massa in which, with the consent of Cristina Kirchner, he treated the country’s economy as an electoral fund.
If it were only a sports competition, the many who do not like Milei would have good reasons to celebrate the daily setbacks that the government is suffering, which, due to how difficult it is for them to find suitable cadres not contaminated by “caste”, is still trying to form, but it happens that there is much more at stake than the fate of the character who best knew how to take advantage of the contempt that so many feel for the bulk of the national political class. It is bad that despite those who are celebrating how difficult it has been to obtain legislative approval of what remains of the famous “omnibus law” and betting that it will be undermined by a new league of governors, the social, economic, and cultural crisis and morality that is tearing apart the Argentina we know is not a libertarian invention. It’s very real.
Unless the government, with the help of those who understand that it would be collectively suicidal to attempt to continue as before, manages to subdue it, many will soon look back nostalgically on the current hardships as typical of a period of relative prosperity. Is Milei exaggerating when she talks about the calamities that would occur if she does not deactivate the explosive inheritance that the previous government gave her? Although some seem convinced that the crisis is far from being as serious as she says, for now at least the majority accepts that, before beginning to recover, the economy will have to undergo a very painful adjustment. From the point of view of those who take the libertarian’s harsh messages very seriously, those who prefer to minimize the dangers to which he alludes are cynics concerned with their own corporatist interests.
It was largely thanks to his status as a political novice that Milei was able to move to the Casa Rosada, but what is a merit in the eyes of his supporters is hindering his management. In politics, uninhibited sincerity can be more dangerous than hypocrisy, but Milei, who is prone to making one unforced error after another, prides himself on his willingness to always say what he believes, and many who would like to help him fear being publicly vilified by saying something that, for reasons that are difficult to understand, gives the president or his senior associates a pretext to excommunicate them.
Even so, the manifest weaknesses of the government that Milei is assembling should not distract us from what is fundamental: “the model” that was improvised and tweaked by a series of governments obsessed with the short term is no longer viable. It is therefore urgent that it be replaced by another radically different one, one that, despite the dismay of many, will need to have more in common with the one proposed by the libertarian than with those imagined by the Kirchnerists, the union heavyweights or the moderates of the UCR.
Milei warns that, without drastic reforms, Argentina will soon be devastated by an economic implosion of enormous dimensions that could impoverish ninety percent or more of the population. His opponents, including some who do not fear chaos because they trust in their own ability to turn the misery of others into a very valuable political asset, have chosen to treat what is happening as a game of chicken; From his point of view, it would be much better to push the country and its inhabitants over the abyss towards which it is sliding than it would be to allow a president they describe as “rightist” to save him such a catastrophe.
The libertarian government will not be able to survive the storms that it will soon face without the determined support of the many professional politicians who, after having thought about it, agree that it would be in the country’s interest to make a bonfire of thousands of perverse bureaucratic rules that only motivate problems or What is worse, they provide “jobs” that serve to ensure a good living for unscrupulous individuals like those who managed to make poor gnocchi a source of income. Likewise, it would seem that fewer and fewer politicians refuse to recognize that today there is no valid alternative to liberal capitalism, although in their opinion – and that of virtually all their counterparts in the developed world -, they would have to be accompanied by an extensive social safety net.
There may be many among such political foxes who belong to “the caste” that Milei continues to denounce, but this does not mean that it is in his best interest to continue treating them as outcasts or congenitally mentally deficient people incapable of understanding what is happening. Without his support, he will fail, which would be a disaster not only for him personally but also for the country, which would then risk falling back into the hands of gangs of inept and phenomenally corrupt populists.
Argentina has had to become the scene of an ambitious revolution promoted by a fussy and monothematic man – a hedgehog, Berlin would say – who heads a government that is structurally very weak and that, of course, is forced to respect limits. constitutional principles that revolutionaries of other kinds have never hesitated to transgress. Finding reasons to oppose him or mock his claims is extremely easy, since few days go by without Milei uttering some atrocity that, in the mouth of another president, would unleash an avalanche of fierce criticism or, as has happened with some frequency, would have international repercussions. undesirable. In this area, he is as disruptive as the American Donald Trump, although his own ideology is very different from that of the person who in November could once again be president of the still reigning superpower.
Milei’s rise was due less to his own merits than to the reduced drawing power of his rivals. The same can be said of the dissemination of the creed that he made his own. After suffering the ravages caused by the collectivist voluntarism of the Kirchnerists and feeling betrayed by the less than good results of the gradualism of Together for Change, the majority came to the conclusion that the only viable option that was still standing was the one proposed. with unusual vehemence for the libertarian. Fortunately, it was a version, perhaps a bit extreme, of the same formula that all currently prosperous democracies adopted long ago, so that, unlike schemes proposed by other groups that dream of remodeling the country, it is not merely a fantasy of the kind that usually attracts those who dream of a radically different world.
Needless to say, Milei has quite a bit in common with such utopians. He hopes that, once the economy is stabilized, it can build on the basis thus assumed the very rich libertarian world power that it has promised us. However, if she manages to completely curb inflation and eliminate a multitude of obstructive regulations, it would be unlikely that society would ask her to continue moving towards other goals she has set. After all, if the country were given a strong peso backed by a properly functioning economy, it would make no sense to insist on dollarization, a proposal that does not inspire any enthusiasm in the North American financial world.
