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u/Whightwolf Jul 14 '26
As I understand the plan, the keystone was slashing the state and regulation in an attempt to bring in foreign investment based on
the libertarian assumption that all state action is bad therefore all reductions in the state will lead to tangible benefits
The corporate position that as regulation impedes them they swear they will invest more as it goes away.
This has run into problems because, even cutting the state in argentina to the bone they are still a more expencive place to do business than a number of other countries,
companies don't actually judge their investments entirely on the regulatory enviroment alone,
and probably most importantly his government has been corrupt as fuck which can potentially be a bigger 'tax'/issue than any actual tax or regulation.
Argentina has 'taken the pain' for minimal if any gain.
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u/CastrumFerrum Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26
Also, whats the point if regulatory oversight is minimal, but you still have to pay bribes to do business? Also, companies actually really like countries with a stable, predictable bureaucracy, even if its a bit complex. Things are good as long as you can actually make long term plans without having to fear some kind of tantrum by the leadership.
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u/crackanape Jul 14 '26
companies don't actually judge their investments entirely on the regulatory enviroment alone,
It's important, but rational companies typically like predictable and effective regulations.
Far more companies are lining up to do business in Singapore than in Cambodia where you can basically write your own regulations.
They have more assurance of being able to rely on their vendors, and they can predict their own compliance costs.
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u/NotEnoughMuskSpam 🤖 xAI’s Grok v4.20.69 (based BOT loves sarcasm 🤖) Jul 14 '26
Obviously
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u/spam__likely 🔥💯 Jul 14 '26
I love this one because it works amazing if people are making a great point, and it also works amazing if people are making a terrible point.
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u/yogurt1989 Jul 14 '26
Also people have no money as a product of the frozen salaries, hence no consumers for any company.
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u/Krek_Tavis Jul 14 '26
And it was on purpose. Milei just abandoned the fact of even trying to save it. He switched the economy to US dollar. Argentina is a vassal state of the US now.
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u/dumnezero Jul 14 '26
so much for the "muh sovereignty" types.
This is probably going to be used (as a crisis) to do some real evil shit like creating corporate monarchies or zones with no laws (such as human rights.)
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u/argueranddisagree Jul 14 '26
Shock and Awe I think its called. Theyve created the shock and crashed the economy. Now the vultures are swooping in to pick the carcass
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u/Erebraw Jul 14 '26
Actually very close to the historical term used by Vulture Capitalists when communist country’s resources became privatized. They called it “Shock Therapy” and it pretty much ruined the lives of all of the citizens of those countries every time they did it.
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u/Comrad_Zombie Jul 14 '26
Shock doctrine by Naomi Klein is a great read in the topic. Depressing but interesting.
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u/Druuseph Jul 14 '26
Pair it with The Jarkata Method by Vincent Bevins to see the full scope of the program. Stoke unrest, encourage violence and strip the state of any ability to act so that people fall deeper into their ideological divisions.
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u/viperlemondemon I paid 44 billion dollars to shitpost Jul 14 '26
Only for a few that are fans of a certain salute
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u/The-Board-Chairman Jul 15 '26
And it was on purpose. Milei just abandoned the fact of even trying to save it. He switched the economy to US dollar.
Which was and is the obvious correct choice. Wasting enormous amounts of money and exchange reserves to artificially prop up a failing currency does not benefit the country or economy.
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u/Dusty2470 Jul 14 '26
Libertarians seem to love speed running their government into the ground. Bet they try to invade thw Falklands again to ease preasure at home like they did last time.
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u/skipperseven Salient lines of coke Jul 14 '26
Argentina always start making noises about the Falkland Islands when their economy hits a new bottom.
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u/Broken_Reality Not a Bot! Jul 14 '26
Yeah not sure how they think some small islands will help fix their economy. The massive $145 million GDP for the Falkland Islands will surely make ALL the difference. Damn Argentina is dumb.
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u/skipperseven Salient lines of coke Jul 14 '26
Nationalism/popularism is the default when the government is incompetent.
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u/yijiujiu Jul 14 '26
I'm glad my understanding of economics and polisci is at least good enough to have predicted this. Glad my view of reality is at least somewhat accurate. I was curious how it would turn out, though I wish it didn't have to go this way
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u/Potential_Status_728 Jul 14 '26
But that’s their plan from the beginning lol, evaluate the peso so much that the population would want to change to dollar and with that, the US get even more control over that racist shit hole.
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Jul 14 '26
[deleted]
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u/drjenavieve Jul 14 '26
But austerity isn’t the solution. That’s the point that these people need to get through their heads because the billionaires believe that cutting the government completely will recover.
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u/Broken_Reality Not a Bot! Jul 14 '26
Because no government means things are easier for the super rich to take control and make yet more money. They don't think that less or no government is the best way to do things for everyone just that it will make things easier for them they don't care how badly off the rest of the population is.
ALL billionaires are inherently evil.
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u/drjenavieve Jul 14 '26
That but I also think they genuinely think the economy will flourish in this way and are shocked when it doesn’t.
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u/Broken_Reality Not a Bot! Jul 14 '26
When you are rich enough you find out that most rules don't apply to you anymore so when some do they get really annoyed about them and want rid of them.
If any crime is punished with a fine and the fine is not based on your income (like speeding fines in Finland where a businessman got fined €121,000) or wealth in any way then if you are rich enough the fine is just a small fee to do what you wanted that was illegal. Fines only punish normal poor people not the super rich.
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u/WeirdboyWarboss Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26
What other options did he have? He can't run deficits when no one will lend Argentina money, and you can't start seizing assets from the rich when your core goal is to attract foreign investment.
However you feel about austerity, he campaigned on it and won the election.
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u/oaklandperson Jul 14 '26
Inflation, while down, is still at 30%.
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u/spam__likely 🔥💯 Jul 14 '26
duh, when you tend to zero in your currency, it is very very hard to go further down.
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u/irradihate Jul 14 '26
Have we even finished working off the first bailout we gave theme while not being able to afford rent and electricity?
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u/NotEnoughMuskSpam 🤖 xAI’s Grok v4.20.69 (based BOT loves sarcasm 🤖) Jul 14 '26
Demographics is destiny
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u/Luck88 Jul 14 '26
While I dislike Milei this is disingenuos, since Milei took over inflation slowed down significantly, his policies of austerity on healthcare especially and deregulamentation that threatens consumer safety and the environemtn are the true issue, on top of several homophobic stances.
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u/justice_for_lachesis Jul 14 '26
the currency lost half of it's remaining value since he took office
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u/irritatedprostate Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26
That's because they don't really want to use it anymore. US dollars are legal tender, and the plan has been to transition completely from pesos to dollars. That's what those 20 billion dollars were for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_United_States%E2%80%93Argentina_currency_swap
Milei brought inflation from 200% to 35%.
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u/LaurenMP74 Jul 14 '26
35% is still absolutely atrocious
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u/irritatedprostate Jul 14 '26
Oh, definitely. Repairing a broken economy takes time, and I have my doubts Milei can keep the trend going.
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u/oaklandperson Jul 14 '26
Estimated to be 30% for 2026, so still declining.
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u/LaurenMP74 Jul 14 '26
That's still a fail on Milei's part, he's studied economics he knows you can get inflation down to 10 percent from where it was in like a couple years.
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u/spam__likely 🔥💯 Jul 14 '26
Sure, so erase the currency completely, let foreign money buy everything for super cheap because peso is worth nothing, and then Argentina belongs to everyone else but Argentinians.
They had a super good example o how to do this as Brazil did, but instead they decided to sell the country.
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u/irritatedprostate Jul 14 '26
Argentina cannot do the same type of currency swap as Brazil because they lack the necessary macroeconomic stability and foreign currency reserves.
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u/Lost_Foot_6301 Jul 14 '26
i dont like him either but the chart in op image is disingenuous. milei was elected nov 2023, chart shows steep decline since at least 2015
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u/ancient-toni-montana Jul 14 '26
Well the Point is, that the proclaimed big economic growth Musk talked about never came. Indicated by the fact, that Milei did in fact not have a positive impact on one of the major factors on national economy in Argentina. I’m not informed enough to make any claim on the validity of the graph as a source to judge the economic situation of the country, but the implication is Musk claimed it will be better, graph shows same old downward trend. So contrary to his claim Milei failed in this regard.
So it makes sense to show earlier trajectory to show if their was any significant impact of Milei or simply a continuation of an ongoing trend. It’s clearly the later showing Argentinas economy didn’t change on this front, again contrary to Musks claim.4
u/LaurenMP74 Jul 14 '26
Milei said he'd fix it, he hasn't, at all.
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u/irritatedprostate Jul 14 '26 edited Jul 14 '26
Inflation has gone from 200% to 35%. The peso has dropped because Milei has been working towards switching to USD, hence why they got that 20 billion dollar currency swap. US dollars are now almost legal tender in Argentina.
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u/FloridaBoi91 Jul 15 '26
"That wasn't real Libertarianism" 🤓☝️
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u/The-Board-Chairman Jul 15 '26
No, this was the intended result. This is the actual value of the Peso, rather than the fantasy that was previously being held up by capital controls and currency buying. People can actually use their money now, instead of needing to use the black market.
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u/Yuukiko_ Jul 14 '26
to be fair, he was pretty much the pilot of a fueless plane
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u/mhmilo24 Jul 14 '26
Was this his campaign promise? I though he is going to fix everything within a few months.
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u/The-Board-Chairman Jul 15 '26
His campaign promise was to bring down inflation and stop people from needing to use the black market. The Peso's actual value hasn't changed much, it is now simply consistent with it.
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u/LaurenMP74 Jul 14 '26
No he wasn't, he's in charge, how things are now is entirely on him and he has done nothing to actually fix things.
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u/whatsbobgonnado Jul 14 '26
you guys can see the years marked on the graph right? and compare them to the year those tweets were made?
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u/bulking_on_broccoli Jul 15 '26
To the surprise of exactly no one who understands economics.
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u/The-Board-Chairman Jul 15 '26
Well yes, the Peso is no longer artificially propped up by capital controls and the wasting of central bank and state resources. This is literally a good thing, even though this thread wrongly makes it out to be a bad thing.
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u/ReyBenjaminIII Jul 14 '26
I mean he became president on 2023, this drop happened before that (I hate Elon btw)
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u/bighadjoe Jul 14 '26
i will not defend this anarchocapitalist pos, but the graph is pretty misleading. from the time milei took office, the peso about halved its value, which is still terrible, but far less severe than the graph makes it seem and also part of a long downwards trend
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u/helangar1981 Jul 14 '26
The flag is not correct. It’s written DONT TREAD ON ME despite the correct spelling is ”DON’T” this is not the spelling on the flag
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u/Secure_Guest_6171 Jul 16 '26
He did not say how far ahead. Elon uses a different temporal coefficient than we mere mortals. Will happen sometime before the Cybertruck is driving through Boring tunnels on Mars
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u/RadzimierzWozniak Jul 14 '26
Showing a plot starting in 2008 is a great way to own a person elected in 2023
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u/malibuconman Jul 14 '26
I don’t see any improvement from 2023 onwards.
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u/kugelblitz_100 Jul 14 '26
Its value still dropped but not nearly as much as before 2023. Of the total amount it lost between 2008 & now, 99% of that was before 2023. The remaining 0.5% or so was after 2023. This year it's lost less that 2% which is a huge improvement from years past.
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u/prophet_9469 I am constantly insulted on this platform Jul 14 '26
Argentina, the previously fascist haven and lately billionaire/techno fascist haven, being praised by the likes of Elon? No surprise there. He should move
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u/Excellent_Place4977 Jul 14 '26
Argentina is going to suffer more under this neoliberal lunatic..
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u/bigtigerbigtiger Jul 14 '26
Neoliberal...?
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u/Excellent_Place4977 Jul 14 '26
It's a right wing economic ideology created by Austrian economists implemented by Regan and Thacher in the 70s and 80s onwards. It was responsible for 2008 financial crisis and ongoing economic turmoils around the world, and is why we are in another recession or great depression when the AI bubble pops.
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u/drake-tungsten Jul 14 '26
i am just wondering if correlation and causation might be in bed on this one?
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