"Heartless Libertarians"
When it comes to politics, less really is more...
“I believe that the State is a criminal association and that taxes are theft.”
~ Javier Milei at the Madrid Economic Forum, June 2025
Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Ohrid, Macedonia...
Caesar and the Optimates... Robespierre and the Jacobins... Putin and the Oligarchs...
There is nothing new about power and money falling out of favor. The case of the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and the world’s most powerful man, Donald Trump, is but the latest such divorce... but it will not be the last.
And now that words have been said which cannot be taken back... feelings have been hurt and egos bruised... it’s time to look forward.
Our advice to Mr. Musk – unsought and gratuitous – is to take his dough and head south of the border... all the way down to the End of the World. “Ancapistan,” as some (we) have taken to calling Argentina, is ground zero for free markets... and getting freer by the day. Musk and his money are sure to be treated well, or at least fairly.
For readers just joining us, Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, is a rare breed indeed. Alone among world leaders, he understands what his contemporaries either cannot comprehend or choose to willfully ignore: when it comes to politics and its grubby practitioners, less is always more.
It is not better politics, in other words... or “3D governmental chess”... but rather less government and more freedom, less regulation and more private transactions, less bureaucracy and public serpents, and more free minds and free people.
The Hard Truth
Since coming to office a year and a half ago, Milei’s administration has taken a giant chainsaw to the bloated leviathan that is the Argentine government... a writhing political apparatus that had spent the previous 75+ years stifling innovation, crushing commerce, destroying the currency and generally grinding its citizens into poverty.
No more, said Sr. Milei, who began his tenure in the Casa Rosada with a hard truth, telling supporters and detractors alike: “No hay plata” (there is no money).
Recognizing this rather inconvenient fact, something that leaders from DC to London, Ottawa to Canberra, Berlin to Brussels and beyond appear incapable of grasping, Milei aggressively pursued and ultimately implemented a “zero-deficit” agenda... the kind that Mr. Trump himself was passionately advocating not so very long ago.
Here’s the self-styled “King of Debt,” in his very own words...
Mr. Trump was right, of course, and millions of voters agreed... sending him to the nation’s capital to fulfill his promises to “drain the swamp” and rein in the country’s reckless spending. (The US national debt is set to surpass the $37 trillion mark in a few short months... while the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects it will hit $43 trillion by the 2029 budget showdown.)
What, then, are those very same voters to make of the following, from USA Today:
Trump agrees with longtime rival Elizabeth Warren on need to abolish the cap on US debt
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump announced he agrees with a longtime antagonist, Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, on the need to abolish the cap on the country’s borrowing.
The announcement marked a thaw in years-long criticism that Trump and Warren of Massachusetts have hurled at each other. The rare consensus came as Congress faces the need to raise the country's debt limit, a hurdle to approving an 1,100-page package of Trump's priorities for tax cuts, spending cuts, and border security.
No longer outraged with simply extending the debt ceiling... President Trump now wishes to abolish it altogether! Here he is again, on Truth Social:
I am very pleased to announce that, after all of these years, I agree with Senator Elizabeth Warren on SOMETHING. The Debt Limit should be entirely scrapped to prevent an Economic catastrophe.
His words, dear reader. Not ours.
Poca-Muskus
Whatever the outcome of this big top fiasco, none could claim the circus is not at least entertaining. Who would have thought, even two weeks ago, that we’d be witnessing a drama unfold in which Musk is out... and Pocahontas is in? Strange bedfellows, indeed.
Whether this is just a bit of post-breakup political promiscuity on Trump’s part... or more “3D chess,” we wait to find out...
Meanwhile, at the other End of the World, Milei continues delivering a master class in promises kept. Here he was, speaking at the Madrid Economic Forum in Spain last week:
“We took a zero-deficit policy. That is, we decided that in Argentina, there is no more fiscal deficit. Argentina is one of the five countries in the world that has no deficit in the financial line. We did it after 123 years, where nobody else did it. And we succeeded within the first month of the administration.
“And so, by the middle of last year, stage two of the program was concluded, that was the termination of money issuance [money printing]. Quasi-fiscal deficit was ended in Argentina. The Central Bank’s balance sheet was repaired. And the amount of money since has been fixed.
“One year later, the poverty fell to 35% [from 57%], meaning the ‘heartless libertarians,’ those of us who ‘have no heart,’ those of us who ‘have no empathy,’ who do ‘no deal with the poor,’ we lowered poverty by 22%. That is, we got 10 million people out of poverty.
“Boy do freedom ideas work well for all, and especially for those who have less.”
Sh*t Politicians
By taking from the takers (the political ‘caste’) and giving back to the makers (citizens in the private sector), Milei’s libertarian economy is roaring to life. During the first quarter of this year alone, Argentina’s GDP expanded at an annualized rate of 6%. And in the second quarter, it has accelerated, growing at a rate of 8%.
But what about all the fear and scaremongering in the media? The blind assertions that cutting government would result in chaos and “anarchy”? Again, from Milei’s address in Madrid...
“Give no credit to sh*t politicians who say that cutting leads to recession. We've made a cut of 15% of GDP. We made the cuts in the parasite, meaning the public sector. When you cut the public sector, the private sector expands itself.
“Today, our popularity levels are at levels higher than when we began. And if you take it from international consultants, it’s even much higher. Meaning, cutting does not result in a loss of popularity. If the cuts fall on the political caste, popularity grows, because it means giving more resources back to the people.
“We had very ambitious goals. They said they were impossible to achieve. And yet, today, after a year and a half, we have fulfilled all of our campaign goals.”
Month after month... quarter after quarter... year after year... the results are becoming impossible to ignore. Government is not the solution, it is the problem.
The future is free markets, free minds and free people... and for many, including the poorest among us, it cannot come too soon.
Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...
Cheers,
Joel Bowman
P.S. We are grateful here at Notes for the generous support of our members, who value independent writing and are happy to be part of the pushback against the mainstream media’s mono-messaging.
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How much is enough when it comes to government and how much is too much? I lived in smoggy Los Angeles in the fifties and sixties, when state government decided they could reduce smog by controlling automobile and other emissions. I was skeptical of their approach. Now it's hard to remember just how painful it could be when the smog was so bad I was choking and puffing riding my bicycle home from school.
Now state government wants to release water that is currently impounded behind dams so the Delta Smelt can live. I don't care about the Delta Smelt. But I did care about air quality enough to pay extra for a catalytic converter. And there is probably a Californian somewhere who is willing to release impounded water and destroy existing dams to save the Delta Smelt.
Was clean air really the responsibility of state government? Is conserving the Delta Smelt?
Everything the government undertakes requires funding. And it is the nature of a bureaucracy to expand its responsibility, then ask for more money. Limiting exhaust emissions proved to be beneficial, although it might not be as important where I live now in Ohio, because there is no ring of mountains around me to contain pollutants. But of course what was good for LA was soon important for the rest of the state, and then the entire USA.
That mentality fosters government intervention and growth, so that now any major project requires a whole range of studies to prove it will not damage the environment, or insult indigenous cultures, or stop us from seeing the stars. And the truth is, controls like environmental impact statements, now required of engineering projects, open the door to people who want to stop a project, either out of genuine concern for it's impact on some aspect of life or just plain NIMBYism.
And it all takes money. The kind of impact statement we all need is "does this government expenditure solve an existing problem or is it just something designed to garner some politician more votes?"
Great piece Joel. Thank you for exposing DJT's ability to change course without batting an eye. His 2013 tweet that as a Republican he is embarrassed that Congress would allow the debt ceiling to be raised. He is now pleased to support Elizabeth Warren on raising the debt limit. How can anyone take the man seriously? Elon Musk clearly does not. I expect a number of followers to lose faith in one who blows with the wind.
Milei is setting an example to the world of how Austrian Economics does and should work. Who will ignore him to their country's peril