How To Make a Government Disappear Completely
One deficit... one debt... one onerous tax at a time...
“If the bulk of the public were really convinced of the illegitimacy of the State, if it were convinced that the State is nothing more nor less than a bandit gang writ large, then the State would soon collapse to take on no more status or breadth of existence than another Mafia gang.”
~ Murray N. Rothbard, from The Ethics of Liberty (1982)
Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Cefalonia, Greece...
Don’t look now, gentle reader, but here’s more good news from the (other) End of the World...
After having committed to a radical “zero deficit” policy, Argentina’s libertarian president, Javier “El Loco” Milei, just delivered yet another month of unfashionable economic sanity.
Here’s the update, from the nation’s Ministry of Economy (translated):
MAY REGISTERS ANOTHER PRIMARY AND FINANCIAL SURPLUS
In May 2025, the National Public Sector recorded a primary surplus of $1,696,917 million and a financial surplus of $662,123 million.
Thus, in the first five months of the year, a financial surplus of approximately 0.3% of GDP and a primary surplus of approximately 0.8% of GDP were accumulated, confirming the National Government's commitment to the fiscal anchor, a fundamental pillar of the economic program implemented starting in December 2023.
The latest surplus is the twelfth consecutive month in the black, representing an accumulated 1.45% of GDP.
For those of us unaccustomed to espying such rare birds in the wild, here’s what a primary fiscal surplus looks like in graphical form...
(NB: The astute reader will note that Milei took office in December 2023, right on the bottom step of that healthy looking staircase on the righthand side of the graph.)
Vanishing Inflation
Concurrently, though by no means unrelated, Argentina’s Public Enemy #1, inflation, has been further beaten back into its cage. The latest data from the national institute of statistics, INDEC, shows inflation slowing to its lowest level since the economy ground to a standstill during The Covid, back in the darkened days of 2020.
Even establishment newswires were obliged to admit the inconvenient truth. Here’s one such outlet, revising “expert” estimates downward like a toddler swallows Brussels sprouts...
BUENOS AIRES, June 12 (Reuters) - Argentina's monthly inflation rate slowed to its lowest level in more than five years in May, official data showed on Thursday, adding momentum to President Javier Milei's drive to rid the country of chronically soaring prices.
Prices during the month rose just 1.5% from the month before, national statistics agency INDEC said, well below the 2.0% estimate from analysts polled by Reuters.
Though still eye-wateringly high, the annualized rate of 43.5% is down from 47.3% the previous month... and waaay down from the official high, 289.4%, recorded last April.
Often called the “sneaky tax,” inflation most impacts those clinging to the lower rungs of the economic ladder; poor folk about whom politicians pretend to care... but whom they hope never to have to meet on the street.
Coming in below the average rate of inflation were things these real world people tend to care about, such as home appliances (1.4%), clothing and footwear (0.9%), food and beverages, non-alcoholic (0.5%) and transport (0.4%). Overall, the trend is hard to ignore, even for Big State bootlickers...
But let us back up for a moment and ask a question rarely heard during the Age of Experts: Why?
Why are we interested in the goings on down at the End of the World, anyway... besides the fact that we happen to be part of the 0.6% of the planet’s population that actually lives there?
Good question.
The Road to Caracas
When we first began visiting Argentina, back in 2010, it was an certified economic basket case, well on the road to Caracas... if not Harare. Moreover, its political landscape was essentially one giant crime scene, such that you could have drawn a chalk outline around the entire barrio of Congreso and nary caught a pure heart or clean conscience in the undue process.
But we didn’t move there for economic opportunity nor for purposes political. As long-time readers know, when it comes to being into politics, we’re mostly into being out of them. Rather, we decamped to Buenos Aires (from Taipei) for the Belle Epoch architecture and the copious bookstores, for unhurried, postprandial libations and the artful culture of the sobremesa.
Lifestyle, in other words. The kind that privileges private affairs over public folly, the individual over the collective, community over congress.
Having been made to endure three-quarters of a century of economic innumeracy, bread and circuses of the kind that would make a Roman senator blush, there was barely a scam, scheme or swindle to which the long-suffering Argentines had not bared sorry witness. As such, they’ve come to know what’s important in this brief life, and how to celebrate it... even as the country around them goes to Hades in a Hermes hand basket. (More about CFK in future Notes…)
Imagine our shock, then, when of all places on the planet, Argentina was recently converted into a giant, open air experiment in libertarianism, where the people elected a self-declared “enemy of the state” to slay the governmental dragon.
All that we had written about over so many years... fringy concepts like “balanced budgets,” “sound money,” “personal responsibility,” and so forth... was about to be put to the test.
We called it, with due rhetorical restraint, the “Greatest Political Experiment of Our Age.” And we bucked up for what promised to be an exciting ride.
Natural Laws
Of course, there were bound to be mistakes made along the way... errors in judgement and all-too-human oversights. If all’s fair in love and war, all’s cruelly unfair in the scrappy arena of bare-knuckled politics. Still, we exist in a world of imagined realities, where mankind’s stupidest ideas are writ large in capital cities and capitol buildings, from Buenos Aires to Washington DC, London to Ottawa to Sydney and beyond.
But we must live in the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. And we must recognize cause and effect where we see it. As the song goes, the politics bone is connected to the economics bone... the economics bone is connected to the real life bone. And that, dear reader, is what makes the Argentine experiment so very fascinating.
Here’s Javier Milei's spokesman, Manuel Adorni, explaining how to make a government disappear... one deficit, one debt, one onerous tax at a time:
“When there's a fiscal surplus and the printing press slows down, inflation plummets. It's natural for this to happen. The fundamental laws of economics dictate this.”
Casting their weary eyes across the world stage, some people yearn, misty-eyed, for the glory days of refined statesmen and dignified political leaders. But what they seek is a mirage, a fantastical phantasmagoria of shape shifting delusions. For one thing, politics is not dignified, just as socialism is not social and communism is not communal.
Rather, it is an uncommon thug’s business, full of pretense and charade which, when pulled away, finally reveals naught but brute violence and blunt force.
We do not want better politicians, slicker salesmen and craftier auto-prompt articulators... we want less of the degenerate bandits. We do not care for politics for politics sake, in other words... we care for it so that, one day, we won’t have to.
Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...
Cheers,
Joel Bowman
P.S. “But, but, but… without the government, who would…?”
We would, dear reader. Free people. The freed market. Those who express real world demand for whatever it is people fret over the government not doing. Education. Healthcare. Roads. Not putting razorblades in candy apples. (Turns out, it’s bad for repeat customers.)
Whatever the government does poorly, the market can do better, cheaper and (perhaps most important of all) with the consent of voluntary individuals.
This in mind, we’d like to extend a special thanks to all our Notes Members, whose generous support keeps the lights on and our laptop charged. It’s thanks to you we’re able to share the message of free markets, free minds and free people… now in all 50 US States and across 140 countries, from one End of the World to the other.
If you enjoy these musings and/or find them valuable, please do chip in for a membership. At less than 20 cents a day, we do our best to make it worth your pennies. Cheers!
I have nothing to say. Joel has said it all.
What a way to keep life simple . Thanks Joel.