Javier Milei: The Anti-Dictator

The pen is mightier than the chainsaw: a look at how Milei is dismantling Argentina's administrative state

(The Casa Rosada. Source: Getty Images)

Joel Bowman, with today’s Note From the End of the World...

“The omnipotence of the State is the denial of individual freedom.”

~ Juan Batista Alberdi, Argentine political philosopher

It is a rainy ol’ day down here at the End of the World. Yellow and black taxis splash through the puddles as they bound down the streets. Café-goers huddle around their espressos, fogging up the windows. The purple jacaranda trees drink deeply under the emptying skies. 

Let’s review our position...

Almost two months have passed since the beginning of what we’ve been calling the “Greatest Political Experiment of our Time.” That is, the election of a self-described “anarcho-capitalist” to the highest office in the land. 

It is the first time we know of where “the people” voluntarily decided to shrink the size of their own state... and to employ a man with a chainsaw to get the job done, no less. 

The irony of an anarchist occupying the Casa Rosada (i.e. Pink House, Argentina’s equivalent of the White House), is lost neither on your editor nor on the current occupant. The term anarchist derives from the Greek αναρχία, romanized: anarkhia; where "αν" ("an") means "without" and "αρχία" ("arkhia") means "ruler".

Without ruler, in other words... but not without rules. (Yes, real anarchists still use a net when playing tennis... they just don’t force people to participate.)

Cradles to Graves

El Presidente, Javier Milei, calls himself a “philosophical anarchist”... but a pragmatic libertarian. That is to say, he seems to recognize the subtle truth in Henry David Thoreau’s statement at the outset of his must-read essay, On the Duty of Civil Disobedience:

I HEARTILY accept the motto,—“That government is best which governs least;” and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,—“That government is best which governs not at all;” and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

After 75 years of socialistic parasitism, the Argentine people are plenty aware how their public officials can fail... now, they must prepare for how private enterprise, entrepreneurship and voluntary cooperation might succeed. 

To that end, El Señor has introduced two key pieces of legislation designed to dismantle the vast administrative state, rotten limb by rotten limb. It’s worth spending a little time on these in order to understand the means by which this great political experiment is being undertaken. 

One is a massive Omnibus Law, the so-called “Bases and Starting Points for the Freedom of Argentines.” We’ll take a look at that in the next installment. The other comes in the form of a “mega deregulation decree” (known as the Decreto de Necesidad y Urgencia (DNU) or Decree of Necessity and Urgency). This Milei signed into law December 20. It came into effect 8 days thereafter, though there has been some subsequent squabbling in the courts. 

(Interestingly enough, it was the Perónist leader, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner who, in 2006, changed the way executive decrees work in this country, handing more power to the executive branch and bypassing the requirement that decrees need to go through Congress before being implemented. That Milei is now leveraging Kirchner’s Law – 26.122 – to derogate power from the state is a sweet, sweet irony indeed.)

Limb by Rotten Limb

The mega decree essentially strips the administrative state of immense and overreaching powers to meddle in the country’s labor markets, leaving free people to determine with whom and under what conditions they choose to enter commercial relationships. 

The “30 points of deregulation of the economy” include (translated from original; not exhaustive):

• Repeal of the Supply Law so that the State never again attacks the property rights of individuals.
  

• Repeal of the Gondola Law so that the State stops interfering in the decisions of Argentine merchants.
  

• Repeal of the Rental Law: so that the real estate market works smoothly again and so that renting is not an odyssey.
  

• Repeal of the National Purchase Law that only benefits certain power players.
  

• Repeal of the Price Observatory of the Ministry of Economy to avoid the persecution of companies.
  

• Repeal of the regulations that prevent the privatization of public companies.
  

• Transformation of all state companies into public limited companies for subsequent privatization.
  

• Modernization of the labor regime to facilitate the process of generating genuine employment.
  

• Reform of the Customs Code to facilitate international trade.
  

• Repeal of the Land Law to promote investments.
  

• Authorization for the transfer of the total or partial share package of Aerolíneas Argentinas.
  

• Deregulation of satellite internet services.
  

• Deregulation of the tourism sector by eliminating the monopoly of tourism agencies.

The Anti-Dictator

Also included were deregulation laws pertaining to the optional privatization of football clubs, ending price controls in the medical sector and (¡saludos!) liberating the domestic wine industry from government interference, among other derogations to state power. 

Of course, sniveling insiders, special interests and those Milei refers to as the “political caste” are none-too-happy about having their rice bowls broken. The president is a “dictator,” they claim, ruling by decree. Aside from the fact that Sr. Milei is playing by the very rules the Perónists wrote for him, and aside from the fact that it is the Perónists who top the table of “most decrees issued” (which they used to accrue power unto themselves, not divest it), there remains another inconvenient fact for those who so freely conscript the “dictator” epithet... 

Of all the myriad laws repealed under Sr. Milei’s deregulation decree, by far the most numerous belong to two presidencies – those of Juan Carlos Onganía (1966-1970) and Jorge R. Videla (1976-1981). (In total, 138 laws were repealed from those two presidencies, 82 and 56 respectively).

For his part, Juan Carlos Onganía rose to power as a military dictator after toppling the president Arturo Illia in a coup d'état. It was Onagía’s stated intention to install in Argentina a paternalistic dictatorship modeled on that of Spain’s Francisco Franco. Responsible for implementing strict censorship laws, his brand of government came to be known as the “authoritarian-bureaucratic state.”

Jorge R. Videla, meanwhile, was a military officer and dictator whose de facto presidency was one of the most infamous in Latin America, known for its human rights abuses and severe economic mismanagement. 

That Sr. Milei would repeal laws and dictates enacted by such men says a lot about his own enmity towards state power and oppressive government...but it says even more about his detractors, who apparently yearn for the preservation of a militarily enforced authoritarian-bureaucratic state.

In Thursday’s Note, we’ll take a look at Milei’s comprehensive Omnibus Law (the “Bases and Starting Points for the Freedom of Argentines”)... and the “Argentine Jefferson” behind its inspiration...

Until then...

Joel Bowman