The Revolution So Far

The Greatest Political Experiment of Our Age... One Year On

“My prediction is that, unless President Milei is stopped in some way from taking the actions that he wants to take, Argentina will have massive growth in the economy and there will be far more prosperity and optimism about the future than there has been perhaps in one-hundred years.”

~ Elon Musk (Occupy Mars advocate, DOGE consultant, rich guy)

Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina...

¡Feliz aniversario!

‘Twas one year ago today when a chainsaw-wielding anarcho-capitalist assumed the highest office in the Land at the End of the World.

And what a year it’s been!

We’ll take a closer look at this incredible journey over the closing days and weeks of 2024, but first...

Why are we so fixated on this story, one we’ve modestly dubbed, The Greatest Political Experiment of Our Age? What’s so special about the End of the World, anyway? And, most importantly for our dear readers, why should anyone living outside of these far-flung fronteras care at all?

All good questions. So glad you asked! Let’s take them in order...

For better or worse, ‘til death do us part, be it closer to the beginning or the end, this is the world in which we live. So far as we know, we have no present alternative, Mars being for the moment rather hostile to life and parallel universes being confined for the present to the realm of the theoretical.

We are in the world whether we like it or not, “thrown” as Martin Heidegger had it, “like a dog without a bone,” as Jim Morrison later added.

Riders on the Storm

It is from this state of “thrownness” (or “geworfenheit” in Heidegger’s German neologism) that we confront the peculiar nature of human existence. How are we to make our way, to orient ourselves, to live a life of meaning, knowing that our time here is finite?

As theology is (well) beyond the scope of these humble pages, we stick to our earthly beat... riding the storm of worldly experience with senses engaged, questions close at hand and mind wide open.

In such a state of wonder, we can’t help but notice that history is full of pivotal events, moments and movements upon which our journey appears set... at least until another such occasion emerges and recharts our course. These events, these “ideas whose time have come,” as the great Victor Hugo phrased it (referring to the French Revolution), are characterized in part by their delineating nature, their “before and afterness.”

There was a time before Caesar crossed the Rubicon... a moment before Napoleon crossed the Alps... a split second before Hitler crossed the Rhine...

Then, there was “the afterward”... and all that came with it.

Of course, as Ludwig von Mises reminds us, thoughts and ideas must precede human action. And as history itself has gone to great pains to reveal, not all ideas are created equal…

In the murky realm of politics, certain ideas have ebbed and flowed during the course of history that have come to impact the lives of millions, and even hundreds of millions, who follow. Capitalism versus communism, for example, or the unalienable rights of the individual versus the insatiable claims of the collective... man’s essential liberty versus the promise of a little temporary safety... the brute force of the state versus the voluntary cooperation of the free market.

Upon these ideas, whole empires rise and fall... currencies soar or collapse... men march off to war, to kill and die by the millions, serving kings and tyrants they will never meet, slaying brothers and comrades they will never know.

Alea Iacta Est

Which is to say, it is not just any old world that we inhabit... but one subject to change, to cycles, to events bursting with the potential to reorientate the very course of mankind. Moreover, there is no going back when such momentous trends take hold. One does not “undetonate” the atomic bomb, for example, just as one does not “unstorm” the Bastille or “uncross” the Rubicon.

“Alea iacta est (The die is cast),” as Suetonius said to Julius Caesar when he defied the Roman Senate and led his army across that storied river in 49 BC, setting the stage for the long and bloody civil war... and the eventual collapse of the Republic.

The rest, as they say, is history. And so it continues...

When one year ago today, Javier Milei became the president of the Republic of Argentina, it was the first time in our age that a democratically elected leader had risen to his country’s highest office by declaring war on the State itself. The fact that he did so by winning the popular vote – and by the highest percentage in the country’s modern, democratic history – signified something even deeper: that the people were ready for a change... that the freedom of which Milei spoke was “an idea whose time had come.”

A year on, and we are witnessing not only a liberty revolution down here on The Pampas, but the surging of that idea from one end of the Americas to the other. It is not only a story of the End of the World, in other words, but potentially the beginning of a new chapter in world history.

History in Motion

Needless to say, it’s been a busy twelve months for the man with the motosierra and his team of free market advocates. Cutting, hacking, slashing... demoting, derogating, deregulating... liberating markets, minds and individuals from the clutches of a ravenous political caste (“la casta”).

One analysis, by the Cato Institute, estimated that over the past year, Javier Milei’s administration has slashed the bloated bureaucratic State at a rate of more than one deregulation... per day. The Institute:

From December 10, 2023, when Milei assumed the presidency, to December 7, 2024, there were 672 regulatory reforms. On average, that means that during his presidency, Milei has been issuing 1.84 deregulations per day, counting weekends. Out of the total amount of reforms, 331 eliminated regulations and 341 modified existing regulations.

That’s a lot of wood chips... a lot of dead branches... and a lot of termites, suddenly without hollow limbs to call home.

In fact, there’s now an official Ministry of Deregulation, tasked solely with cutting the State down to size. Since it began in July of this year, its head minister, Federico Sturzenegger, has posted virtually every day one or multiple deregulations.

Cause and Effect

And the ripple effect of this action extends far beyond these shores...

The Ministry is now considered something of a working model for Mr. Trump’s Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed up by the aforementioned Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who both cite Sr. Milei and his team as inspirations for their cause.

What began as an experiment in functional libertarian governance, down at the End of the World, has become a central part of the political discussion for the biggest economy on earth, the one with the most powerful military, which carries the unholiest pile of debt, maintains (for now) the world’s reserve currency, and whose industries, academies and institutions lead the world, for better or worse.

All is to say, “The Greatest Political Experiment of Our Age” is beginning to live up to its name. And if we’re right, and the tides of history are indeed turning, we’re only just beginning...

Later this week we’ll have a closer look at the nature and specifics of the experiment thus far... from policies designed to liberate the markets, to crushing inflation at home and winning the war of ideas for future generations.

Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World...

Cheers,

Joel Bowman