Hyperinflation to Hope: Javier Milei's Vision for Argentina

By: Ser Ulric

Simply Bitcoin

Oct 17, 2023

With each passing block, we inch closer to hyperbitcoinization: a state of existence where the world recognizes Bitcoin as the arch or apex monetary system. That journey will be one that consists of rebirth. A rebirth of economics, values, culture, and politics. This effect coincides with cyclical generational "turnings" as defined in the 4th Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe. As we settle in our current Western 4th Turning, it is expected to face similar crisis similar to preceding ages:

Great Depression/World War 2
Civil War
American Revolution
Glorious Revolution

During each of these points of history, staples and standards of the current day were left in the dust. Monetary policy, industrial production, national borders, and world-class political coups define these phases in history. It is short-sighted and even self-righteous to conclude that the present day would not repeat or rhyme with the past.

In the bipartisan dominant western political sphere, there has been discontent with elected leaders as they have decreasingly represented the wants and needs of their voter base. The incentive to abdicate public responsibility for the sake of corporate cronyism and fiscal manipulation is too great to abstain. It has come to the point where politicians do in fact tell bold face lies to swindle trust and votes.

While a favorite classic phrase of the Bitcoin subculture is "Bitcoin fixes this", the opposition to Bitcoin as a multidimensional force will fight back fervently. Bitcoin will not convert modern liberals or conservatives to support an unyielding monetary supply by unconscious assimilation. Bitcoin does not have the magical ability to change politicians' philosophy that money created by nothing more than a unilateral edict is intrinsically criminal. Any bitcoiner hoping to convince statist elite leaders to give up their claim to seigniorage and returning value back to society's producers and capital creators does not recognize the power of political office in a Keynesian economy.

From the ashes of hard times, great men arise. Argentina’s decades-long economic spiraling abyss can surely be classified as “hard times”. Javier Milei is the result. He is the leading candidate for the presidency and he intends to tear down government institutions like no leading modern day politician has ever done.

Rather than create novel ways to increase or reallocate government expenditure, he intends to cease spending and become a more austere administration. Some goals include the following (link for expanded summary):

Deconstruct all government ministries, except for seven
Consolidate and eliminate bureaucratic waste
Remove 90% of current taxes on population
Remove all luxury privileges for state employees
Recover current liabilities on Central Bank balance sheet
Eliminate the Central Bank
Allow Argentinians to conduct transactions in the money of their choice
Eliminate restrictions on international trade
Eliminate export taxes
Eliminate foreign exchange restrictions

Jesus Christ said this during his ministry,

For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. - John 3:20, ESV

If He is indeed correct, one can test their own heart by reviewing the preceding list of Javier Milei's intended reform. Does it elicit fear, anger, or frustration? If this is your case, there may be a part of you that believes it is the right of one class of people to leech off productivity of another. This mindset looks for reasons to justify theft. It takes surprisingly little effort to justify and support other atrocities against humans (death culture, human trafficking, core family destruction).

Does the prospect of Milei's radical changes encourage hope, inspiration, and excitement? If this describes you, you probably find contentment in market forces allowed to play out. You understand the State is insolvent and their actions have been proven to continually impoverish their citizens. The only rational vote, if your vote is actually counted, is a candidate that will reduce his own ability to politically assault you.

Milei promises objective political revolution. It is a tough pill to swallow for international central planners that enjoy having a node of economic control that can be activated in virtually every country. The most interesting part in all of his promises is he can just say "eliminate the Central Bank" and all of his other promises would naturally materialize over time. No other central bank has displayed so much evidence of how locally destructive such an institution can be than the one in Argentina. Am I being hyperbolic? No, but their currency has been.

A brief history:

In 54 years, there have been 5 monetary resets.

According to the table on Wikipedia, the Argentinian currency inflated 149x against the dollar from 1914 to 1969.
After a monetary reset, the next Argentinian currency inflated 28,163x against the dollar from 1969 to 1983.
After a monetary reset, the next Argentinian currency inflated 58.5x against the dollar from 1983 to 1985.
After a monetary reset, the next Argentinian currency inflated 11729x against the dollar from 1985 to 1991.
After a monetary reset, the next Argentinian currency inflated 340.5x against the dollar from 1992 to August 2023.

This loss in purchasing power does not even consider that the $USD itself loses purchasing power against real goods and services. In fact, when looking at the $USD 3000% loss of purchasing power since the creation of the Federal Reserve, it adds some context of how bad economics are in other places in the world of which Americans are completely ignorant.

Inflation Data

Most Americans think the value of their money over the last couple of decades is unacceptable. Imagine in your lifetime your savings was inflated to worthlessness, not once, but 3 or 4 times. There might be a few more Libertarian Bitcoiners walking around if people had more empathy to the destructive power of unreliable money.

Even if this argument were to sway the thoughts of an ignorant statist to denounce Argentinian banking as evil, it is irrational to think that their existence is evil while the Federal Reserve is justified. After all, the only differences between the two is the reach and magnitude. The reach of the Federal Reserve is wider, but does not impact each individual as much. The Argentine Central Bank scope is much smaller, but their impact to each individual cuts exponentially deeper. What type of thief do we let go free in society? The grand thief? The petty thief? No, both of them are punished and often beyond the impact of their theft. It is the LEGAL thief that is protected. This protection, sadly not only comes from its benefactors, but its victims as well. Those victims are your neighbors, family, and loved ones, who are not pained enough to search out a solution. Most people in a modern civil society think the government they put in place to help them prosper has the right to take their prosperity away and then redirect any angst to a fabricated rival faction. Are we awake yet?

Our most recent trend of politics and culture in the west is to value saying the "politically correct" thing everywhere above everything. "Do no harm…to another's feeling" has been an extension to the Hippocratic oath taken by all the self-proclaimed psychologists to force everyone to smile while their ability to pursue prosperity is being suffocated.

Do note that in an abundant, honest society, there may be a possibility to select leaders that value saying the nice thing over doing the right thing. In an abundant society, those leaders are also less critical to your future due to you having the resources you need for your pursuits. Have you ever really cared what the American ambassador has said at the United Nations? Almost assuredly, he or she does not matter to your ability to live productively.

However, we are in a society with skewed economics and dishonest money. This has resulted in hardship and opportunity lost for most of the world. The repeated errors made by central planners only show that they are causing more harm than good. They have ushered us into hard times decades in the making that is leading the current working class (Millennials and Gen Z) to be a lost generation of borrowers, renters. A group of people that are generally priced out of property ownership, undercover stagflation, indebted to loans for E-vehicles and worthless college degrees, and left with experience chasing as a salve for a poor future outlook. "You will own nothing and be happy."

As we noted earlier, hard times create tough men. Javier Milei will make enemies. He will not smile next to the socialite with whom you are obsessed. He will tell you hard truths, like everything you see on TV is designed to pacify you to the open air robbery of your Time as you work harder for the same buying power every year. He will tell you that if a job does not directly lead to a good or service produced for value exchange, it is a waste and those jobs (most of which are government administration and bureaucracy) should be eradicated. This is offensive to some people and being offensive is not desirable, especially in an abundant, honest society. However, we are not in that society are we? Our world is hard, and in the short term getting harder. Hard times create tough men.

Javier Milei has been vocal and supportive about the existence of Bitcoin. His economic vision of enabling competing monies makes sense for a growing presence of Bitcoin in Argentina. However, Milei does not intend to change the color of coercion upon the Argentine population. He wants to enable people to act out their personal incentives. For some that may be acquiring $USD. For others, they may want a major BRICS currency like the RUB. This does not hurt Bitcoin, rather it will enable game theory to play out. What money do you trust your savings to?

Biden's Dollar: who will spend helicopter money to defend his "interests" in Ukraine.
Trudeau's Dollar: which may freeze if you don't want a COVID booster
Xi's Yuan: that comes with a social credit score that will work fine as long as you don't jaywalk
Putin’s Ruble: where it's redeemable for gold from March 2022 to June 2022. Oh you missed the window? Sorry bro
Lagarde’s Euro: just don't buy anything more than €500 in cash or straight to jail.
Bitcoin: it's just money that no one can mess with

People who desire laws to push Bitcoin onto the population by law really miss the mark when it comes to incentives. We don't need laws to force people to eat healthy. If given a balanced choice (where the cost to produce real food isn't inflated away due to monetary debasement), people will be healthy enough to thrive because of the incentive to live. Society does need laws to protect those that need protecting: honest people from criminals. Bitcoin does not need protection. However, neither should any other monetary network. Laws that protect an entity against competition are definitively fascist. This includes any laws made by the state to protect the sovereignty of state money from competitors.

The state and all its "services", because it steals from people to exist, is fundamentally an illegitimate institution. However, even if we were to ignore that sin, the state's goal should be to enable its people to prosper, not the other way around. As we have witnessed over much less than a lifetime, taxes have increased, freedom of travel has reduced, and sending money domestically and internationally has been constrained. How are these changes good for people? This seems like gradual steps toward bondage. In an ever so slight manner, the "free" western nations have increasingly taken up attributes of nations that are allegedly our idealistic communist rival. If the things that Javier Milei promises to accomplish sounds bad to you, then your preference is truly for many people to suffer for the sake of a select royal few that do not create value. This collectivist scam only skews economic incentives rewarding inaction and encourages capital flight. Seen from this perspective, it is no wonder laws are increasing to constrain the movement of people. Central planners want you to stay still so they can more easily harvest your productivity for their own enrichment. If you were a parasite, which would be easier: a moving target or a stagnant one?

Some people will still pursue the idea that we just need to elect better leaders. If we can find someone who is greater than their incentives will surely be the perfect leader. The problem is no one can make that claim. To risk society's fate on a popular vote (or even worse, the popular vote of a micro set of swing districts #GOUSA) for the temporary right to rule cheapens the importance of such a role.

Take two Chevrolet Corvettes:

One owned by a single person who cannot easily purchase a second
One made available to rent by a modern car rental business

If one were to conjecture, which of the two after 25,000 miles were more often a) eaten in, b) engines redlined, c) tires peeled out, it would be a rational guess that selection #2 would have more of a, b, and c. For as long as there is not any glaring difference during the rental period, #2 is able to be rented again. The owner of #1 has incentive to care for this one car for as long as it is not cost prohibitive (thus sell it to another owner if he cannot maintain it). The better it is cared for, the better it serves him. For the rental, the goal is to get as much out of it without any noticeable damage because the period of obligation is short.

This example could be applied to a car, website, house, school, business, city, or nation. Ever since World War I our world has shifted into “political rendition”; not in the sense of a version of a song or play, rather from the 17th century definition "yielding up" or "giving up". The modern political office is an opportune fountain for rent seekers. Structures have been put in place, from elite academia gatekeeping, to mainstream media control of information, to maintain a visceral barrier to entry to this lucrative and powerful field of grift.

We do not need philosopher kings or stoic kings to guide us mongrels to his version of societal self-actualization. We need more brave individuals like Javier Milei willing to go into the belly of the political beast, hold the democratically elected office treasure in his hands, and cast it into hell by dismantling as much as he can while he has the ability without harm to the people that have been made dependent on those services. Milei plans to show the world what happens when true capitalism is allowed to take place. Getting rid of the biggest inhibitor to capitalism, the central bank, and replacing it with a basket of currencies ($USD, ₿, etc…) that is outside of domestic control will force all economic parties to play by the same rules, including the government. Abolishing government agencies and ministries for the sake of austerity will provide an example to the world that real, drastic government reduction in size and economic role is the only way to reverse poverty, increase productivity, and drive human progress. If Javier Milei is indeed elected, Argentina will become the prime example of reversing the dystopian despondency that is rapidly growing all over the world. If Bitcoin will have a significant role in that change like it is assumed, the correlation to nation-state adoption and positive economic change will be too obvious to ignore any longer.