Beyond Cheerleading and Doom: A Classical Liberal Reads Milei’s Argentina

I operate under the principle that no one is immune from legitimate criticism, including my own views and tribe.

For readers of Meanderings of an Eccentric Economist, that means I approach Javier Milei and Argentina’s “libertarian experiment” neither as a cheerleader nor as a doomsayer, but as a classical liberal/libertarian who thinks institutions, incentives, and constraints matter more than slogans.

I am a classical liberal/libertarian in the broad tradition of thinkers like Adam Smith, F. A. Hayek, and Milton Friedman: pro–market and pro–civil liberty, but also deeply skeptical of concentrated political power—even when it flies “our” flag.cato+1

So in this new piece on Argentina, I’m asking a simple question: if you take libertarian rhetoric and drop it into a highly inflationary, low‑trust democracy with fragile institutions, what survives contact with political reality, and what mutates into something else?

If that kind of critical‑but‑sympathetic analysis interests you, you can read the full essay here: “Argentina’s Libertarian Experiment”