“The Bad Thing Is Not Being Free,” Argentina’s Milei Tells Stanford Audience

Plus, the money behind anti-Israel protests; Hong Kong verdicts; NRA v. Vullo

The president of Argentina, Javier Milei, was in Silicon Valley yesterday, bringing his message of freedom to a state—California—and a place—an elite university campus—that could benefit from it. 

Martin Varsavsky has posted a 4 minute video clip on X from one meeting that gives you a flavor of Milei’s themes: “I’ve also been quite explicit as far as our foreign policy. I openly clearly stated my alignment with the United States and Israel….One of the things I used to do before going into politics was demonstrating how capitalism was superior to socialism, not only in terms of economic performance but in terms of the values that it embraced. In fact, when you take the discussion to that level, you can see that socialism is based on envy, on hatred, on resentment, on inequality before the law, and that it can even go as far as murder.”

Milei also spoke at the Hoover Institution at Stanford.

In the Stanford speech, Milei mentioned Ludwig von Mises. “Mises pointed out that there were only two economic systems, in polar forms, right? That is, on the one hand, free enterprise capitalism, and on the other end, real socialism,” Milei said.

“The presence of socialism — what it does is to abort the process of discovery. And that is not a minor issue. In fact, Hayek pointed out that the market is a process of discovery,” Milei said. “This is very important, because the interference of the state, what it ends up doing is breaking the process of discovery.”

Milei defined the idea of a market: “the market is a process of social cooperation where rights of property are exchanged voluntarily.”

“The bad thing is not being free,” he said. “In defense of the right to life, freedom, property and based on the principle of non aggression. What is the problem with that? Who is against that? God, only you could be successful serving others with better quality, a better price.”

Milei

“So let’s not be afraid. Let’s move forward and be optimistic,” he said. “We don’t know what the future will be like. The only thing we know is that it will be much better if we remove the state from our lives.” 

An ETF that tracks Argentina, ARGT, is up about 45 percent since Milei was elected November 19, 2023.

Recent work: “Trump’s First Big Second-Term Foreign Policy Decision Is Between Senators Vance and Cotton” is the headline over my latest column in the New York Sun. “The two potential running mates offer diametrically opposed views on America’s role in the world,” the subheadline says. Please check the column out over at the New York Sun if the future of Republican foreign policy is among your interests.

The money behind the anti-Israel protests: The standard line from the left-leaning media is that the big money is on the pro-Israel side of the campus protest wars.

The more you dig into it, though, the more big money becomes apparent on the other side of the anti-israel side of it. This is coming out in bits and pieces but is worth putting together.