Argentina's Milei & Heritage's Roberts @ The World Economic Forum Annual Meeting - 2024

The 54th annual, invitation only, meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) was held in Davos, Switzerland from January 15 to 19, 2024.  The theme this year was "Rebuilding Trust."  

Click here to hear WEF Founder Klaus Schwab's opening remarks that address what he calls the "deeply transformative challenges" of "inequalities and uncertainties that threaten the very fabric of our societies" & "the relentless challenges of climate change, a threat to our planet's delicate balance."  The uncertainty, fear, &  pessimism of remedying these challenges, & others, as the WEF sees fit, "erodes the trust we place in our ability to shape a better world" that leads to the "need(ed) paradigm shift" that "rebuilds trust" & the "fundamental need to embody trusteeship, which means to care for the greater good" & "exercising our trusteeship individually and collectively for safeguarding the future of humanity & nature."

In other words, twelve minutes into the annual WEF meeting, we see that the agenda of these global elite busy bodies is to influence & control the lives of people all over a world that "compels us to think beyond borders."

The WEF is a self proclaimed independent international organization that is committed to improving the state of the world & promoting true global leadership through its progressive ideas highlighted @ the Davos meeting & operating the other 51 weeks of the year from its headquarters in Cologny, Switzerland.  Its mission statement says that the WEF "engages business, political, academic & other leaders of society to shape global, regional, & industry agendas."

Attendees totaled over 2,700 people made up of the heads of WEF's 1,000 partner companies, public figures, chiefs of international organizations, society leaders, academics, & highly acclaimed "top thinkers."  The list included Li Qiang, Premier of the People's Republic of China; Emmanuel Macron, President of France; Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission; & Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.  Viola Amherd, President of the Swiss Confederation for 2024, also offered welcoming remarks that are included in the link above.

Now the only reason I was not surprised when I learned that Argentina's President Javier Milei was invited to speak @ the meeting was because I had learned from Glenn Beck that Kevin Roberts, President of the Heritage Foundation, had been scheduled to appear a week before I knew Milei was coming.  Both men are authentic principled champions of the Blessings of Liberty from which economic freedom & its resultant prosperity naturally flow from unrestricted human endeavor - so @ least the attendees heard two points of view 180 degrees from the usual progressive dribble they hear at every other WEF annual meeting.

The question is how much of what the attendees heard from Dr. Roberts & President Milei sticks with them & for that matter how much of what you read in this post you are able to do something with.

Kevin Roberts believes that he was invited to the WEF meeting to add credibility to the "Rebuilding Trust" theme - i.e., the WEF thought Roberts would courteously agree with the majority of their platform & maybe offer a few tweaks thereby showing the world that a major American think tank supported & trusted the WEF.  If the same thinking was used to invite Javier Milei it shows how little the WEF knows these men.

Roberts' remarks focused on "taking away the power of the unelected bureaucrats and giving it back to the American people."  He said "The administrative state is the greatest threat to democracy in the United States, and we need to end it. " 

Milei's message is that too many world leaders, including those in attendance, are rejecting the empirical evidence that since 1800 the world has been ridden of 90% of its poverty thanks to free enterprise capitalism - an economic system that has given us the greatest expansion of wealth & prosperity in human history.  The continuing advocacy of socialism will eventually impoverish the world again - poverty being the economic condition of the world for all but the past 225 years.

Click here to hear Kevin Roberts go scorched earth on globalist elites in a compelling candid presentation.  First, Dr. Roberts called it "laughable that anyone would describe Davos as protecting liberal democracy" after his elite moderator stated that the people who come to the WEF in Davos stand up for liberal democracy.  Second, after listing five points covering 1) open borders & illegal immigrants robbing Americans of their way of life, 2) crime & public safety not only endangering Americans' way of life, but their lives, 3) the solutions to the supposed existential crisis called climate change costing more human lives than the problem themselves, 4) the WEF @ Davos not only doesn't call out China as the number 1 adversary to free people on Earth but actually gives the Chinese Communist Party a platform, & 5) the World Health Organization is discussing foisting gender ideology on the global self -- Dr. Roberts stated that "Joe Biden has done a God awful job of articulating what is best for the American citizen."  Then most pointedly he concluded that "every single member of a new administration needs to have a list of everything that has ever been proposed @ the WEF & object to all of them - wholesale." 

But Javier Milei was the headliner of the Davos WEF meeting - first by flying economy class on a scheduled commercial flight (Lufthansa from Buenos Aires to Zurich via Frankfurt) that Milei calculates saved the Argentine government $392,000 in travel costs.  See photo below.

Milei's speech @ Davos was delivered on January 17, 2024 to polite applause that showed the audience heard his refreshing message that emphasized America's founding principles of limited government, personal responsibility, & free enterprise.  

The theme of the speech was that the Western World is in danger of abandoning freedom for socialism, & thereby descending into poverty,  saying "The state is not the solution. The state is the problem itself," & that a return to excellence of libertarianism where "economic freedom, limited government and unlimited respect for private property are essential elements for economic growth" that will cast off "the political caste or the parasites that live off the state."

Below are key excerpts from the English transcript of Milei's speech.  Also, WSJ Editor in Chief, Emma Tucker flew to Argentina to interview Milei on January 27 - click here to watch a video of this interview where Milei dismissed any idea of failure of his plan to restore Argentina to economic health & prosperity by saying "there is no Plan B."

1)  Socialism versus capitalism:  We’re here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world. Rather, they are the root cause. Do believe me: no one is in a better place than us, Argentines, to testify to these two points.

Thirty five years after we adopted the model of freedom, back in 1860, we became a leading world power. And when we embraced collectivism over the course of the last 100 years, we saw how our citizens started to become systematically impoverished, and we dropped to spot number 140 globally.

It should never be forgotten that socialism is always and everywhere an impoverishing phenomenon that has failed in all countries where it's been tried out. It's been a failure economically, socially, culturally and it also murdered over 100 million human beings.

2)  Free enterprise capitalism is the cure for poverty:  But before having the discussion, it would first be important for us to take a look at the data that demonstrates why free enterprise capitalism is not just the only possible system to end world poverty, but also that it's the only morally desirable system to achieve this.

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If we look at the history of economic progress, we can see how between the year zero and the year 1800 approximately, world per capita GDP practically remained constant throughout the whole reference period.

If you look at a graph of the evolution of economic growth throughout the history of humanity, you would see a hockey stick graph, an exponential function that remained constant for 90 per cent of the time and which was exponentially triggered starting in the 19th century.

Now, it's not just that capitalism brought about an explosion in wealth from the moment it was adopted as an economic system, but also, if you look at the data, what you will see is that growth continues to accelerate throughout the whole period.

This trend, far from stopping, remains well alive today. If we take the period between the years 2000 and 2023, the growth rate again accelerated to three per cent a year, which means that we could double world per capita GDP in just 23 years.

That said, when you look at per capita GDP since the year 1800 until today, what you will see is that after the Industrial Revolution, global per capita GDP multiplied by over 15 times, which meant a boom in growth that lifted 90 per cent of the global population out of poverty.

We should remember that by the year 1800, about 95 per cent of the world's population lived in extreme poverty. And that figure dropped to five per cent by the year 2020, prior to the pandemic. The conclusion is obvious.

3)  Individualism versus collectivism:  Far from being the cause of our problems, free trade capitalism as an economic system is the only instrument we have to end hunger, poverty and extreme poverty across our planet. The empirical evidence is unquestionable.

Therefore, since there is no doubt that free enterprise capitalism is superior in productive terms, the left-wing doxa (public opinion) has attacked capitalism, alleging matters of morality, saying — that's what the detractors claim — that it's unjust. They say that capitalism is evil because it's individualistic and that collectivism is good because it's altruistic. Of course, with the money of others.

So they therefore advocate for social justice. But this concept, which in the developed world became fashionable in recent times, in my country has been a constant in political discourse for over 80 years. The problem is that social justice is not just, and it doesn't contribute to general well-being.

Quite on the contrary, it's an intrinsically unfair idea because it's violent. It's unjust because the state is financed through tax and taxes are collected coercively. Or can any one of us say that we voluntarily pay taxes? This means that the state is financed through coercion and that the higher the tax burden, the higher the coercion and the lower the freedom.

4)  Universities & media promote poverty:  So how come academia, international organizations, economic theorists and politicians demonize an economic system that has not only lifted 90 per cent of the world's population out of extreme poverty but has continued to do this faster and faster?

Thanks to free trade capitalism, the world is now living its best moment. Never in all of mankind or humanity’s history has there been a time of more prosperity than today. This is true for all. The world of today has more freedom, is rich, more peaceful and prosperous. This is particularly true for countries that have more economic freedom and respect the property rights of individuals.

Countries that have more freedom are 12 times richer than those that are repressed. The lowest percentile in free countries is better off than 90 per cent of the population in repressed countries. Poverty is 25 times lower and extreme poverty is 50 times lower. And citizens in free countries live 25 percent longer than citizens in repressed countries.

5)  Libertarianism:  Now what is it that we mean when we talk about libertarianism? And let me quote the words of the greatest authority on freedom in Argentina, Professor Alberto Benegas Lynch Jr, who says that libertarianism is the unrestricted respect for the life project of others based on the principle of non-aggression, in defence of the right to life, liberty and property.

Its fundamental institutions are private property, markets free from state intervention, free competition, and the division of labour and social cooperation, in which success is achieved only by serving others with goods of better quality or at a better price.

In other words, capitalist successful business people are social benefactors who, far from appropriating (seizing or taking) the wealth of others, contribute to the general well-being. Ultimately, a successful entrepreneur is a hero.

And this is the model that we are advocating for the Argentina of the future. A model based on the fundamental principle of libertarianism. The defence of life, of freedom and of property.

6)  Radical feminist agenda:  The first of these new battles was the ridiculous and unnatural fight between man and woman. Libertarianism already provides for equality of the sexes. The cornerstone of our creed is that all humans are created equal and that we all have the same inalienable rights granted by the Creator, including life, freedom and ownership.

All that the radical feminist agenda has led to is greater state intervention to hinder economic progress, giving jobs to bureaucrats who have not contributed anything to society. Examples are ministries of women or international organizations devoted to promoting this agenda.

7)  Humans against nature - climate change:  Another conflict presented by socialists is that of humans against nature, claiming that we human beings damage a planet which should be protected at all costs, even going as far as advocating for population control mechanisms or the abortion agenda.

Unfortunately, these harmful ideas have taken a stronghold in our society. Neo-Marxists have managed to co-opt the common sense of the Western world, and this they have achieved by appropriating the media, culture, universities and also international organizations.

The latter case is the most serious one, probably because these are institutions that have enormous influence on the political and economic decisions of their member states.

Fortunately there's more and more of us who are daring to make our voices heard, because we see that if we don't truly and decisively fight against these ideas, the only possible fate is for us to have increasing levels of state regulation, socialism, poverty and less freedom, and therefore, worse standards of living.

8)  The market value:  The problem with Neoclassicals is that the model they fell in love with does not map reality, so they put down their mistakes to supposed market failures rather than reviewing the premises of the model.

Under the pretext of a supposed market failure, regulations are introduced. These regulations create distortions in the price system, prevent economic calculus, and therefore also prevent saving, investment and growth.

This problem lies mainly in the fact that not even supposed libertarian economists understand what the market is because if they did understand, it would quickly be seen that it's impossible for there to be market failures.

The market is not a mere graph describing a curve of supply and demand. The market is a mechanism for social cooperation, where you voluntarily exchange ownership rights. Therefore based on this definition, talking about a market failure is an oxymoron. There are no market failures.

If transactions are voluntary, the only context in which there can be market failure is if there is coercion and the only one that is able to coerce generally is the state, which holds a monopoly on violence.

Consequently, if someone considers that there is a market failure, I would suggest that they check to see if there is state intervention involved. And if they find that that's not the case, I would suggest that they check again, because obviously there's a mistake. Market failures do not exist.

9)  Conclusion:  . . . long live freedom, damn it! 

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