Hey there, I`m from Argentina, and we have elections this year. We come from a 35 years of democracy since the militaary dictatorship was abolished in the early 80´s. Since then, we voted once and again protecionist goverments, with a lot of comercial and financial limits, with inhuman ttaxes for the private companies, specially the small ones, tax on impo and expo and an average of 30% inflation (anually). So the questios is, the solution for this vicious circle is a liberal system, even when it means a huge social (and political) cost? Of course nobody wants to fire people from their jobs, and live people in the street with no aid at all, but I need a real answer, is a liberal system the solution or is just that we are doomed to be what we are?

My opinion: Look at the EU, take the good parts (e.g. Schengen zone), dismiss the bad parts (e.g. Brussels bureaucracy), apply it to Mercosur.

I'd say it should be as laissez faire as possible. Have some laws that defend small businesses from being out competed, such as anti-monopoly laws and anti-trust laws. Don't criminalize any kind of product no matter how obscene the product is (If you do, the black market will get stronger). This includes legalizing guns, drugs, porn, and even prostitution. Taxes should be low. Basically, be what America was meant to be.

Yes. But make sure you don't confuse freedom with un-regulated. There's no point reducing government intervention in the market if the average man or small business owner is going to get screwed over by some huge monopoly.

Freedom for whom to do what? Too many people, especially those who call themselves "libertarians" seem to see freedom as some physical thing that can be measured and we'll be fine as long as we increase our emission of libertons. But really, freedom involves the interests and stakes of billions of people, many of whom have interests irreconcilably opposed to one another. And furthermore, "economic freedom" is usually defined very narrowly, as the "freedom" of owners of businesses, banks, and other forms of capital to do whatever they want with "their" capital, usually to the detriment of people who don't own the capital but are still affected by it (living in it, working on it, raising the next generation of worker bees, etc.). If that's "economic freedom", then I am wholeheartedly against it and "the economy" needs to be reined in and subject to democratic governance.

Fuck your socialism. Socialism doesn't work and it will never work.

Yeah, let's act like Scandinavia hasn't been thriving for fucking ages with policies as close to straight up socialism as capitalism will allow. Here's the thing about capitalism. It worked great for awhile, at least in terms of technological innovation, but now it's running out of steam. The system has been the same for too long and the flaws are growing ever bigger in size. Now instead of driving progress and technological innovation, it's actively holding it back in the name of profit. And that's how you craft a rebuttal, my friend.

Except for almost every single thing that works properly in America (roads, sanitation, food that doesn't have excrement in it, buildings that don't spontaneously light on fire, etc etc etc) and something that doesn't work properly but you probably think is awesome (the most powerful military in human history) and systems that should work well but are constantly strangled by capitalism (Medicare, social security, welfare, low-income housing, education). And then of course you have children who die because their parents can't afford insulin, HIV victims forced to turn to prostitution and drug running because they can't afford their meds, people who were bussed in ambulances to out-of-network hospitals and will be stuck with a $50,000+ debt to be paying off for the rest of their lives, private "for-profit" prisons filled with more prisoners than all of China and thousands if not millions more grievances against the broken and doomed system that is American capitalism.

But yeah, other than that, socialism totally doesn't work, and laissez faire capitalism totally works.

Related - https://www.bbc.com/news/business-47532522
Raghuram Rajan says capitalism is 'under serious threat'

Basically former Indian central bank guy saying increasing inequality and decreasing opportunities are turning capitalism into a dysfunctional system people are going to walk away from if we don't work on increasing opportunities and decreasing inequality.

If you mean Venezuela... sure, OK. But the social democratic system found in Canada, Scandinavia, and other European countries has resulted in far healthier, safer, more educated, and more egalitarian societies who beat the US in terms of every metric relating to quality of life.

But, well, libertarians continue to be assholes completely disconnected from reality. Par for the course.

Those systems are not socialism in any way, they take some things from socialism but over all they have huge economic freedom, much more than in any south american country, except Chile perhaps, and note that Chile is one of the helthiest systems in this region

They are socialism in many ways, at least the way I see it there's never been black and white 100% socialism or 100% capitalism, there's always been some market stuff even in the most socialist systems and always been some social stuff even in the most capitalist system, I don't think it is functionally possible to be 100% one or the other, it's more a scale where you find yourself closer to one side or the other. So yeah there are socialist elements in Canada/Europe, but there were also socialist elements in the USA under Ronald Reagan.

Yes, economic freedom is key.

Freedom to have a job and not starve. Freedom to be able to afford both food AND housing AND medical care on a working class income. Freedom to be able to enjoy life, instead of having to work multiple jobs to survive. Freedom to have an affordable education. Freedom to have representation and democracy in your workplace, as opposed to a boss dictating everything like a petty tyrant. Freedom to have working public institutions, from roads to hospitals to jails to schools to public transport. Freedom to be able to negotiate pay, conditions etc as a collective. Freedom to strike!

Freedom to not have billionaires sucking up the surplus value you produce, and giving you dregs in return!

So yeah, economic freedom sounds great to me. Count me in

Capitalism does not mean "there is no government and all services are provided by private enterprise." Social democracy is not socialism and we would all be better off not talking about it like it is. I'm very much a fan of using the word pretty much only for countries like Venezuela or North Korea today, and am not at all down with the current left-hip fad here in the US of appropriating the American right's "SWEDEN IS TEH SOCIALISM" disinformation tactic.



I would also contest the claim there has never been 100% socialism on a large scale. There has; it just doesn't stay that way for long without turning into something that (most) socialists don't want to own.

Blame US right-wingers, who actually call the politics of Bernie Sanders (which is pretty much the social democratic model and not the Venezuelan model) or hell, any hints of universal healthcare programs, as "socialism".


Do libertarians want to own Somalia?

Bernie calls himself a socialist. He even use to praise Venezuela up until it's economy crashed. You're the people who's denying reality. You're bunch of idealists. Socialism is not pragmatic. Utopias are impossible. Humanity way to ape-like, people are individuals. Greed will never stop existing. Stop living fantasy land and wake up into the real harsh world were not everyone can make it to the top and nothings fair. Capitalism isn't idealism, it's an acceptance of human nature.

Ah yes, the dEvAsTaTiNg human nature argument.

"we've developed a system that encourages only the most greedy, the most ruthless and most selfish individuals"

"It's human nature buddy! Humans are greedy, ruthless and selfish"

Maybe if we changed the carrots and sticks around this wouldn't be a problem. The "people are individuals" comment is also deeply, deeply retarded. The only reason why Humans got as far as we have is because we're so social. There's animals out there who are much stronger, faster, better sight, better hearing, smell, bigger teeth etc. You put one hunter gatherer in the wilderness by themselves and they're fucked. The only reason we got so far is because of mutual aid, because of cooperation. Humans are by nature as benevolent as they are vicious. It's just a matter of what strings you want to pull- and capitalism pulls all the worst ones.


Sorry m8, Denmark has a larger amount of people employed by the public sector (which is a decent way of measuring things) than Venezuela does. So does Latvia, so does Norway. So if you're gonna say we have to claim Venezuela then fine, but we get Scandinavia too. It's a hard thing to measure because I would actually agree that Scandinavia isn't in anyway socialist.

Of course, Cuba, Vietnam and Burkina Faso are fairly obvious communist success stories, despite a whole lot of bloodshed by the yanks in particular to try to make it otherwise. When a poor country with a brutal embargo placed on it has a better healthcare system than the most powerful nation in the world, well suffice to say we live in a society.



Anyway, I like that no one bothered refuting the fairly obvious points in my previous statement. "Economic freedom" in terms of paying no taxes benefits the absolute top, the 1%, and absolutely no one else. It's just ridiculous that anyone who's not a billionaire would even consider it as a good idea. It's no coincidence that the countries with the highest living standards are the countries with high taxes.

Saving stuff for the elderly, sick and wounded has been traced back all the way to bronze age societies - worldwide. The "dog eat dog world" of libertarian thought only works for people who are against science "because science has a leftist agenda."

Back even further man. Kropotkin's Mutual Aid book is a goldmine for this sort of stuff- highly recommend it to anyone interested in human nature.

Any idea of 'social darwinism' in ancient societies, even pre-civilization (exposure of the elderly, infanticide etc) was by and large only practised when there were times of desperate need. Things like the Spartans are a historical abberation

Argentina has the highest taxes in the world along with the komodo island. And we do not have high life standards.

Fellow Argentinian here.

What you say is more of a result of our crooked government than anything else. We have Macri pardoning millions of pesos in debt to his own family members and defunding public education left and right and we see inflation go up and up with every week that goes by. Proper social democracies don't pull this shit, because Finnish and Norwegian and Swedish (and so on and so forth) politicians seem to actually understand that they're public servants, not feudal lords.

Our main problem isn't the system we have, it's the fact that the people in charge of it should be guillotined. I'd certainly welcome a shift toward a more socialist model though.

I think this administration is as bad as the previous, and the one before it and so on. What I see is that we never had real economic freedom here, and we keep failing as a country. Perhaps (just perhps jajja) Milei is right!!! I agree that people in charge should respond for their mistakes and their corruption.
And I dont think socialism is the solution to anything.

I never said I was a fan of the previous administrations. Sure, we had a better economy under the Kirschners but they weren't squeaky clean by any means, and their successors have simply been worse in every sense.

Argentina was an economic superpower once, but that was around a century ago. And no, socialism won't solve anything unless we have people with the actual balls and ethics to put it into practice without coddling the 1% at the cost of starving everyone else. Perón, for all his faults, put the working class first, which allowed our country to massively grow in pretty much every single area, at least until dictatorships and more recent administrations slowly dismantled everything he worked for. He did more than anyone to bridge the gap between classes, but of course rich people never liked him or his followers because of that. Rich people like their class gaps nice and wide.

Our system is rotten from the inside out, and I honestly don't think we'll see any sort of grand scale positive change until something very big, and probably very violent, happens first. Sure, future administrations might put some bandaids here and there, but a paradigm change? For real? Not happening during our lifetime. The right is harmful and the left is ineffective, and that's pretty much that.

Argentina, as a country, as I see it right now, is basically doomed to commit the same stupid fucking mistakes over and over again, because despite everything that's happened, we've forgotten our history and have chosen time and time again to treat politics like a fucking football match. If you want a better standard of living, I suggest you go live somewhere else. That's what I plan to do, at least.

Long story short, Peron is part of the problem. He did some good, but over all, he created this bad system where seems to be natural that the state provides, and naturally, our politicians made the state this big, something we can not afford. I think it was until Peron that we were among the top 10 countries in PBI in the world

The state is supposed to provide, man. Provide education, safety, and jobs, among other things. "Small government" is just code for "let corporations do as they please while the rest rots". Are you really gonna tell me that he did more damage than Videla or Menem?

Establishing a functioning rule of law when it comes to corporate crime and corruption is number one before thinking of any future economic system. Germany is already in a pretty bad state when it comes to companies getting away with all sorts of criminal activity, the bigger the companies, the more they get away with. In the United States it's basically anarchy, no rule of law whatsoever, there's like a 1% chance corporate crime will be persecuted/punished. In South America from what I've been told it's even worse. No economic system can function without any rule of law when it comes to corporate crime and corruption. It's like politicians in Germany or the USA talking about increasing the tax rate for the rich - what does it matter if they don't pay taxes in the country? Establish a rule of law, persecute and punish crimes, then you can consider what kind of economic system you want.

There is a limit on what the state should provide. The economics should be driven by private initiative, and the state should give security, justice, quallity education and health care. Social programs shoud be reduced to the minimum. Here in Argentina social security represents more than 50% of the state outcome ( +20 million people live from the state) and the priovate comanies, mainly small ones (called PYME here) pay 21 taxes per month. You talk about Menem being worst than Peron, well, look at where Menem comes from... And Videla... well there is o need to even talk about that asshole.

This is correct, as long as you establish it and make it happen

Oh really?

(Note that this source is widely regarded as a libertarian publication.)

Neat, a shouting guy and ableism jokes. Solid journalism.

The only video I liked of Rageholic besides his review of Bound By Flame was where he got fucking destroyed by Kyle Kulinski, lmfao.

I love when people try to own Bernie by pointing out that he calls himself a socialist like that's supposed to be a bad thing, and instead I'm just thinking hell yeah.

Couldn't agree more. As somebody whose family came to America as refugees from an actual socialist country nothing exasperates me more than American leftists touting Sweden and Denmark as sterling examples of socialism, or going 'oh, you don't like socialism? I guess that means you hate roads and fire departments!'.

Bernie Sanders isn't a socialist. Denmark isn't socialist. Having the audacity to suggest the government should hold itself responsible for the wellbeing of its citizens isn't socialist, and there's a whole lot of people on both the left and the right in America who could stand to get that through their skulls.

The reason why this narrative began was because conservatives flipped a fucking bitch when Obama tried to pass universal healthcare, claiming that he was a radical socialist for trying to pass such a thing. All that narrative did was push the left to say that those services would be socialist, so that it discredited the argument that universal healthcare was a bad policy simply on that premise alone.

Nah, this whole story that it's only "real socialism" when there's a dictatorship is just nonsense, it's about how the economy is run, not about how many people sit in torture chambers.

Besides, if we're talking authoritarian, you get way more of that in capitalism, that's for sure. Yes, you can choose between 10 different types of toothbrushes! But your workplace (which is a far bigger thing in your life) is 100% gonna be a petty dictatorship.

I guess you have a choice there too, though- You can wage labour or starve. Both such fantastic options!!!!

I think we are going to off topic here. My question was for a country that has today (and for the las 70 years) one of the closest economies in the world, and we have a default every 10 years, we live on a constant crisis, with a floor of + 30% of people living in poverty, and the size of the state gets bigger and bigger as we speak. Soon we will have zero private companies, and everybody will be living out of the state. Now, we need to do something new, and I saw that the contries with liberal economy are much better than the ones with closed market. Examples are New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Denamk, Finland, and so on. On the other hand, the absolute extreme are Cuba and Venezuela, both rotting in poverty and corruption. Just that. I don´t reqally care if Obama was socialist or if Trump is whatever.

Cuba seems to be doing fairly well despite a huge ongoing embargo, so I'm not sure what you're talking about there. Denmark (to pick one example) has a bigger public sector than Venezuela- there's again, different forces at play there.

People seem to do a really bad job at looking at economies in context, in terms of outside interference, what's being done to support/shit on various countries, etc.

Perhaps do a better job at stopping the bourgeois from stealing everyone else's stuff and I'm sure it'll turn out for the better. Getting rid of taxes does nothing but benefit the very top. What's that saying- "Poverty exists not because we can't feed the poor, but because we can't satisfy the rich", something along those lines.