Rafi Farber’s Take on the Rise of Milei (And More)
I received Rafi Farber’s explicit permission to copy (and edit some of the language):
Here come lots of excerpts.
The election of Catholic-born anarcho-capitalist economist, with a dog named after Murray Rothbard, who learns with a Rabbi, to the Presidency of a hyperinflated country called “Argentina” (literally “The Land of Silver”), is just too weird and out-of-the-blue to put to chance. There is nothing sane about it.
Milei’s flogging of the World Economic Forum with an avalanche of completely unhinged economic truth was nothing short of a giddy pleasure. It was a haymaker right to the face, and the ultra elites at Davos have been stunned. They had no choice but to invite him. Not to invite him would have shown weakness. To invite him means the megalomaniacs at least have a chance of coddling him to the point of brain death, as they do to everyone who crosses their gates to cartoon hell. But if they fail to suck out his soul, they risk sparking a contagion of glorious disobedience among the peasants and serfs around the world.
When we use the term “capitalism” we have a loose set of concepts in our heads. In that sense, the word is a broad heuristic for a society that allows people to amass capital to a certain extent, and produce stuff with that capital. But capital is just stuff that allows people to produce other stuff better and more quickly. For example, if you want to knock someone unconscious, like Klaus Schwab let’s say, you could use your fist, but that would probably take a few swings at least, and you’d bruise your knuckles. Alternatively, you can channel “capitalism” and use capital, like a two-by-four. That piece of wood will knock Klaus right out without bruising your hand, and it might even kill him.
Hmm, is choosing Klaus Schwab for “someone” a Freudian slip? Don’t think it qualifies as a “slip”, though.
There is no “ism” regarding capital. Man has used capital since homo habilis. Even apes use capital when they stick twigs in termite nests to crunch on those insects that eat two-by-fours professionally.
How do people amass capital? By not having it stolen. If you have a society that doesn’t glorify stealing and rather punishes people who steal, then people can start amassing capital, making stuff, and trading it for other stuff. Industry is just bigger pieces of capital. There is no qualitative difference economically between a massive factory and a twig used to fish for termites. People figure out their talents, go to where they are most needed through a combination of price signals, predilection, and ability, and they start producing stuff. If that stuff is not stolen, it will be traded, and everyone then has more stuff.
If this goes on for long enough, meaning if people are allowed to make stuff and trade for other stuff without being robbed, then society becomes rich. If you want to call that “capitalism” then fine. I prefer to call it just. If, however, that stuff is stolen, people will stop producing it, and everyone has less stuff and becomes poor. If that goes on for long enough, everybody starves and dies, including the thieves. If you want to call that “socialism” then fine. I prefer to call it lawlessness.
Rafi deconstructs GDP and economic growth:
Milei spends most of the beginning of his speech talking about per capita GDP as a justification for capitalism. What’s “per capita GDP”? That’s some amount of units of money being exchanged by some unit of people in a given unit of time. This doesn’t indicate anything other than how many units of money exist in a society and how fast they circulate. In a hyperinflationary society, per capita GDP approaches infinity, as people struggle to exchange their monetary units instantaneously. Try to tell them that their per capita GDP shows they are all infinitely rich and they’ll whack you in the face with a two-by-four, if there are any left to whack you with.
Of course, in order to whack someone in the face with a two by four, you need capital. So you need to be “capitalist” to some extent.
The truth is, people in hyperinflationary societies are poor because their government glorified theft through inflation, citing “growth” in “per capita GDP” to justify it all the way down, until per capita GDP approaches infinity and everybody dies of starvation. People who are robbed are poor, regardless of GDP. It’s really not that complicated, unless you focus on made-up fairy-tale concepts like GDP.
Milei doubles down on this calculation from hell when he talks about “growth” accelerating to “3% a year” from 2000 to 2023, which just so happened to be the decades of maximum inflation. If GDP measures the amount of money circulating, and you print a ton of money units out of absolutely nothing, GDP is going to expand in those terms. When you think about it, it’s really dumb. Who the hell cares, besides some high school dropout zit-encrusted bureaucrat paid a living wage via that very inflation, out of your pocket, to calculate the garbage GDP that justifies the salary he steals from you? Nobody cares. That’s who.
Even “growth” itself is not necessarily a good thing. “Growth” implies a rise in wealth, the ability to consume more, to satisfy one’s physical desires. But “growth” could also mean consuming less, like a morbidly obese man-whale who finally decides to lose weight so he can walk without crushing his own shins. Did he grow? Yes, because his quality of life is now much better, and if he wanted to, he could walk over and smack Klaus Schwab in the face with some capital. Still, he consumed much less, so is that a recession?
As the Rabbis of the Mishna say in Tractate Avoth, “The more flesh, the more worms. The more possessions, the more worries.” There is a downside to wealth, to “growth”, and that is, maintaining all you have becomes more and more difficult. We all want to climb higher, but the higher you climb and the faster you “grow”, the more prone you are to a psychological breakdown as a result of not handling the pressure and status and not being able to maintain it.
So, a two-by-four can serve as a great metaphor… I don’t agree with each word (especially the ones I left out here), but the ending is crucial:
But my Number One critique of Milei’s speech is not related to any of these mistakes. It is that he does not mention God anywhere. Milei comes from a Jewish/Noahide mindset, so he cannot be shy about it now. If he chooses to throw his lot in with us, with the Jews, to feely choose that danger and that magnifying glass, then he’s got to go the whole way.
Interestingly, though, he did quote Austrian School economist and Rabbi Israel Kirzner, a Talmud scholar, but Rav Kirzner, also, for some inexplicable reason, does not wear a kippah when speaking about economics. I never understood this.
The one thing the World Economic Forum does not have, for certain, is God. These people are the godless of the godless, rivaled only, maybe, by the secular Zionists who run the State of Israel. If we are going to defeat them, and we will, then we need to invite God into the battle. God will fight for us, if only we let Him.
And we will.
