Long Live Freedom, Damn It!

 Javier Milei delivered a fearless speech to The World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on 1/14/2024.  He presented a classical demolition of collectivist policies and extolled the accomplishments of individual liberty.  Watch the speech by clicking on this link:

Javier Milei speech to WEF

Read the transcript of the speech at this link:

Transcript

This was such a well written speech you should watch or read all of it.  In my opinion these are the highlights of his speech:

Unfortunately, in recent decades motivated by some well-meaning individuals willing to help others and others motivated by the wish to belong to a privileged cast the main leaders of the western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism.  We're here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problem that afflicts the citizens of the world, rather they are the root cause.

That said when you look at per capita GDP since the year 1800 and 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% of the global population out of poverty.  We should remember that by the year 1800 about 95% of the world's population lived in extreme poverty and that figure dropped to 5% by the year 2020 prior to the pandemic.  The conclusion is obvious.  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.

The problem is that social justice is not just and it doesn't contribute either to the general wellbeing.  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 anyone of us say that they voluntarily pay taxes?  Which means that the state is financed through coercion and that the higher the tax burden the higher the coercion and the lower the freedom.

If the goods or services offered by a business are not wanted the business will fail unless it adapts to what the market is demanding.  If they make a good quality product at an attractive price they will do well and produce more.  So, the market is a discovery process in which the capitalist will find the right path as they move forward.

Countries that have more freedom are 12 times richer than those that are repressed.  The lowest decile in terms of distribution in free countries are better off than 90% of the population of repressed countries.

...libertarianism is the unrestricted respect for the life project of others based on the principle of non-aggression in defense of the right to life, liberty, and property.  Its fundamental institutions being private property, markets free from State intervention, free competition, the division of labor, and social cooperation as part of which success is achieved only by serving others with goods of better quality or at a better price.  In other words, capitalists, successful businesspeople are social benefactors who, far from appropriating the wealth of others, contribute to the general well-being.

Why do I say that the West is in danger?  I say this precisely because in those of our countries that should defend the values of the free market, private  property, and the other institutions of libertarianism, sectors of the political  and economic establishment some due to mistakes in their theoretical framework and others due to a greed for power are undermining the foundations of libertarianism, opening up the doors to  socialism and potentially condemning us  to poverty, misery, and stagnation.

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 a 100 million human beings.

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

The market is a mechanism of 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 a 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.

However, faced with the theoretical demonstration that state intervention is harmful and the empirical evidence that it has failed couldn't have been otherwise.  The solution to be proposed by collectivists is not greater freedom but rather greater regulation which creates a downward spiral of the spiral of regulations until we're all poorer and the life of all of us depends on a bureaucrat sitting in a luxury office.

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.

Today states don't need to directly control the means of production to control every aspect of the lives of individuals.  With tools such as printing money, debt, subsidies, controlling the interest rate, price controls, and regulations to correct the so-called market failures, they can control the lives and fates of  millions of individuals.  This is how we come to the point where by using different names or guises a good deal of the generally accept political offers in most Western countries are collectivist variant whether they proclaim to be openly communist, fascist, Nazis, socialists, Social  Democrats, National Socialists, Democrat, Christians, Christian Democrats, progressive populist, nationalists, or globalists.  At bottom there are no major differences.  They all say that the state should steer all aspects of the lives of individuals.  They all defend a model contrary to that one which led humanity to the most spectacular progress in its history.  We have come here today to invite the rest of the countries in the Western World to get back on the path of prosperity, economic freedom, limited government, and respect for private property are essential elements for economic growth.

...I would like to leave a message for all businesspeople here and for those who are not here in person but are following from around the world.  Do not be intimidated either by the political cast or by parasites who live off the state.  Do not surrender to the political class that only wants to stay in power and retain its privileges.  You are social benefactors, you are heroes, you’re the creators of the most extraordinary period of prosperity we've ever seen.  Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral.  If you make money, it's because you offer a better product at a better price thereby contributing to general wellbeing.  Do not surrender to the advance of the state.  The state is not the solution, the state is the problem itself.  You are the true protagonists of this story and rest assured that as from today Argentina is your staunch unconditional ally.

Why would WEF invite Javier Milei to speak?  

FOX Business host Maria Bartiromo attended the WEF annual meeting.  She witnessed Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab walk out of the room during President Milei’s speech.

Bartiromo

Daniel Hannan writes in The Telegraph that WEF invited Milei to speak to provide "at least a warning to that most self-regarding of conferences that voters can make terrible choices."

Hannan also notes that Milei, a former economics professor made no attempt to meet his audience half way. On the contrary, he began by warning that Western values had been betrayed by “those who want to belong to a privileged caste”.

Did WEF invite Milei to speak so that they can concoct a narrative to embarrass or discredit Milei?

Does WEF intend to edit Milei's speech so that they can release soundbites that will discredit his message?

If Milei's invitation to speak was without hidden intentions, then it suggests that the WEF believes they can dismiss any critique and continue with their collectivist plans.

To enhance your knowledge of the philosophy of individual liberty, click on the link below:

The Root Of Liberty

A legacy of liberty

The liberty movement recently lost an enthusiastic supporter.  In November of 2020, Richard (Dick) Rowland died at the age of 90.  Dick dedicated himself to promoting individual liberty.  At the age of 70, he founded the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii to educate people about the values of individual liberty, economic freedom, and accountable government.

There is much to be learned from Dick’s vast knowledge and passion for liberty.  Here are 8 of Dick’s favorite sayings:

1.  Hold onto your principles, because values change, but principles do not.

2.  The Declaration of Independence is the origin of our liberty.  It is both aspirational and inspirational.

3.  There are only 2 paths that we can travel: upward to liberty or downward to tyranny.

4.  As government gets bigger the individual gets smaller.

5.  Politics is downstream from culture.  If we can persuade 10% of the population to follow a path upward toward liberty, we can change the political trajectory of Hawaii.

6.  We persuade our friends, neighbors, and colleagues by planting seeds of thought.

7.  Assemble new supporters and build little platoons.

8.  Provide a voice to the forgotten man.

The following short video provides an excellent tribute to Dick, his philosophies, and his message:

 A tribute to Dick Rowland

Liberty Defined

The Mises Institute recently published an essay by Ron Paul.  You can read it at this link:

https://mises.org/library/liberty-defined-2

The following are some highlights;

Liberty means to exercise human rights in any manner a person chooses so long as it does not interfere with the exercise of the rights of others.

To believe in liberty is not to believe in any particular social and economic outcome. It is to trust in the spontaneous order that emerges when the state does not intervene in human volition and human cooperation. It permits people to work out their problems for themselves, build lives for themselves, take risks and accept responsibility for the results, and make their own decisions.

Understanding how governments always compete with liberty and destroy progress, creativity, and prosperity is crucial to our effort to reverse the course on which we find ourselves. The contest between abusive government power and individual freedom is an age-old problem. The concept of liberty, recognized as a natural right, has required thousands of years to be understood by the masses in reaction to the tyranny imposed by those whose only desire is to rule over others and live off their enslavement.

And yet even among the friends of liberty, many people are deceived into believing that government can make them safe from all harm, provide fairly distributed economic security, and improve individual moral behavior. If the government is granted a monopoly on the use of force to achieve these goals, history shows that that power is always abused. Every single time.

The choice we now face: further steps toward authoritarianism or a renewed effort in promoting the cause of liberty. There is no third option. This course must incorporate a modern and more sophisticated understanding of the magnificence of the market economy, especially the moral and practical urgency of monetary reform. The abysmal shortcomings of a government power that undermines the creative genius of free minds and private property must be fully understood.

The goal is liberty. The results of liberty are all the things we love, none of which can be finally provided by government. We must have the opportunity to provide them for ourselves, as individuals, as families, as a society, and as a country.

In an Ideal America

 

Every person should be free

• to pursue his ambition to the full extent of his abilities, regardless of race or creed or family background.


• to associate with whom he pleases for any reason he pleases, even if someone else thinks it's a stupid reason.


• to worship God in his own way, even if it isn't "orthodox."


• to choose his own trade and to apply for any job he wants — and to quit his job if he doesn't like it or if he gets a better offer.


• to go into business for himself, be his own boss, and set his own hours of work — even if it's only three hours a week.


• to use his honestly acquired property or savings in his own way — spend it foolishly, invest it wisely, or even give it away.


• to offer his services or products for sale on his own terms, even if he loses money on the deal.


• to buy or not to buy any service or product offered for sale, even if the refusal displeases the seller.


• to disagree with any other person, even when the majority is on the side of the other person.


• to study and learn whatever strikes his fancy, as long as it seems to him worth the cost and effort of studying and learning it.


• to do as he pleases in general, as long as he doesn't infringe the equal right and opportunity of every other person to do as he pleases.

The above, in a nutshell, is the way of life that the libertarian philosophy commends.

It is the way of individual liberty, of the free market, of private property, of government limited to securing these rights equally for all.

Leonard E. Read

Publisher

The Freeman

November 1954

The Libertarian Plot

Key Concepts of Libertarianism

The key concepts of libertarianism have developed over many centuries. The first inklings of them can be found in ancient China, Greece, and Israel; they began to be developed into something resembling modern libertarian philosophy in the work of such seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thinkers as John Locke, David Hume, Adam Smith, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine.

Individualism. Libertarians see the individual as the basic unit of social analysis. Only individuals make choices and are responsible for their actions. Libertarian thought emphasizes the dignity of each individual, which entails both rights and responsibility. The progressive extension of dignity to more people — to women, to people of different religions and different races — is one of the great libertarian triumphs of the Western world.

Individual Rights. Because individuals are moral agents, they have a right to be secure in their life, liberty, and property. These rights are not granted by government or by society; they are inherent in the nature of human beings. It is intuitively right that individuals enjoy the security of such rights; the burden of explanation should lie with those who would take rights away.

Spontaneous Order. A great degree of order in society is necessary for individuals to survive and flourish. It’s easy to assume that order must be imposed by a central authority, the way we impose order on a stamp collection or a football team. The great insight of libertarian social analysis is that order in society arises spontaneously, out of the actions of thousands or millions of individuals who coordinate their actions with those of others in order to achieve their purposes. Over human history, we have gradually opted for more freedom and yet managed to develop a complex society with intricate organization. The most important institutions in human society — language, law, money, and markets — all developed spontaneously, without central direction. Civil society — the complex network of associations and connections among people — is another example of spontaneous order; the associations within civil society are formed for a purpose, but civil society itself is not an organization and does not have a purpose of its own.

The Rule of Law. Libertarianism is not libertinism or hedonism. It is not a claim that “people can do anything they want to, and nobody else can say anything.” Rather, libertarianism proposes a society of liberty under law, in which individuals are free to pursue their own lives so long as they respect the equal rights of others. The rule of law means that individuals are governed by generally applicable and spontaneously developed legal rules, not by arbitrary commands; and that those rules should protect the freedom of individuals to pursue happiness in their own ways, not aim at any particular result or outcome.

Limited Government. To protect rights, individuals form governments. But government is a dangerous institution. Libertarians have a great antipathy to concentrated power, for as Lord Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Thus they want to divide and limit power, and that means especially to limit government, generally through a written constitution enumerating and limiting the powers that the people delegate to government. Limited government is the basic political implication of libertarianism, and libertarians point to the historical fact that it was the dispersion of power in Europe — more than other parts of the world — that led to individual liberty and sustained economic growth.

Free Markets. To survive and to flourish, individuals need to engage in economic activity. The right to property entails the right to exchange property by mutual agreement. Free markets are the economic system of free individuals, and they are necessary to create wealth. Libertarians believe that people will be both freer and more prosperous if government intervention in people’s economic choices is minimized.

The Virtue of Production. Much of the impetus for libertarianism in the seventeenth century was a reaction against monarchs and aristocrats who lived off the productive labor of other people. Libertarians defended the right of people to keep the fruits of their labor. This effort developed into a respect for the dignity of work and production and especially for the growing middle class, who were looked down upon by aristocrats. Libertarians developed a pre-Marxist class analysis that divided society into two basic classes: those who produced wealth and those who took it by force from others. Thomas Paine, for instance, wrote, “There are two distinct classes of men in the nation, those who pay taxes, and those who receive and live upon the taxes.” Similarly, Jefferson wrote in 1824, “We have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” Modern libertarians defend the right of productive people to keep what they earn, against a new class of politicians and bureaucrats who would seize their earnings to transfer them to non-producers.

Natural Harmony of Interests. Libertarians believe that there is a natural harmony of interests among peaceful, productive people in a just society. One person’s individual plans — which may involve getting a job, starting a business, buying a house, and so on — may conflict with the plans of others, so the market makes many of us change our plans. But we all prosper from the operation of the free market, and there are no necessary conflicts between farmers and merchants, manufacturers and importers. Only when government begins to hand out rewards on the basis of political pressure do we find ourselves involved in group conflict, pushed to organize and contend with other groups for a piece of political power.
Peace. Libertarians have always battled the age-old scourge of war. They understood that war brought death and destruction on a grand scale, disrupted family and economic life, and put more power in the hands of the ruling class — which might explain why the rulers did not always share the popular sentiment for peace. Free men and women, of course, have often had to defend their own societies against foreign threats; but throughout history, war has usually been the common enemy of peaceful, productive people on all sides of the conflict.

… It may be appropriate to acknowledge at this point the reader’s likely suspicion that libertarianism seems to be just the standard framework of modern thought — individualism, private property, capitalism, equality under the law. Indeed, after centuries of intellectual, political, and sometimes violent struggle, these core libertarian principles have become the basic structure of modern political thought and of modern government, at least in the West and increasingly in other parts of the world.

However, three additional points need to be made: first, libertarianism is not just these broad liberal principles. Libertarianism applies these principles fully and consistently, far more so than most modern thinkers and certainly more so than any modern government. Second, while our society remains generally based on equal rights and capitalism, every day new exceptions to those principles are carved out in Washington and in Albany, Sacramento, and Austin (not to mention London, Bonn, Tokyo, and elsewhere). Each new government directive takes a little bit of our freedom, and we should think carefully before giving up any liberty. Third, liberal society is resilient; it can withstand many burdens and continue to flourish; but it is not infinitely resilient. Those who claim to believe in liberal principles but advocate more and more confiscation of the wealth created by productive people, more and more restrictions on voluntary interaction, more and more exceptions to property rights and the rule of law, more and more transfer of power from society to state, are unwittingly engaged in the ultimately deadly undermining of civilization.

From Chapter 1, “The Coming Libertarian Age,” Libertarianism: A Primer, by David Boaz (New York: The Free Press, 1998). See also www.libertarianism.org.