Visiting California, United States, President Javier Milei held meetings with businessmen in the technology sector, seeking investments for Argentina, and returned to his favorite activity: speaking about his “libertarian” ideas and anathematizing any form of state intervention in the economy. This time he was at Stanford University, where he spoke for almost an hour and uttered a phrase that illustrates his creed. “Do you think that people are so idiotic that they won’t be able to decide?” He asked his audience. “There will come a time when he is going to die of hunger, with which, let’s say, that is, he will decide in some way not to die. So I don’t need someone to intervene to solve the externality of consumption, because in the end someone is going to solve it.”
The far-rightist gave that example to question the concept of “market failure,” which in his vision never fails. Inevitably, the phrase resonated in Argentina in the context of the Government’s refusal to send food to soup kitchens. In the midst of a deep economic crisis and increasing poverty—it reaches 57.4% of the population, according to the Social Debt Observatory of the Argentine Catholic University—the administration of mercy suspended food delivery since December, denouncing alleged irregularities in soup kitchens managed by cooperatives and social organizations. In State warehouses there are at least 5,000 tons of non-perishable food, purchased by the previous Government, waiting to be distributed, as ordered. a court ruling still unfulfilled.
Milei referred to this situation last week, when leaving a rural exhibition. “Why don’t you distribute the food that is in the warehouses?” a journalist asked him. “Yes, they are sharing it, what happens is that there are people who work (steal), who are losing their work,” she answered. “People don’t make ends meet, president,” the chronicler insisted. “If people didn’t make ends meet, they would be dying on the streets,” Milei responded.
While in Argentina its Government tries to overcome the internal crisis that led to the dismissal of his chief of staff, President Milei completed his second day of activities in San Francisco. Upon arriving at Stanford University he was welcomed by a group of students with Palestinian flags. “Milei, fascist, we don’t want your visit!” they shouted at him. The president, who supports the Government of Israel without nuances, responded: “Why don’t you go to study so you don’t say stupid things? Fascists are socialists. Liberals are opponents. Stop defending murderers.”
Once inside the building, Milei was received by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, director of the Hoover Institute. There, the president met with teachers and then gave his speech about the benefits of the free market. “State intervention is always bad, because it is based on force,” she maintained. “The more intervention there is, the more the right to property is violated and violated, the signal that is transmitted is increasingly worse (…) In all the places where it was applied, socialism was a failure economically, in socially and culturally,” he reiterated his usual statements.
In his diatribe against the “socialisms of the 21st century” he included in that group different current and recent Latin American governments, to which he added, smiling and raising his eyebrows: “And in Spain they have Pedro Sánchez, who is something like a Kirchnerist “I wouldn’t say good manners anymore, because he doesn’t have them.” Spain has just made official the retirement of its ambassador in Argentina, after Milei’s insults against Sánchez and his wife.
On his fourth trip to the United States in almost six months in office, the president already met with Sam Altman, manager of OpenIA, the company that develops ChatGPT. Among other businessmen, he was also with the directors of Apple, Tim Cook, and Google, Sundar Pichai. He presented to them “his vision of the future of Argentina and the importance of a regulatory framework that promotes innovation and investment,” according to the Executive.
The official agenda foresees a meeting with the creator of Facebook for this Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg, director of Meta. Milei’s tour will conclude on Saturday in El Salvador, where she will participate in the inauguration ceremony of the re-elected Nayib Bukele.
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