Bad news

#Argentina's #Milei has led his party to a landslide victory in Sunday's midterm elections, after defining the first two years of his presidency with radical spending cuts and free-market reforms.

His party, La Libertad Avanza, won nearly 41% of the vote, taking 13 of 24 Senate seats and 64 of the 127 lower-house seats that were contested.

His gains will make it easier for Milei to push ahead with his programme to slash state spending and deregulate the economy

I'm not going to link to the statement, but apparently the "libertarian" "think tank" the Mises Institute just lost three of its advisory board members (including every sweaty "libertarian's" favorite "ancap" Hans-Hermann Hoppe), who resigned as a group in protest over a decision to grant Argentine president Javier Milei a newly invented "Memorial Prize in honour of Ludwig von Mises."

This ultimately means very little on the world stage, but it's gratifying to watch people like these fighting among themselves.

The three who just resigned published a statement on the institute's website criticizing both the unaccountable way the prize was just invented out of whole cloth and also raising some serious concerns about Milei's understanding of Mises' economic ideas. Probably the most biting passage is the following:

"[W]e consider the awarding of this prize to him to be unjustified. In our view, a ‘Memorial Prize in honour of Ludwig von Mises’ could be awarded to scientists or politicians who have rendered outstanding services to the development, dissemination or application of Mises’ ideas. It is obvious that Javier Milei is not a scientist, but a politician. It is true that he has made the names of Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard and other thinkers of the Austrian School known to a wider public. But his knowledge of their ideas and theories is superficial and flawed, and his praise is therefore double-edged. In any case, we can only advise the public not to regard Milei’s statements on economic philosophy as authoritative."

Yeowch! How do you say "This guy's full of shit" without saying "This guy's full of shit"?

These advisory board members generally represent some really terrible politics, but even they had to come down on Milei, a self-proclaimed "anarchist," for his "expansion of the police state" and his "uncritical and downright enthusiastic solidarity with the current governments of the United States and Israel."

Anyways, if you're into the kind of fireworks that don't actually look like fireworks at all, it's worth looking up. As I said, I'm not by any means going to link to that nonsense.

#Milei

I'm not going to link to the statement, but apparently the "libertarian" "think tank" the Mises Institute just lost three of its advisory board members (including every sweaty "libertarian's" favorite "ancap" Hans-Hermann Hoppe), who resigned as a group in protest over a decision to grant Argentine president Javier Milei a newly invented "Memorial Prize in honour of Ludwig von Mises."

This ultimately means very little on the world stage, but it's gratifying to watch people like these fighting among themselves.

The three who just resigned published a statement on the institute's website criticizing both the unaccountable way the prize was just invented out of whole cloth and also raising some serious concerns about Milei's understanding of Mises' economic ideas. Probably the most biting passage is the following:

"[W]e consider the awarding of this prize to him to be unjustified. In our view, a ‘Memorial Prize in honour of Ludwig von Mises’ could be awarded to scientists or politicians who have rendered outstanding services to the development, dissemination or application of Mises’ ideas. It is obvious that Javier Milei is not a scientist, but a politician. It is true that he has made the names of Ludwig von Mises, Murray Rothbard and other thinkers of the Austrian School known to a wider public. But his knowledge of their ideas and theories is superficial and flawed, and his praise is therefore double-edged. In any case, we can only advise the public not to regard Milei’s statements on economic philosophy as authoritative."

Yeowch! How do you say "This guy's full of shit" without saying "This guy's full of shit"?

These advisory board members generally represent some really terrible politics, but even they had to come down on Milei, a self-proclaimed "anarchist," for his "expansion of the police state" and his "uncritical and downright enthusiastic solidarity with the current governments of the United States and Israel."

Anyways, if you're into the kind of fireworks that don't actually look like fireworks at all, it's worth looking up. As I said, I'm not by any means going to link to that nonsense.

#Milei