Javier Gerardo Milei[note 1] (born 22 October 1970) is an Argentine politician and economist serving as the president of Argentina since December 2023. Milei has taught university courses in macroeconomics, economic growth, microeconomics, and mathematics for economists. He has written numerous books on economics and politics, and also hosted radio programs on the subject.

As we can see he's basically accomplished veteran of all levels of economics. And regardless of capitalist economics being more or less worthless scam, there are countries run by it and not having nosedive into fascism and slavery in a week. Therefore we can assume that either he faked his entire career and nobody noticed that or he is doing what he's doing completely on purpose.

[–] Virkkunen@kbin.social 26 points 10 months ago

Even better: he faked his entire carreer AND he's doing everything completely on purpose!

[–] elbarto777@lemmy.world 14 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Is he a good economist, though?

I mean, I can write books and host radio shows about quantum mechanics if I want. And I'm no physicist.

But regardless, if he's a climate denier, that's all I need to know.

[–] Virkkunen@kbin.social 11 points 10 months ago

Is he a good economist, though?

Just take a look at how Argentina is faring right now and you can connect the dots to see he's not in any point a good economist, or an economist at all.

[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Is he a good economist, though?

Considering his academic career, he has to be at least well regarded by academia circles. It does not of course preclude he is outright incompetent hack, but it stronly point out that he's established figure in mainstream economics.

Of course he wouldn't be first and not the last of "great economists" that run a country into the ground, but just as in case of people like balcerowicz or chicago boys, it's not because incompetence but because dogmatically following utter nonsense and being the pawn to imperialism (to be fair at this point the question of competence stops being relevant).

[–] Skua@kbin.social 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I fully agree that Milei is at best dangerous to Argentina, but the country's economy has been kinda fucked up for a while. Inflation has been mad and growth has been generally negative for at least a decade

[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Yes, but neoliberal shock therapy is not gonna make it better. If you look at history of neoliberalism, it made everything worse every single time.

[–] Skua@kbin.social 5 points 10 months ago

It looks like I actually replied to the wrong person accidentally. I had meant to post that under Virkkunen's comment rather yours. I do agree with you though

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club -3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

But what is going to make it better?

The problem is that the election was between Captain Anachrocapitalism and a continuation of Peronist policies which included a lot of government intervention.

He was won because he ran against everything the government represented.

[–] PolandIsAStateOfMind@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

But what is going to make it better?

Maybe organizing workers into political representation. I know it's not easy, but desperate voting for a fucking ancap just to get a change from bad to much worse is not it, unless someone is accelerationist.

[–] HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

So once you organize, what do you do?

What policies do you implement?

[–] Shardikprime@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

They scream for they do not know

[–] aniki@lemm.ee 1 points 10 months ago

"The Economy" is about as hard a science as play-dough. It's all just made up bullshit.

[–] andrew_bidlaw@sh.itjust.works 0 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'd say I'm more afraid he's also a talented enterpeneur for a product of his speeches and personality. I've met some people called visionaires, and I'm sure he may be one of these. They are not necessary bad in their field, but their word is taken for granted in too many indisciplinary cases and they are succesful at selling it at many conferences worldwide. He may be a really talented economist, or a man that just have an instinct to getting a career here, it doesn't matter. That characteristics just makes him more likely to succeed at elections, winning the public.

More important to my judgement of him is that he uses a populistic platform of redoing everything from the ground up in an instance. I get people got fed up with previous governments, but nothing good happens overnight. It's a big red flag. Even if he's trully the savanth scientist who planned it all himself for 20 years and get it all perfectly right, the amount of changes themselves would cause a crisis. And him accepting it, not seeing it or serving some lobby makes him not a president material equally.

[–] hangukdise@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago

Argentina needs a first step away from peronism and millei was as good as any. Sure he won't complete any major transformation but avoiding that first step because change can't be done well is also a misleading argument