Live data from Hacker News

What is going on in Argentina?

memoirsandrambles.substack.com

81–90 of 184 posts

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#81
post #21

this is a pretty good post if you're interested in what the fuck is going on in argentina, you might try git clone http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/pavnotes2.git and read milei-diary.md, which are my observations here on the ground, after having lived here most of my adult life. it's been a few weeks since i added an entry to it, but i'll update it again soon one minor problem with the post: 'the white rate' is a phra…

I'm not going to clone a git repo to read a file, but I did waste some time clicking around your site trying to find this file that you mentioned, to no avail. Just FYI.

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a pretty fair assessment of Milei. Do you feel the sex guru part adds much though? Maybe he is in an open relationship, or actually gay, or xyz... does it matter in his economic reform plans for Argentina?

He isn't a lifelong politician, so when the media describes him, they refer to his career in the private sector which as far as I'm aware includes two jobs. One was as an economist and the other as a "sex guru" of some kind. I have no idea what all that involved (mainly been following the economic reforms). If he had been an electrician beforehand they would have said economist and electrician. Some may try to use it…

> they refer to his career in the private sector which as far as I'm aware includes two jobs. One was as an economist and the other as a "sex guru" of some kind.

He was an economics professor for more than 20 years.

And he has also been a semi pro football player, played in a rock band, and been a tantric sex instructor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javier_Milei

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#83
post #2

I submitted a transcript from Javier Milei's address at the 54th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, which I think explains a bit about what is happening, and what is about to happen, from the eyes of the newly elected president who has pretty strong and "out of the ordinary" opinions and ideas. It got some upvotes, but sadly no discussions at all. Highly relevant when discussing Argentina at the moment thoug…

This speech has no legs to stand on. His key premise conflates the industrial revolution with a special definition of capitalism. Which for his ideology has perfect price discovery and a world where no large corporations collude with other. His main course is your usual slab of blaming socialism, sprinkled with side blame at feminists and environmentalists.

I don't see anything worth reading here. It is deceptive with intent and fundamentally unhinged.

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#84
post #2

I submitted a transcript from Javier Milei's address at the 54th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, which I think explains a bit about what is happening, and what is about to happen, from the eyes of the newly elected president who has pretty strong and "out of the ordinary" opinions and ideas. It got some upvotes, but sadly no discussions at all. Highly relevant when discussing Argentina at the moment thoug…

I don't think it's that extreme of a perspective. I'm surprised that the perspective he's speaking against, which when implemented reliably causes citizen impoverishment and death should be spoken about more in those terms, I think.

Exactly!

We are driving our future off a cliff by allowing collectivism to return over libertarianism.

For example his perspective would be very consistent with the perspectives of the founding fathers of the United States. The Founding Fathers would have widely agreed with the speech’s support for free-market capitalism and its critique of collectivism, socialism, and excessive state intervention. Advocating principles that promote economic freedom and prosperity would resonate with them as a reflection of their own efforts to create a government that promotes individual liberty and economic opportunity. celebration of the entrepreneur as a hero of prosperity and its warning against state overreach would likely find broad support among the Founding Fathers. They were, after all, establishing a new nation built on principles of liberty, property rights, and opposition to tyranny. The speech’s call for economic freedom and limited government intervention mirrors the Founding Fathers’ debates on the proper role and size of government. Many of the Founding Fathers, like Alexander Hamilton, would likely support the speech’s endorsement of free-market capitalism. The emphasis on economic freedom and the role of free enterprise in lifting people out of poverty would resonate with his and similar Founders’ views on economic development.

Yet somehow this is generally considered the majority opinion today of his speech:

> has pretty strong and "out of the ordinary" opinions and ideas

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Argentina didn't really go down hill. Constant GDP per capita is up ~50% from 1960: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/NYGDPPCAPKDARG The GDP of the rest of the world went up a lot more than that [1] - and Argentina never did anything besides have decent weather and a roughly constant amount of fertile land. It's kind of like a Dutch Disease: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org…

People didn't really need smartphones, laptops and even personal cars in 1960s in Argentine. I believe they generated that GDP while being mostly rural, where it translates to a lot of amenities. Now they would usually be cramped in a city where the effective cost of living is much greater (leading to villas ), whereas their GDP and thus income didn't grow much.

70-80%+ of the population was already living in urban areas in the 60s though.

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#86

For those not keeping up with the news, Argentina used to be an extremely wealthy country, but went the reverse route many decades ago and has embraced peronism for awhile (kind of a mixture of socialism and fascism) that has led to rampant inflation. They recently elected Javier Milei (an economist and former sex guru) who although some media claim is a radical rightwing candidate, center-right Libertarian might be…

Sound fiat central bank managed monetary policy is now libertarianism? Sheesh...

He has no interest in his own central bank, so no, we wouldn't say that's sound central bank monetary policy.

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#87
post #2

I submitted a transcript from Javier Milei's address at the 54th annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, which I think explains a bit about what is happening, and what is about to happen, from the eyes of the newly elected president who has pretty strong and "out of the ordinary" opinions and ideas. It got some upvotes, but sadly no discussions at all. Highly relevant when discussing Argentina at the moment thoug…

> I think explains a bit about what is happening, and what is about to happen

There is a lot of distance between promising economic changes and getting a positive outcome. His path seems to include a lot of reducing income to the government, privatization of government services and shuttering government branches that promote sciences, etc.

I think he wants to recreate Alabama https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Javier_...

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#88

I've been there in 2011. Wonderful place. At the time Brazil was recovering from the 2008 crises, which was very light for us, and our economy was probably at its top. I had my first job as a programmer and was very well payed compared to locals. I saved all the money to travel there and pay all expenses for me and my girlfriend in about just 4 months; that's how strongly we were economically. At the time 1 Brazilian…

Is it true the Brazil Real is named after that currency crisis. Meaning the real rate of the currency or just urban legend?

The currency was named "real" as in "royal", not as in "actual". And it was what the Portuguese and later Brazilian currency was called from the 1400s until the 20th century. (or at least that's the actual etymology of the currency, even though "real" does also mean "actual" in portuguese now.)

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#89

Argentina has been like this for a very long time. I studied abroad there in 2019 and it was exactly the same. I believe one of the reasons Brian Armstrong started Coinbase was because he saw how devastating inflation was to Argentina’s economy. Argentina was at one point a top 20 country in the world wealth wise and has obviously gone very down hill. It’s too bad, a lot of talented tech workers there.

The Crystal language was written by gauchos!

So was Godot, the open source gaming engine.

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#90
post #21

this is a pretty good post if you're interested in what the fuck is going on in argentina, you might try git clone http://canonical.org/~kragen/sw/pavnotes2.git and read milei-diary.md, which are my observations here on the ground, after having lived here most of my adult life. it's been a few weeks since i added an entry to it, but i'll update it again soon one minor problem with the post: 'the white rate' is a phra…

Beware, exploits have been found in the past where cloning a repo allows remote code execution.
Post reply on HN