Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What is going on in Argentina?

memoirsandrambles.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 184 posts

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#131

Post by inglor_cz »

kingofthehill98 wrote: post #121
inglor_cz wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"700k brazilians died to COVID, we now have a huge anti-vax problem" That sounds like a common world problem, not anything specifically Brazilian. In my country of 11 million (including Ukrainian refugees), we've had 45 thousand deaths. And anywhere where people frequent Facebook, the anti-vax movement thrives. It is not even specifically far-right, a lot of the crowd belongs to the organic green bio-mom milieu. I ca…

>That sounds like a common world problem, not anything specifically Brazilian. Before the pandemic I personally never saw a single person denying vaccines to their children. Our health system had one of the most successful vaccination programs in the world, we were nearing 100% rates on a country with a scale of continent. Since Bolsonaro our rates are dropping on a very alarming rate and on the streets you see peopl…

"Before the pandemic I personally never saw a single person denying vaccines to their children. "

In that sense, you were lucky before. In the Western world, widespread anti-vax paranoia dates at least back to the infamous Wakefield paper (1998) linking vaccination to autism. It was probably just a matter of time until it skipped over the ocean to Brazil as well. Language barrier might have protected you temporarily, but with the advent of automatic translation, it has been significantly lowered.

Ironically, there is no vaccine against bad ideas such as anti-vaxxery.

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#132

Post by robertlagrant »

notahacker wrote: post #109
robertlagrant wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Perhaps, if you have never been to the West - the object of Milei's criticism - it is possible to believe that it is a world where people are impoverished and dying through evil collectivists providing welfare states. For everyone else, that's a perspective as extreme as his chainsaw stunts. Milei's bark is likely to prove more extreme than his bite, of course. He's already pointedly not abolishing the central bank a…

> where people are impoverished and dying through evil collectivists providing welfare states

Your perspective is too non-collectivism skewed. The West is a mish-mash, but it's the bastion of economic liberalism and capitalism. Those are so effective that they can pay for all sorts of social policies without affecting the productivity too much of the people making the money.

You should be thinking about the millions starved and killed in China or Russia or now Argentina when you think of the problems of collectivism. Thinking of somewhere like Sweden as a collectivist paradise is wrong - there are plenty of billionaires there. It's easy to pay for "free" stuff when there's plenty to go round, and the plenty is generally not provided by a collectivist state.

There are plenty of people who think that eating the rich would pay for everything. They think billionaires actually have yearly billions in cash to pay for social entitlements, rather than one-off ownership of valuable companies. That's the worry that's being discussed.

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#133

Post by thriftwy »

Wytwwww wrote: post #85
thriftwy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Perhaps we've spotted a case for sloggy Argentinean growth, since the country doesn't strike me as being an industrial giant or a R&D hub - what would they all do living in urban areas?

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#134

Post by thworp »

notahacker wrote: post #118
thworp wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is such a tired argument. The socialist block was, at least by the 1980s, much more wasteful and destructive to the environment than the capitalist world. I encourage you to search for videos like "1980s krakow winter" or "Elbe river GDR" to see a few examples. Then for comparison research when capitalist countries passed their various environmental protection laws. More than that, it's easy to make abstract sta…

> Then for comparison research when capitalist countries passed their various environmental protection laws. Then, for comparison, research the position people describing themselves as libertarians hold and held on the existence of these laws... (I'm not a big fan of blanket statements on growth like "we should slow down" either, but libertarians deserve no more credit for the enactment of environmental laws they cam…

My comment was specifically a response to the "because it is capitalism on steroids" line of reasoning which implied that global warming and environment destruction are consequences of capitalism.

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#135

Post by robertlagrant »

slibhb wrote: post #125
alchemist1e9 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I respectfully disagree in that perhaps some vocabulary would need altering to use words they were more familiar with, but free markets and free enterprise, along with property rights and low taxation was exactly their founding perspective. Regarding “most economists” it would depend on how broad you allow the claim of being an economist is a valid one. We have literal socialist and marxists claiming to be economists…

You're ranting about marxists...but the question is whether markets can fail. Milei says no. But there are plenty of examples of markets failing so, if we take that idea seriously, it reduces to something like "free markets have never been tried". What does that remind you of?

> You're ranting

There's no need for this. Marxism seems to be a re-growing school of thought, taking various angles in modern society and culture. No ranting has happened, and your mischaracterisation of things is revealing.

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#136

Post by gausswho »

diggan wrote: post #110
gausswho wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 wit…

I don't necessarily agree or disagree with Milei, I think my understand of the space and the country is too low to be able to do so. But I disagree with "I don't see anything worth reading here", even if it's unhinged and you fundamentally disagree with their point of view. He is the democratically elected president of a country in despair, and trying to understand what will happen to the country requires understandi…

I half agree. It is helpful up to a point to know what demogogues might be hatching. But I don't agree that his words describe the actual sources of Argentine despair, even among those who voted for him.

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#137

Post by MichaelZuo »

thriftwy wrote: post #133
Wytwwww wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Perhaps we've spotted a case for sloggy Argentinean growth, since the country doesn't strike me as being an industrial giant or a R&D hub - what would they all do living in urban areas?

A huge portion of the population in the cities doesn't do anything, quite literally living on the government budget.

Hence why the poverty rate near instantly skyrocketed after the huge cuts to government spending recently.

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#138

Post by pjc50 »

thriftwy wrote: post #133
Wytwwww wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Perhaps we've spotted a case for sloggy Argentinean growth, since the country doesn't strike me as being an industrial giant or a R&D hub - what would they all do living in urban areas?

?? Urban areas are just the default for the 20th century, let alone the 21st.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Argentina is surprisingly comprehensive. The sidebar has agriculture at 7% of the economy. The place is not without industry, it's just making and selling things at ""wrong"" prices because of the currency issue, which in turn comes from the balance of payments issue. There's clearly substantial local commerce, just not quite enough export.

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#139

Post by thriftwy »

pjc50 wrote: post #138
thriftwy wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps we've spotted a case for sloggy Argentinean growth, since the country doesn't strike me as being an industrial giant or a R&D hub - what would they all do living in urban areas?

?? Urban areas are just the default for the 20th century, let alone the 21st. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Argentina is surprisingly comprehensive. The sidebar has agriculture at 7% of the economy. The place is not without industry, it's just making and selling things at ""wrong"" prices because of the currency issue, which in turn comes from the balance of payments issue. There's clearly substantial loca…

What % of exports, though, and what % of exports to the countries outside of the region (i.e. the globally competitive industries)?

Even by world standards, 70-80% of urbanization in the 60s and 92% now is quite a lot. Especially a lot for a country which mostly exports agricultural produce. Without checking, I would expect it to be 50% in the 60s and 70-80% today.

Re: What is going on in Argentina?

#140

Post by thriftwy »

GaryNumanVevo wrote: post #103
epolanski wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inflation is a symptom, not the cause. Not sure how Argentinians are supposed to do better using cryptocurrencies.

They'd be better off holding literally any _other_ currency. US dollars are hard to get in large quantities, and you'd be stuck holding a lot of cash. Bitcoin (or any crypto currency, BTC isn't unique here) is just easier to buy and hold as a hedge against inflation

I've never seen issues with obtaining any required quantity of physical US dollars cash, and that includes 2022 Russia.
Post reply on HN