Javier Milei, economist and president of Argentina, is a complicated character whose background and views have deserved heated discussion. This article will look briefly at Milei as an Austrian economist — the question of his libertarianism was settled elsewhere. One further point before starting: This is an article about economic thought. An assessment of his policies will be touched only shortly in the closing remarks and hopefully in another article.Milei, Smith and development economicsWe shall begin, where Milei and most of the economics profession start in mainstream economic thought, with Adam Smith (1723-90). Milei celebrates Smith as the Gauss of economics, the “father” and “mother.” Milei’s praise of Smith comes from his treatment of the division of

What is the Mises Institute?

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

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What is the Mises Institute?

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

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Ludwig von Mises visited Argentina in June 1959 by invitation of Dr. Alberto Benegas Lynch. The lectures Mises delivered at the University of Buenos Aires are reproduced in the book Economic Policy: Thoughts for Today and Tomorrow. As the title suggests, the economic knowledge transmitted by Mises was for both those days and for the future. Argentina in 1959 was in a recession, the Frondizi administration trying to cope with the terrible situation left by President Juan Domingo Peron (1946–55) and the military government that got him exiled.In his time, Peron turned the Argentinian economy into a command economy with massive price regulations, decapitalization that greatly damaged wages and infrastructure, nationalizations, inflation, foreign exchange control, and

Javier Milei’s administration is generating much deserved commentary, both positive and negative. Critical discussion is vital since he is the first libertarian president, so keeping a distance between libertarianism itself and his government actions is a must if libertarians don’t want to fall with him should his government plans fail.
Just because he is a libertarian and has accessed the presidency doesn’t mean he has immanent support from the rest of the libertarian movement. Thus, it would not be wise to jump into his -short term- winning wagon. Staying in a critical stance until further results are shown is the better way.
A great question among libertarian and non-libertarian social settings has been rolling around since Milei kicked off as an outsider and

The seventy-fifth anniversary of Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action invites us to ponder on Mises’s scholarly achievements and how the economic mainstream has not yet caught up to his advances in economics. Like Jesus Huerta de Soto points out in his preliminary study to the Spanish version of the thirteenth edition of Human Action: few are the treatises on the side of the mainstream that even try to match what Mises does in Human Action.Mises’s work is not only monumental but pivotal; Austrian economists post–Human Action would define themselves in terms of how they interpret Mises’s magnum opus. Regarding the mainstream and Human Action, much has been and can be said, but the key is that the great tragedy of the mainstream is that what is valuable about them is

The seventy-fifth anniversary of Ludwig von Mises’s Human Action invites us to ponder on Mises’s scholarly achievements and how the economic mainstream has not yet caught up to his advances in economics. Like Jesus Huerta de Soto points out in his preliminary study to the Spanish version of the thirteenth edition of Human Action: few are the treatises on the side of the mainstream that even try to match what Mises does in Human Action.Mises’s work is not only monumental but pivotal; Austrian economists post–Human Action would define themselves in terms of how they interpret Mises’s magnum opus. Regarding the mainstream and Human Action, much has been and can be said, but the key is that the great tragedy of the mainstream is that what is valuable about them is

Argentina makes press headlines worldwide and tops the inflation world rankings. People are becoming desperate—living in Argentina is extremely tough—and people are beginning to immigrate to foreign countries. The Argentinian peso is, to the world and the Argentinian citizens, a relentless zombie, rejected by the people but supported by the government, which is desperate to snatch whatever money people have left in their pockets.
To develop this further, we must go first through the history of the Argentinian monetary system to better understand the current situation. Then we will move to examine this living-dead currency and analyze proposals to return to a prosperous and free society.
A Brief Summary of the Monetary History of Argentina
The earliest local