""How many people can honestly say they are sure that they would have done the right thing, if they had lived in a very different time and place? "

"I don’t believe it makes sense to accuse people of being Nazis or Maoists. Almost everyone, including even extremists, now understand that these were highly flawed political movements.
    "Nonetheless, it’s worth thinking about why Maoism and Nazism were once so popular. Why did so many Chinese college students join the Red Guard and enthusiastically persecute their professors (and others)? Why did 37% of the German electorate vote for the Nazi Party in 1932? These questions cry out for an explanation. ...
    "Of course, not everyone joined the Red Guard, and not everyone voted for the Nazis. [But] which people alive today [in those circumstances] would have joined the Red Guard? And which people alive today would have joined the Nazis?
    "Consider the woke extremists that enthusiastically denounce and shun people for not being sufficiently left wing on a check list of issues. Does anyone seriously believe they would not have been part of the contingent that joined the Red Guard? And think about people that are so anti-immigrant that they don’t even want us to accept high-skilled people from India and China because they worry about America’s European heritage being diluted. Does anyone seriously believe they would not have been among the 37% who voted for the Nazis?
    "I wish more people would do some serious soul searching, and honestly ask themselves how they would have behaved in some of these extreme situations. ...
    "I’m not accusing modern nationalists of literally being Nazis. ... Nor do I believe that today’s woke extremists wish to beat and torture their professors. Instead, I see far left and far right wing ideologies as a sort of virus, which can infect people’s minds, even otherwise reasonable minds. And I see liberalism as a sort of vaccine. ... making [one] immune to the lure of authoritarian ideologies. [I’m not defining liberalism in the American sense of left-of-center Democrat. I am using the term in the international sense of supporter of free speech, human rights, a market economy, democracy, civil rights, opposition to nationalism, etc. ] I have no doubt that if [the liberal] had been born in another time and place, he would have avoided becoming an authoritarian of either the left or the right.
    "How many people can honestly say they are sure that they would have done the right thing, if they had lived in a very different time and place?
    "When politics gets extremely contentious and extremely tribal, people are pressured to take sides. ... People hate it when they are ostracised by fellow members of their 'tribe.' Sorry, but the enemy of your enemy is not your friend. Your only reliable political allies are those that share your core principles."

~ Scott Sumner from his post 'Liberalism as a vaccine'

 

“The art of *not* reading is a very important one."

“The art of not reading is a very important one. It consists in not taking an interest in whatever may be engaging the attention of the general public at any particular time. When some political or ecclesiastical pamphlet, or novel, or poem is making a great commotion, you should remember that he who writes for fools always finds a large public. A precondition for reading good books is not reading bad ones: for life is short.”

–Arthur Schopenhauer from his essay 'On Books and Writing'

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… "

“Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster… 

for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you."

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Nietzsche's quote seems an apt one to memorialise today's ceasefire in Gaza. 

Hamas was empowered by Netanyahu's Israel in order (said Netanyahu) to divide Palestinian power. On October 7 a Hamas mob overran slipshod Israeli barriers to rape, butcher and burn 1200 innocent souls and kidnap another 250. And then Netanyahu's Israel began what it said was a battle to eliminate Hamas.

With more signing up daily to join Hamas than can possibly have been eliminated — and Hamas's leader promising ever more atrocities to replicate the "miracle" (his word) of October 7— it seems that the battle to eliminate, or even subdue, Hamas is lost. But in those 471 days of bombings, air strikes and savagery, so too might be the battle for Israel's own soul.

As the Middle East's even remotely individualistic liberal democracy, that could be the biggest loss.

"Capitalism is indeed remorseless, but in distributing economic advantage."

"[Michael Ingatieff complains] as if it’s a fact too obvious to question, of 'capitalism’s remorseless distribution of economic disadvantage.'
    "What in the world is he talking about?
    "Ordinary [folk around the world], even ones in lower-income brackets, today live in air-conditioned homes, drive air-conditioned automobiles, carry electronic devices that stream music and videos and enable real-time conversations – in voice or in text – with people literally on the other side of the globe. Nearly all of us regularly fly through the air to distant locations, have closets full of clothes and amazing appliances and detergents to keep those clothes clean, spend lower and lower shares of our disposable incomes on food as the quality and variety of that food increase (fresh blueberries in January in New York would have astonished J.D. Rockefeller), enjoy health care undreamed of by J.P. Morgan, and have life expectancy at birth more than double what it was for most of humanity’s existence.
    "Indeed, our pets eat better than did most of our forebears, and even our inanimate stuff is more comfortably and securely accommodated than they were.
    "These and many other ordinary experiences of modern life are so routine that we take them for granted, yet each and every one would have astounded the richest monarch or pooh-bah before the capitalist era. And each one is the product of innovative, entrepreneurial capitalism. Capitalism is indeed remorseless, but in distributing economic advantage."

~ Don Boudreaux, from his post 'Capitalism Is Indeed Relentless (It Cannot Possibly Feel Remorse)'

"The capitalist achievement"

"It would be cold comfort if the gains since 1800, or 1960, had gone to the rich, as you hear claimed every day. But the poor have been the big winners. The great economist Joseph Schumpeter described “the capitalist achievement” in his 1942 book, 'Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy':

"'The capitalist process, not by coincidence, but by virtue of its mechanism, progressively raises the standards of life of the masses. Queen Elizabeth I owned silk stockings. The capitalist achievement does not typically consist in providing more silk stockings for queens but in bringing them within the reach of factory girls in return for steadily decreasing amounts of effort.'

"Marie Antoinette is supposed to have said, when told that the peasants had no bread, 'Let them eat cake' (well, 'brioche,' but same difference.) In rich countries now, people worry about different problems. All of us, even the poor, have too much bread. We eat too much cake. We are on our way to a world in which everyone has 'first‐​world' problems such as bulging waistlines, cluttered closets, and nothing good to watch on Netflix."

~ Deirdre McCloskey and Art Carden from their 2020 book Leave Me Alone and I’ll Make You Rich [excerpted here]

 

 

REMINDER: "Freedom, in a political context, means freedom from the coercive power of the state—and nothing else."

 

"Freedom, in a political context, means freedom from government coercion. It does not mean freedom from the landlord, or freedom from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity. It means freedom from the coercive power of the state—and nothing else." 

~ Ayn Rand, from her essay 'Conservatism: An Obituary,' collected in her book Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal. [See also 'Cue Card Libertarianism: Freedom']

 

Anti-slavery sculpture is being cancelled

Memorial to the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron, by Vincent Gray, 2024

 

A remarkable and historically important sculpture is being denied a home.

From 1807, when Britain abolished the slave trade, until 1867— two years after the US finally abolished slavery after a bloody civil war — the Royal Navy patrolled the West African coast intercepting slavers and freeing those enslaved.

For the first time in human history, a government took a stand against human slavery. Over its sixty years of operation, the Squadron is estimated to have freed 150,000 slaves!

And yet, in an era when statues themselves are being 'cancelled' — removed or destroyed because those memorialised acquired their prominence through participating or defending slavery — this monument to a remarkable act in defence of human liberty is being denied a home at its most obvious location: in Portsmouth, where the Squadron was based.

The owners of the local shopping centre, Gun Wharf Quays, located by the prominent landmark, the Spinnaker Tower, initially gave permission to site the sculpture there. But subsequently they rescinded it because the memorial ‘lacked authenticity and sensitivity’ and would remind people of ‘a dark part of the nation’s history.’
    Of course, the sculpture actually reminds us of a remarkable act of national generosity, a profound atonement for the role of some British in the slave trade of the 17th and 18th centuries. The establishment of a memorial to the West Africa Squadron does not hide the history of the slave trade nor seek to sanitise Britain’s role in first trading, and then preventing the trade of Africans. Nor would it preclude or prejudice the erection of a memorial to the slaves themselves. Slavery and freedom are part of the same historical narrative and both must be remembered. This sculpture remembers the slaves and the Royal Navy together, and will prompt thoughts and questions about both enslavement and emancipation.
    Portsmouth City Council and the Historic Naval Dockyard in Portsmouth, from where the Squadron sailed, have also declined the offer of the memorial. So has the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, the Historic Dockyard Chatham (where some of the ships were built) and Gosport City Council (where the ships were victualled). As [Colin] Kemp writes [in seeking a permanent home for the statue], ‘The current mood seems only to be interested in apologies and reparations’ and will not recognise the moral action, after abolition, ‘in sending ships to patrol the coast of West Africa for 60 years’.

It's almost like the cancellers want to cancel history.

"Blaming climate change for these disasters only deflects attention away from actual causes."

"First, understand Southern California is naturally dry. Its Mediterranean climate means it rarely rains in the summer and has a limited winter rainy season. Three deserts in the region attest to its dry climate. ...
    "While climate alarmists like Michael Mann blame the fires on global warming, December dryness is not unusual. In fact, the January 9th fires were preceded by a 30-day trend of increasing rainfall, but that obviously was not a factor. ... Furthermore, the winter rainy season coincides with the time of the Santa Ana winds ... the winds warm and dry further, typically with a relative humidity below 10% that rapidly dries out the vegetation. ...
    "The region’s last big fire – the December 2017 Thomas Fire – was ignited when Santa Ana winds caused electrical wires to spark.
    "Knowing that natural, lethal fire dangers are always looming for the growing population, the question is whether city and state governments could have been better prepared to minimize ignitions and more efficiently contain a fire’s spread ...
    "Climate alarmists like Michael Mann claim it is the increase of CO2 causing drier conditions that correlates with bigger fires. But the data do not support his fearmongering.
    "An increase in the destruction of property by wildfires better correlates with population growth and the expansion of an electrical grid that is vulnerable to high winds. Increased 1-hour fuels and 10-hour fuels due to land disturbances and poor land management correlate with bigger fires. Increased homeless populations correlates with more ignitions.
    "Blaming climate change for these disasters only deflects attention away from actual causes. Fabrications linking rising CO2 to wildfires should be ignored. Governments must [allow] solutions that will truly protect people and their property from the unstoppable, natural conditions enabling devastating fires."

~ James Steele from his article 'Assigning Responsibility for the Tragic Los Angeles Fires'

"The Woke Right ... " [updated]

"The Woke Right is that part of the Right that has decided everything the Left has been saying is bad must actually be good.

"The Left said racism is bad, so racism must be good. 

"The Left said patriarchy is bad, so patriarchy must be good.
"The Left said Fascism is bad, so...

"Because the Woke (or Dissident, or New, or 'New Christian') Right defines itself by glorifying everything the Left said was bad, it becomes an extension of the Left's tortured and destructive caricature of society. They become an extension of the Left and take up its methods.

"The Left wasn't wrong that racism is bad. The Left was wrong about what racism is. The thing the Left referred to as 'racism' isn't racism. Most of it isn't even real. The purpose of most of those claims was to extract power, and it worked because racism is actually bad.

"The Woke or New or Dissident Right ... has adopted a basic reactionary reversal of the Left's pronouncements while accepting the Left's characterisations, framing, and belief in power dynamics."

~ James Lindsay on 'The Woke Right'

UPDATE:

'Decolonisation' is about embracing 'original sin'

 

"Settler colonialism is ... the idea that countries founded by European colonialism—primarily countries like the United States, Canada, [New Zealand] and Australia, and then often by extension, Israel—are sort of permanently shaped by the original sin of colonisation. So that the countries, even hundreds of years after the original settlement, remain shaped by this settler colonial experience. And that a lot of the injustices and problems, as critics see it, with those countries can be explained by reference to that European settlement. ...
    "[A] settler colony would [originally] be a colony like Algeria or Rhodesia where Europeans had come to settle but had not displaced or replaced the native population. ... But, in the 1990s, settler colonialism came to be applied to countries with a very different history and situation, [like NZ,] Australia and ... North America. ... And, thinking about those countries as settler colonial societies means something very different. ... you can't decolonise the United States in the same way that you could decolonise Algeria by getting rid of the settlers. ... instead it means that you want to acknowledge that the country was sort of founded on the 'crime' of colonialism, of settlement, and change things about it that are directly related to that. And, it lines up with a lot of Progressive critique of the United States and other societies. So, people talk about the environment, about capitalism and inequality, about gender relations--but framing them as the results of settler colonialism. ....
    "[It] is such a flexible term that it can be applied to almost anything that one wants to criticise; and it puts social critics in a powerful position because you can say, 'Anything that's wrong with our country, it's a settler way of being. That's how we explain it, and we have to do penance for it.' ...
    "[T]here's an odd similarity with evangelical Christianity ... acknowledging that one is sinful, of saying: I've inherited this original sin, just as in the Christian doctrine of original sin. It's not something that I personally did. I personally didn't settle this country, but I've inherited it. I'm a settler by inheritance, and that the first step to curing yourself of this condition or purging the sin is to acknowledge that you are a sinner, to acknowledge that you're 'fallen.' ..."

~ Adam Kirsch in his interview with Russ Roberts on the EconTalk podcast episode: 'Understanding the Settler Colonialism Movement (with Adam Kirsch)'

"Balancing" Regulatory Standards [updated]

Have you ever noticed that Jane Kelsey (sorry, thaat's Emeritus Professor Jane Kelsey to you and I) makes everything to which she's opposed sound better than it is?

David Seymour's proposed Regulatory Standards Bill is, she claims, is a reflection of the ACT Party's commitment to light-handed regulation and private property rights. "It's basically about the protection of private property and wealth," she insists.

Joining in her criticism of the Bill is one Melanie Nelson, who is apparently something called a "cross-cultural consultant." Her concern is that the Bill if enacted would be "constitutional straitjacket" on what government can do.

That's all sounding good so far, right?

Constitutional safeguards should be specifically directed at what government can do, because constitutions are the way by which governments are chained up to do only the things government should be doing: which is to protect individual and property rights.

Which is precisely what David Seymour claims the Bill will prioritise "because 'New Zealanders deserve the ability to make a difference in their own lives,' he said in a statement."

Far be it from me to carp. But that's not what the bill actually does.  

The Bill's co-author Bryce Wilkinson instead says it's about "balance." "What's the balance [?] ... That's an open question."

Good quality regulation to economists like myself [says Wilkinson] is one in which the benefits to people who are affected by it exceed the costs to people who are affected by it. So it's regulation which makes people better off.

Read that equation again: to be balanced, it's asserted the benefits to people who are affected by a regulation should exceed the costs to people who are affected by that regulation. So to be accurate, and to correct Wilkinson's mathematics, it's regulation which will by design make some people worse off. 

Or to put it another way: if the majority will benefit at the expense of a minority, then (by this equation) that minority can go hang.

And the smallest minority is an individual.

It's hard to see from this equation how on earth individual rights can be assured, not when they may be stripped any time a majority might (allegedly) benefit. 

This only adds to concerns about the bill I've already raised. 

Maybe for once Jane Kelsey is right. Maybe the Bill is dangerous. Not because it protects individual and property rights. But because it won't.

UPDATE: 

Kelsey also says she's "worried about the goal of having minimal regulation of everything," citing in particular concerns about the environment and the "public interest," and "the legacy of leaky homes, the deaths at Pike River, and the lack of regulation around finance companies or aged care facilities." All things, I've argued before, that are caused by over-regulation that makes it hard (or sometimes even illegal) to do the right thing.

More on those arguments below, but let's first let's acknowledge the only coherent meaning of “the public interest”:

[T]here is no such thing as ‘the public interest’ except as the sum of the interests of individual men. And the basic, common interest of all men—all rational men—is freedom. Freedom is the first requirement of 'the public interest'—not what men do when they are free, but that they are free. All their achievements rest on that foundation—and cannot exist without them.

The principles of a free, non-coercive social system are the only coherent form of “the public interest.” More here:

• The state can't protect the environment – markets can
• The myth of deregulation, part #123
• HOUSING: "What regulation has ruined, deregulation can repair."
• The myth of deregulation disasters
• Scandalous Regulators
• Corporate welfare is not dead
• LEAKY HOMES, Part 1: The myth of deregulated building
• Leaky logic on leaky homes
• The Market Doesn't Solve Problems; People Do
• The myth of deregulation, part #124
• Pharmaceutical regulations have killed millions
• Risk, Moral Hazard, and the Moochers of South Canterbury Finance
• Don't blame "deregulation," dickhead
• The 'deregulated' building industry...

"The root cause of today’s wildfires is terrible forest management."

"The solution to dangerous, out-of-control wildfires in California is addressing the root cause: 'excess fuel load' from bad forest management. Focusing on climate change, a minor variable that we 'have no near-term control over, is a craven political ploy. ...
    [T]emperatures have risen 1 degree C in the last 150 years. Is it really possible that that amount of warming makes dangerous wildfires inevitable? No. ... The negative effect of rising global temperatures on California wildfire susceptibility in particular is dubious because past centuries had far more fire-prone climates. The Palmer Drought Index shows only a slight increase in California drought since 1900.
    "Historical evidence shows us that prior to man-made CO2 emissions CA experienced regular 'megadroughts' that could last over a century. The modern era has been very lush by comparison. Even if CA could lower global CO2 levels we could easily suffer a regional drought. ...
    "The root cause of today’s wildfires is terrible forest management. Policymakers have prevented controlled burns, debris clearing, and logging — jacking up the 'fuel load' to incredibly dangerous levels. ... The path forward is simple: focus on the main cause, forest management, which is totally within our control. Stop pretending that lowering CO2 levels would bring about some fire-free paradise–and that it is possible near-term. Stop mandating 'unreliables.' Decriminalise nuclear."

~ Alex Epstein from his post 'Bad Forest Management, and Not Climate Change, is the Root Cause of California Fires'

Sense vs non-sense on tariffs

 

It had to happen. A numbnut headed for the White House threatens tariffs on American consumers to get his own way, and a numbnut from Auckland University takes the opportunity to argue for tariffs here to make us all poorer too — which is what would happen, and what did happen last time we tried a Fortress New Zealand approach.

Fortunately, Michael Reddell is there to talk some sense:

A pity that politicians will more likely be listening to Mr Numbnut than Mr Common Sense.

"... a broader, decade-long 'crank realignment' in American politics."

"Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s transition from semi-prominent Democrat to third party spoiler to Donald Trump endorser is emblematic of a broader, decade-long 'crank realignment' in American politics.…
    "The partisan shifts of both Trump and RFK Jr. are part of a long term cycle in which .... a generic suspicion of institutions and the people who run them has come to be associated with conservative politics. Conservative cranks are not even close to new (the John Birch Society, for example), but they’ve become increasingly prominent ...

    "If I’m agitating for a 'liberal' realignment of American politics, it’s partly because I live in terror that the realignment will come anyway—but it will be illiberal….
    "Let’s talk about what kind of implicit idea would cause someone to combine a traditionally conservative proposal (keeping out immigrants) with a traditionally leftist proposal (government price controls)—and do so in a way that so overwhelms every other consideration, including democracy itself, that it causes them to flip their vote.
    "The implicit premise is that government exists to hand out favours to 'people like me'—and to kick everybody else in the teeth, especially poor immigrants coming here in search of a better life. That particular policy combination indicates a tribal mindset….
    "At any rate, this is precisely the political realignment I’m trying to avoid, one that brings together the worst of both worlds: bloated Big Government welfare-statism and paranoid, xenophobic nationalism."

~ Matt Yglesias from his post 'The crank realignment is bad for everyone.'  Hat tip Robert Tracinski who comments, "There’s still a good chance that this is exactly what we’re going to get."

 

Summer reading

 

It's that time again.

Time to gather up the hard-copy reading for the holidays, to read in the sun when Kindles and iPads just won't do it.

What's on your list to read over this summer?

“The Paradox of Heterodox Orthodoxy”

"The big new development this year is the rise of 'Cultural Christianity' or the 'Culture War Christian'—the intellectual who doesn’t necessarily believe in God, but who thinks that Christianity is still somehow necessary for the cultural defense of Western Civilization....

    "Early this year, I linked to a good article in 'Persuasion' by Matt Johnson describing how these Culture War Christians are bringing religious dogma back to the 'heterodox community.' Then Cathy Young leapfrogged us all with the magnificent phrase, “the paradox of heterodox orthodoxy.” Basically, this is what happens when 'anti-woke' intellectuals rebel against the dogmas of the far left—but don’t have the independence of mind to come up with an alternative worldview based on their own observation.

"I added to Johnson’s critique of this phenomenon.

"'Johnson focuses too much on grounding Western liberalism in 'Enlightenment rationalism and skepticism.' That’s true (depending on the meaning of 'skepticism'), but there’s a deeper and more convincing answer.
    "'Conservatives try to ground Western Civilisation on the 'Judeo-Christian tradition'—you know, the one that crashed Western Civilisation the first time it became widely accepted. But they write out of history the true source of unique Western culture: the Greco-Roman tradition. The distinctive culture of the West was created—and even the idea of “'he West' as culturally distinct from 'the East,' originated by Herodotus in response to Persian invasions—by Greek scientists and philosophers centuries before the birth of Christ, and at about the same time the books of the Old Testament were first being written down.

"I can’t emphasise this enough. 'Western Civilisation' cannot be based on Christianity, because it predates the birth of Christ by at least five centuries. I have an article coming out soon that is very specifically about the pre-Judeao-Christian origins of our civilisation, though it probably won’t be published until January.
    "But I’ve spent much of this year attempting to convince people of the viable cultural and intellectual alternatives to Christianity—alternatives that are not merely theoretical, but already here."

~ Robert Tracinski from his post 'Is There Something in the Nothing?'

Tweedledum, and Tweedledumber

"My reading of NZ Treasury's Half Year Economics & Fiscal Update 2024 is that little has changed since the government changed. ...
    "The average of [the fiscal deficit (excess of government spending over taxes)], which comprise the Coalition's first term in office, is -3.4%. ... How does it compare to when former PM Jacinda Ardern & Finance Minister Grant Robertson governed? ... The[ir] average is -1.6%. So National, ACT & NZ First are on course to more than double the size of fiscal deficits that were run during the Ardern-Robertson years.
    "What's more, the year when the deficit really blew out, being 2020, was due entirely to the wage subsidy scheme expansion [for which] National lobbied hard ... to make it of unlimited size ... Before the wage subsidy cap was lifted, the maximum any one firm could take was $250,000. After the cap came off, firms like Fletcher Building scooped over $50 million each.
    'What's the moral of the story? That National and Labour are essentially the same party, just run by different actors, sales folks and marketing directors who are pretending their two products are different, because they use different branding & colors. They're like Coke and Pepsi Cola. ... Same old. Same old."

~ Robert MacCulloch from his post 'Its Official: Behind all the Hot Air from the PM & Finance Minister, National is Running a Bigger Borrow-and-Spend Government than 6 years of Ardern & Robertson.' 

Getting rights right, again.

 

Hat tip Graham C. and Samuel F. who clarify:

A right is something you do not have to ask somebody else's permission for.
A right is something that does not come at the expense of somebody else's rights.
There are lots of made-up things that some people call rights—and they are bogus.
They can be called anything else—but they are not rights."

Rights are either negative or in response to outside factors. A right to defend yourself. A right to free speech. A right to assembly. Things like this don't require anyone to do anything for you. Taking care of infants and elderly is a good thing, and we should do it, but calling it a right means that those charged with doing so don't have the right not to.

Put simply, a non-right requires something from others. Whereas to exercise a genuine right requires from others only that they leave you alone.

"Maori are under attack."? "They aren't."

"There is a sense now that the protest against the Treaty Principles bill, with its highly visible Maori Party branding, is turning into something else. It is an answer to the clarion call that 'Maori are under attack.'
    "They aren't. Maori are no more under attack than any other group affected by policy decisions taken to undo six years of profligate spending, reduce inflation, make housing more affordable and get the private sector producing. That’s all of us. Down-sizing the bloated public service has meant job losses across the board – men, women, young and old, Maori and non-Maori.
    "It’s true that when unemployment increases Maori are disproportionately affected. But so are Pacific people, the young and women. Other than Maori, is there a political party for any of these other distinct groups? No."

~ Lindsay Mitchell from her post 'It's the Maori Party that is driving division'

 

 

Every day we hear numb-nuts accusing this Luxon-led government of privatising, de-regulating and defenestrating the state (I wish!). Yet over in Argentina we learn from this guest post that every single day Milei has actually done there what our numb nuts here fear most, and with transforming effect: increasing economic freedom, reducing opportunities for corruption, creating greater transparency in government, helping to formalise the informal sector, stimulating growth, and setting an example for countries around the world to follow —including this small, over-regulated South Pacific one ...

Milei Has Deregulated Something Every Day

by Ian Vásquez and Guillermina Sutter Schneider

Argentina’s President Javier Milei promised to take his chainsaw to regulations when he assumed power a year ago this week. His newly created Ministry of Deregulation began functioning in July and, virtually every day, Minister Federico Sturzenegger announces one or numerous regulatory reforms.

Getting public spending under control and cutting red tape have been Milei’s two policy priorities this year. His success in shrinking government largesse, balancing the budget, and reducing inflation are well known. Less appreciated is how much he’s been deregulating, so we decided to try to measure that effort.

We should note that prioritising deregulation makes sense. A legacy of the corporatist state that Peronism entrenched, Argentina is one of the most regulated countries in the world. On the Fraser Institute’s economic freedom index, Argentina ranks 146 out of 165 countries in terms of regulatory burden.

Measuring regulatory reform is challenging. Argentine government data is sometimes incomplete or vague. How to quantify reform can also be open to judgment. (Does the elimination of various articles of a regulation affecting different forms of economic activity count as one reform or several? What about the elimination of an entire law or its modification?)

The best source on deregulation in Argentina is the deregulation 'czar' himself, Federico Sturzenegger. We used his posts on X and those of his ministry, where deregulations are regularly announced, and cross-checked them on other government websites. We were conservative in our quantification. If one or dozens of articles were eliminated or modified within one law, we simply counted that as one deregulation. (Each law that was deregulated, no matter to what extent, counted as one deregulation.)

What did we find? From December 10, 2023, when Milei assumed the presidency, to December 7, 2024, there were 672 regulatory reforms. On average, that means that during his presidency, Milei has been issuing 1.84 deregulations per day, counting weekends. Out of the total amount of reforms, 331 eliminated regulations and 341 modified existing regulations.

The heat chart above shows how many regulatory reforms Milei’s government has issued per week over the past year. Milei, in fact, began his administration with a deregulatory bang, introducing an emergency “megadecree” last December that consisted of 366 articles and has continued this drive with the creation of the new ministry. Argentine law allows emergency decrees, which are reviewable by Congress, under certain conditions. Most of the deregulations in the “megadecree” are in force.

In June of this year, the congress passed a massive bill that Milei presented (“Ley Bases”) that gave the president the ability to issue further deregulations for a period of one year. That is the authority under which most of Argentina’s deregulations are currently taking place. (The majority of Milei’s deregulations have since come out in the second half of the year.)

The laws and regulations that Milei has abolished or modified date back well into the 20th century and, in some cases, even further. We found that 12 percent of the laws that Milei deregulated took effect during military dictatorships, and 88 percent originated during democracy, including under populist governments of the left. (The chart below is based on deregulations for which we could obtain sufficient information. Some of the laws that were deregulated took effect in the administrations that followed the ones that introduced them.)

Argentina’s deregulation drive covers a wide range of sectors: housing, pharmaceuticals, technology, non-tariff trade barriers, transportation, tourism, energy, agriculture, etc. Some reform has been procedural, affecting a range of areas. For example, Milei has instituted a “positive administrative silence” rule affecting numerous activities by which a requested permission is considered approved if the government bureaucracy does not respond to the request within a determined period of time.

It’s too early to measure the full impact of the deregulations, but there’s no doubt that they are significant given the bureaucratic weight they are lifting. Some indication of that can be seen in the following examples:

• The elimination of an import licensing scheme has led to a 35% drop in the price of home appliances and a 20% drop in the price of clothing items. 
• The lifting of Argentina’s burdensome rent control system has resulted in a tripling of the supply of rental apartments in Buenos Aires and a nearly 50% drop in price.
• The elimination of a floor price of yerba mate, which is widely consumed in Argentina as a tea, led to a 25% drop in its price.

Many other deregulations, whose impact has not yet been measured, could be cited. Argentina has begun implementing an open-skies policy that has increased the number of airlines operating there. The government has also lifted regulations that favoured the state-owned airline Aerolineas Argentinas, such as the requirement that public employees book their flights on the more expensive state airline, or that other airlines cannot park their airplanes overnight at one of the main airports in Buenos Aires. Milei has gotten rid of legally-sanctioned hereditary positions at numerous government agencies (yes, you read that right). The government has permitted Starlink and Amazon to provide satellite internet service in the country, providing connectivity to vast swaths of Argentina that until now had no such connection. Etc., etc.

When one of us and a colleague visited Sturzenegger and his team at the ministry last month (below), we were struck by their sense of urgency, professionalism, and commitment to the task. They made clear that their priority was to increase freedom. When reviewing regulations, their first question is not about how to increase efficiency but rather about whether the government should be involved in a particular regulation at all.

 

The deregulation team, made up of accomplished economists and legal experts, is up against the clock. During our visit, a countdown sign outside the minister’s office read “237 days left,” indicating the time remaining, according to current law, for the government to continue issuing deregulatory decrees. Argentina is a target-rich environment for the ministry’s work, and it is taking recommendations from the public at large (when the ministry recently set up a web portal to that effect called “Report the bureaucracy,” it received more than 1,300 entries within the first eight hours). The biggest challenges are doing as much as they can with the time remaining and prioritizing regulatory reform, which is sometimes informed by large differences in Argentine versus international prices.

Milei and Sturzenegger have their work cut out for them. But what they are accomplishing is more than most thought could be done in such a short period of time. Their deregulations are increasing economic freedom, reducing opportunities for corruption, creating greater transparency in government, helping to formalize the informal sector, stimulating growth, and setting an example for countries around the world to follow.

* * * * 

*Guillermina Sutter Schneider is a data scientist and information designer and a coauthor of the Human Freedom Index. This article draws partially from “Desregulacion: Argentina vs. Estados Unidos,” by Ian Vasquez (November 20, 2024) and “Argentina’s Escape from Kafka’s Castle,” by Guillermina Sutter Schneider (December 5, 2024).

The post previously appeared at the Cato at Liberty blog.

When the future was something to look forward to

"Progress used to be glamorous. For the first two thirds of the twentieth-century, the terms modern, future, and world of tomorrow shimmered with promise.... In the twentieth-century, ‘the future’ was a glamorous concept.
    "Joan Kron, a journalist and filmmaker born in 1928, recalls sitting on the floor as a little girl, cutting out pictures of ever more streamlined cars from newspaper ads. ‘I was fascinated with car design, these modern cars’, she says. ‘Industrial design was very much on our minds. It wasn’t just to look at. It was bringing us the future.’

"When Disneyland opened in 1955, Tomorrowland embodied the promise of progress. A plaque at the entrance announced ‘a vista into a world of wondrous ideas, signifying man’s achievements . . . a step into the future, with predictions of constructive things to come.’
    "Back then, the Year 2000 and the Twenty-first-century were glamorous destinations. Newspaper features and TV documentaries described a future filled with barely imaginable wonders. ...

"As a child, I felt lucky to be born in 1960. I’d be only 40 in the year 2000 and might live half my life in the magical new century. By the time I was a teenager, however, the spell had broken. The once-enticing future morphed into a place of pollution, overcrowding, and ugliness. Limits replaced expansiveness. Glamour became horror. Progress seemed like a lie.
    "Much has been written about how and why culture and policy repudiated the visions of material progress that animated the first half of the twentieth-century ... Like Peter Thiel’s famous complaint that ‘we wanted flying cars, instead we got 140 characters’, the phrase captures a sense of betrayal. Today’s techno-optimism is infused with nostalgia for the retro future.
    "But the most common explanations for the anti-Promethean backlash fall short. It’s true but incomplete to blame the environmental consciousness that spread in the late sixties. Rising living standards undoubtedly led people to value a pristine environment more highly. But environmental concerns didn’t have to take an anti-Promethean turn. They might have led instead to the expansion of nuclear power or the building of solar energy satellites. Cleaning up smoggy skies and polluted rivers could have been a techno-optimist enterprise. It certainly didn’t require curtailing space exploration. Eco-pessimism itself needs a fuller explanation...."

~ Virginia Postrel from her article 'The world of tomorrow'

 

'Does National Security Justify Trade Restrictions?'

"In a recent article, 'Why Trade Should Be Free,' I made the case for free trade. ... [T]he case for free trade is one that many economists, including Adam Smith, have made. Free trade causes people in the free trade country to produce the goods and services for which they are the least-cost producer and to import goods and services for which people in other countries are the least-cost producers. The case for free trade is no more complicated than the case for hiring someone to mow your lawn.

    "The conclusion that free trade is good for a country’s government to adopt does not depend on other countries adopting free trade. Even if other countries’ governments impose tariffs, we are better off, on average (there could be some losers), if our government refrains from restricting trade.
    "Are there any exceptions to the case for free trade? There’s one main one. Adam Smith himself laid out this exception in 'The Wealth of Nations': restricting trade when the traded item is crucial for national security. But the case for restricting trade even in such cases is not airtight and, indeed, other ways to assure a supply of such items may be better than restrictions on trade. One such way is by stockpiling the crucial items and that may well involve more trade, not less. 

    "Whatever the measures taken to assure availability of crucial inputs to defence, we, unfortunately, depend on government officials with information and competence, two characteristics that are typically in short supply in government."

~ David R. Henderson from his article 'Does National Security Justify Trade Restrictions?'

The Hikoi Hustlers

Tamihere goes bush after a successful recruitment drive

"The Hīkoi mō te Tiriti ('March for the Treaty') was ostensibly a protest against David Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill. But things are not always as they seem. ...
    "Rather than an informed protest against the Treaty Principles Bill, the Hīkoi was in fact a Māori Party recruitment drive and promotion, orchestrated by John Tamihere. ...
    "The Māori Party recruitment drive appears to have worked, with thousands shifting from the general roll to the Māori electoral roll. The increase in the Māori electoral roll could translate into another Māori electorate. In the 2023 general election, the Māori Party won six of the seven Māori electorates.
    "On-the-ground Hīkoi leader was Eru Kapa-Kingi ... a paid Māori Party staffer and son of Mariameno Kapa-Kingi, current Māori Party Member of Parliament. ... Māori Party co-leader Rawhiri Waititi was naturally at the heart of the Hīkoi. ...
    "Funding much of this Māori Party political activism is the Waipareira Trust, with John Tamihere as Chief Executive and his wife Awerangi as Chief Operating Officer. ... The Trust currently receives about $20 million in Government funding per annum ... The Trust owns about $120 million in assets. ...
    "On top of being a Māori Party promotion and recruitment drive, Kingpin John Tamihere employed the Hīkoi, and its downstream media coverage, to deflect and distract from ongoing investigations into his [electoral, charities and privacy] skulduggery.
    "Mainstream media coverage of the Treaty of Waitangi is a shroud of lies. ... [And] our institutions and state agencies have a long way to go to re-earn our trust they can uphold the rule of law and principles of openness and honesty ..."

~ John McLean from his post 'John Tamihere's Māori Party Machinations'

Haters overlap

 

[Hat tip Stephen Hicks]