“I feel a profound contempt for the State. I believe that the State is the enemy, I think that the State is a criminal association. In fact, the State is a criminal association in which a group of politicians get together and decide to use the monopoly to steal the resources of the private sector.” This is one of the most significant passages of the long interview given by the Argentine president Javier Mileito Nicola Porro, during Quarta Repubblica, broadcast on Rete4.
In a nutshell, it was one spectacular unprecedented anti-statist intervention, especially in an Italy dominated by decades of all-round Keynesianism. From this point of view, Milei’s courageous – if not downright reckless – approach refers entirely to a famous expression of Ronald Reagananother monumental example of a liberalism freedom, so to speak: “Do not expect the State to solve your problems, since the State itself is the problem.”
Beyond the certainly picturesque aspects of the character and regardless of what he actually manages to achieve in a country, Argentina, drugged by a pervasive and catastrophic welfare system, ours has imparted to tuned-in viewers a great lesson in economic common sense, identifying in each step the main objective of his political line: to reduce the intervention of the public hand in society as much as possible. Public intervention which, according to a fundamental postulate of the Austrian School of Economics, should be reduced to the bare minimum, protecting private property and encouraging private initiative in every way. All this, according to the Argentine leader, constitutes the fundamental basis of a free society made up of free men.
Pressed by the host, who reminded him that a large part of the West is tending towards a path opposite to his, with increasing State intervention in the economy, Milei replied with a question as provocative as it is pleonastic: “Can you tell me in which area of the world economy is growing less?”. Obviously he pointed the finger at theCommunity Europein which the dogmas of welfare assistancewhich in Italy has reached unsustainable levels for some time, have crystallized for decades in the same feeling of populations indoctrinated by pounding propaganda.
The fact is, in conclusion, that the enormous boulder that Milei has thrown into stagnant water in the consolidated statist culture of the Old Continent should at least lead us to open an in-depth reflection on the strategy that the latter, like many true Italian liberals, believes decisive for the economic and social development of our national communities: a decisive reduction in the increasingly invasive public intervention in every area of society. This, in a nutshell, can only translate into less public spending, fewer taxes and fewer bureaucratic rules. I don’t think there’s anything else to add.