The previous leftist government had used complicated currency controls, consumer subsidies and other measures to inflate the peso’s official value and keep several key prices artificially low, including for gas, transportation and electricity.
Yea devaluing peso from 360 for a dollar to 790 for a dollar instantly meanwhile is such a big brain play.
there is no such thing as a ‘natural’ price. every price is artificial. OPEC is literally a cartel ffs. The concept of ‘artificial’ pricing is so libertarian brained.
no. because the prices are influenced by external factors. i live in a country where markets like these exist and the price is not ‘natural’ in any way, in an idealized world maybe but not in reality.
firstly, transporting any commodity (and inputs such as fertilizers) requires fuel and fuel prices aren’t determined by such idealized markets you mentioned, its determined by what cartels and oligopolies want it to be. you are also ignoring subsides, not just by the national governments but foreign governments. for example, developed countries provide a shit ton of subsidies which pull down prices in the international markets, without restrictions and tariffs these displace local production.
there is also the fact that food prices are very inelastic, the seller can push prices very high and the consumer will be forced to accept it because you can’t live without food.
i dont really get the middle eastern market you are mentioning because in reality there is absolutely price discrimination going on.
OK. Natural prices exist as an unreachable ideal point, but there are no absolutely natural prices in real world. I agree, and, BTW, no ancap would argue with that.
natural prices can only exist in an environment where every consumer and producer has all the information and is completely rational.
if you are rich and a vegetable seller who typically charges $5 for a vegetable charges you $10 you are unlikely to bargain as you would consider it a waste of your time and energy and just buy it. is this person being rational by not wanting to waste their time or irrational because they aren’t squeezing more out of the seller.
I think in his bigbrain libertarian mind, the money market pricing of the peso to usd is what defined the value previously and he decided that the market’s pricing is not correct for that of the Argentinian currency.
By devaluing the currency, it makes Argentinian labor and goods comparatively cheaper on the international market. This is a similar move to how China grew at such a tremendous rate in the 90’s - they intentionally devalued their currency in order to use foreign investment in their relatively cheap labor pool to fund the creation of their manufacturing industries.
That solution probably won’t work here, though. Corporations are scared of investing in countries with unstable political leadership that performs brash actions like his. (Libertarian economics cannot account for such beliefs though since everyone must be a perfectly rational actor that chooses price above all). They are afraid that he may unilaterally nationalize certain industries and claim all assets for the state. Or he may rugpull outside investments and say that all profits must go to the state for some amount of time. Whatever flavor of stupid chainsaw wielding antics he comes up with one day is what they will see and use as a justifiable rationalization for not investing in the devalued market of Argentina.
also China was handpicked by the American capitalists to be the manufacturing hub (cheap currency was a cherry on top). Countries recently forced to devalue currencies haven’t had a similar manufacturing boom especially because global economy is doing kinda shit.
also back then there was western industry that could be offshored to china. whose industry’s gonna move to argentina now? nobody else with a significant manufacturing sector is stupid enough to do it, after watching the west shoot itself in the foot. or so one would hope…
I think in his bigbrain libertarian mind, the money market pricing of the peso to usd is what defined the value previously and he decided that the market’s pricing is not correct for that of the Argentinian currency.
You're half right here. The idea is that the black market Peso:USD price represents the actual real value of the Peso, while the government's official rate was miles away from this and completely divorced from reality and only remotely sustainable by endless amounts of borrowing, price controls, and money printing, which just contributes to worsening the problem. The hope is that a necessary but painful adjustment to the actual economic reality will eventually provide the stability necessary for real growth.
A smart government will know that, if you want to actually pull this kind of thing off, you need to do everything possible to make the transition as minimally painful as possible and do what you can to help protect the most vulnerable. We'll see how Millei does, but I can't say I'm exactly confident.
There's a meaningful difference between a government arbitrarily mandating a price and buyers and sellers reaching an equilibrium, whatever you want to label it.
You can say that price controls are worth it in some cases, and plenty of economists would agree with that, but they do come with consequences compared to raw market prices, and we shouldn't ignore that, whatever label we want to use.
A Mileista friend of mine keep complaining about 140% of inflation a year for the past government, but now that yhey had like 300% in a week suddenly is ok and is just the true price of everything. Of course he dosen’t live in Argentina and dosen’t has his salary cut by a third in a week so it’s ok.
Not correct. He’s trying to undo fifteen years of lunatic tankies stealing money. The country is BANKRUPT. two times over. He’s doing his best. Even tho he has old fashioned dumb religious ideas, you do NOT know what one hundred percent inflation EACH YEAR FOR A DECADE does to people. Argentinians are now waiters in Mexico and Ecuador… They fled because of Kirchner making the country into a mud pool of corruption and freeloaders
hopefully circumstances worsen quickly enough that it’ll be noticable for everybody so that the general public can clearly identify it as a direct consequence of this maniac being elected. If its deteriorating too slowly people might just not notice it as much and might go along with all the coming explanations ( probably immigrants, leftists, blahblah). If there’s a quick look into the abyss people might wake up and get into action.
Or, at any rate, someone else rather than this specific one giving them either the fast or the slow decline. At least there’s a chance, then, that people vote for something other than that.
Regularly worse is still better than significantly worse.
The thing is, in weak democracies there’s rarely “someone else” that will fix things. Ukraine got super lucky with Zelensky but even he looked like a total crook when elected. Pretty much only populists can win elections in countries like that and it’s impossible to tell if the populist is saying populist things to get rich or to actually try fixing things. Most of the time they just want power and money and people that take the risk and vote for them have big chance of getting if more fucked.
This is the standard political cycle in Argentina, like a giant pendulum. Someone starts screaming about how they will fix everything and gets voted in. Their incompetence makes things worse and the cycle repeats with someone new.
Argentina isn’t sanctioned at all lmao. Thinking Venezuela is a failure is exactly what the US and its allies want you to think with the ridiculous amount of sanctions. Can’t have people see Socialism succeeding.
I lived in Argentina for five years. I’ve spent much time since then trying to convince people in the US that you have more rights and freedoms in Argentina. This might be changing now.
Hell no. For Argentina to look like Venezuela, inflation must be 100,000%. I wish I was exaggerating. 1 USD is 40 trillion of the old Venezuelan currency pre-Chavez, the one the government has cut 9 zeroes to hide inflation ever since.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that the situation in Argentina isn’t looking dire.
Venezuela’s economic crisis really began after oil prices fell drastically in 2014 and the west used Chavez’s death/Maduro’s election to increase pressure on the country via sanctions which for example made buying parts to maintain oil refineries difficult. Before that, it was doing about as well, or better (of course, failing to become independent from oil exports) compared to the other countries in Latin America.
Argentina was already in a crisis for the last …20 years-ish, but this acceleration of the crisis happened in a week even as Milei backpedaled on some potentially damaging promises like cutting trade with China.
He genuinelly is not a good person. He’s a glorified US fanboy anti lgbtq+ “anarcho capitalist.” He also is against abortion. Where is this hopeful wiggleroom you have?
Idgf he’s a good person or not, he’s supposed to rule a country and stabilize the economy for the argentinian people. Since he’s not aligned with the popular party of the Internet he’s getting so much hate and from people that haven’t even been to south America.
I don’t think people on Lemmy like Peronistas very much, but the vast majority of things Milei stands for and has proposed are very sus at the very best.
He isn’t going to fail because of Internet criticism. If he fails, it will be because of policies of his own making. It’s up to him to prove himself. If he can’t, the criticism will continue.
I don’t have problems with political views but This post is pure propaganda. Argentina is trying to get up after 100 years of fake socialism that set it to the disaster it is today in all gubernamental institutions
Finally someone that understands the real situation of my devastated homeland. Liberal or not (I don’t follow any political view, I hate them, I follow the common sense and empathy) this guy was the ONLY person with enough balls to change the devastating history and future of my loved country. I don’t know what’s going to happen, I not sure what this guy is going to do in the future, but at least he is doing something. To understand the level of crisis, that’s more than enough.
I don’t follow any political view, I hate them, I follow the common sense and empathy
This is like saying you don’t have a skin colour, you’re just normal. Literally everyone thinks that their political views are the ones based on common sense and empathy, they just usually aren’t solipsistic to think that they don’t have political views at all.
this guy was the ONLY person with enough balls to change the devastating history and future of my loved country.
This is what all people that can’t have a personal point of view of live tends to do. Make life simpler, choose one side or the other. You know, like religion. This is absolutely what people need to stop doing if you want to advance as a society and stop pushing other to do so. Like you.
No, some people just have a different personal point of view of life to you.
There’s no way to just not have a political view, because these issues are all inclusive; either you believe LGBT people should have less rights than others, or they should have the same. Either you believe people should be allowed to own private property, or you don’t. Either you believe women should have the right to abortion or you don’t.
Unless you live in the vacuum of deep space with no other contact with other people, then you have beliefs on how people should behave and treat each other, and those are political.
There’s a meme subtitle of a Hamas statement which says IDF soldiers wear diapers into battle. I speak zero Arabic, so I assume that it’s just a funny subtitle and not a real statement idk.
sure it is. removing subsidies on commodities like gas doesn’t change the demand for gas, it just puts more of a burden on poor people, and doesn’t matter at all to the rich who use it most. that path will only lead to backlash against green policies in general, see the yellow vest protests. in order to reduce consumption you actually need to reduce demand by giving people sustainable alternatives.
Demand elasticity is a thing. Demand won’t shrink by the same ratio prices rose after removing subsidies, but it will shrink.
Response to that I can’t predict, but there are places in the planet where prices are lower because of the general poverty of population and the need to still sell it, and places where prices are even higher, but most of the population can’t afford fuel, I can’t name.
EDIT: This was incomprehensible, sorry. I meant that in the long term prices for the consumer are going to become closer to what they were with subsidies, likely, thus the real prices - lower. The question is how bad it gets before that happens.
Diapers are causing the most damage to the planet? You sure about that? Also the dude is a climate change denier so this isn’t even a “broken clock right twice a day” thing, it’s just purely accidental.
It is absolutely not a fact. There is nothing inherent about any human being that causes damage to the environment. It’s what human society as we organize it does, and a very small number of people do an incredibly outsized proportion of the damage. Focusing on things like birth control and overpopulation is a major part of ecofascist rhetoric. It is also very much about punishing a distant other because after all, if you really believed that all human births were inherently damaging to the environment, we wouldn’t be having this conversation as you would have already undone the damage caused by your own parents. But you haven’t, and nor should you for many good reasons! Those reasons also apply to everyone else too.
It is a fact. And fascism would be a policy that is aimed at a specific group of people. Its not fascist to say all humans need to curb our reproduction rates to make a better life for future generations.
Ok, explain how it is true that every human purely by being born is equally culpable, and that human society isn’t at issue? And then you can explain why this doesn’t apply to you and your family.
No, humans need to reorganize society before curbing anything
Overpopulation isn’t the driver of damage, overconsumption is
So much damage could be eliminated by
allowing people to not mow their lawns/keep animals on them
abolishing all dress codes (less need for AC in the summer)
mandating green roofs
public transit
eliminating bullshit jobs
requiring ease of repair
and so many other things, which wouldn’t even reduce people’s quality of life, but improve it (so long as these resources are shared equally). After that happens, yes you can talk about limiting births to a 2.0 fertility rate, with some leeway (like you get fewer privileges if you have more kids) but in general this planet could easily handle twice or even thrice the amount of humans with no environmental damage if the population was managed properly. Which of course means you don’t get your own personal carriage to take you to a Taylor Swift concert 50 miles away at the drop of a hat
Its not fascist to say all humans need to curb our reproduction rates to make a better life for future generations.
Yes it is, because the problem was never the total number of humans, the problem is our wasteful economic system. With a rational economic system we could easily sustain 10 billion people, we literally already produce food for that much, it just goes to waste.
You’re just so brainwashed by capitalist ideology you think the only solution to climate change is genocide, god forbid you try to envision a better economic system.
How the fuck do you think the global population gets lowered other than, at the very least, restricting some people from reproducing? You think people are magically going to want no kids?
Also you didn’t respond to the part of my comment where I literally say that “overpopulation” is a fascist myth and isn’t anywhere close to the truth.
Studies show that when you give people quality sex education, free contraceptives, and free healthcare they have less children. Its not rocket science lol.
this reads like the reddit mayobrain take where they pat themselves on the back for not eating octopus because it’s “smart”
You’re not doing anything, you’re just stretching and reaching for a bright side to make yourself look good/feel good. Plastic literally-everything-fucking-else usage (ziploc bags, garbage bags, cups, spoons, forks, condiment packets, takeout containers, grocery bags which still exist despite having been banned) is so astronomically higher than diapers that it probably makes the CO2 differential between Africa and Europe look small
You missed the point. Disposable plastic items filing our landfills are bad, sure.
But the problem I was referring-to isnt the diapers. It’s the catastrophic environmental damage caused by humans reproducing. The problem is the babies.
Let me guess, you’ve never raised small children while also having to work full time?
Washing, boiling and drying poopy diapers is something people had the time to do back when women were expected to be full-time housewives. Unless you’re proposing a drastic reduction of work hours for parents, something “just raise the price of everything” is the direct opposite of doing, you’re simply cheering for life becoming harder for ordinary working class people.
You’re not going to avert climate change by making things suck more for working class people. All that is going to lead to is ecofascism. A socialist alternative to climate change has to offer actual justice and a better future than the present.
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