I'm Argentinian, for 3 years I was part of the efforts to create Javier Milei's structure that conformed his coalition and protected his votes on the 2023 elections. AMA!
A friend from Chile came to visit for a few days, she's a strong supporter of Milei, and hopes that he succeeds in his mission. Latin America is in need of such reforms.
In Chile, the communists have been in power for a few years now and, expectedly, the situation has sharply deteriorated: crime, drugs, poverty etc. It's really bad, apparently. With Piñera dead, they're now hoping for an outsider like Milei to put back the country on tracks.
Felt words my friend. My fear about Chile is more about the youth. Here the change was entirely driven by 13 year olds sharing memes of Milei on tiktok. I'm not joking. Every mother and father that came to defend Milei's votes did so at the request of their sons, and against their own dislike for Milei.
But in Chile I'm a little bit more hopeless in the short/medium term, for it's the mass of the youth that has been completely indoctrinated in socialism. No Milei can thrive in such a context even if they had one.
Has it happened here, the change will be driven from the youth. A cultural shift is needed before a Milei. That's what Chile must look for first.
Even with an ever deteriorating situation, Argentina, Venezuela, and optimally Cuba, are demonstrations that there is no bottom until the youth reverts the cultural debacle.
I made mi mission to contribute to affirm local success, to unify all of what makes an ecosystem of liberty, and to spread the word. That's why I'm here.
Victory is at reach, and the process is non-reversible. But as Milei taught us all: "we lost the way because we neglected the cultural battle, now that we have steered the boat back again, we must never forget: the price of liberty is it's constant protection".
What’s the best place to settle in Argentina for a foreigner with a family? Low living costs, low/no crime, rich culture, as little bribing as possible. Can you suggest a location?
I couldn't be more pleased to be answering so many questions about this :)
It really depends on what are your economic possibilities and personal likings. Some families look for villages, peaceful and quiet, good living standards, very low cost, but somewhat isolated (though internet is starting to change that). Some others look for "countries", which are made up villages but closer to bigger cities, more fit for upper-middle classes (if your salary is in dollars, even with minimum wages it will be totally under the budget for you). Some people love the cities suburbs, some love the city itself. You can find all kind of costs. I found a cheap apartment in the city I live, but some others, even close to mine, can be much more expensive.
It also depends on what climate and entourage you like. Some people comes to settle in the south, some in the north, some in Buenos Aires. If it's about budget, there is a mix of everything anywhere, with the constant that villages tend to be the cheapest option anywhere, but again that's not for everyone.
About low crime, again, villages are the most peaceful places, most of them with no crime at all, for they are so small that everyone knows everyone personally. There are thousands of villages per state, so I can not suggest one specifically. You might want to come to visit if it's within your economic possibilities, and discover them while travelling.
Cities are still full of crime, but Milei is pursuing reforms to change that soon, for safety is intrinsically part of the economic recovery policy.
About rich culture, Buenos Aires remains unbeatable, it's THE place if that's something you value much. All other big cities have their decent quotas of rich culture, but it doesn't hit your face like in Buenos Aires. By far and large, and expectably, Buenos Aires haves the most expensive places to live in Argentina, the closest you are to the capital. But again, if you come with a salary in USD (if you are a programmer for example), you can have the time of your life there, and literally anywhere else.
Do you think he would he be able to unfuck Argentina before people elect commies again?
If I'd be sure that Argentina would become a stable Bitcoin paradise, I'd move tomorrow. But there's this bug in people's heads that makes them go "no haha we're not like Cuba... and not like Venezuela... (etc) it will totally work this time".
Key point the one you are rising. That's indeed what I'm focusing on now.
Milei's key achievement was being able to appeal to the entirety of the youth, through all economic classes, and I mean kids from 7 to 13. Many teachers that were among the volunteer lines recalled that during national dates, for which kids always perform small plays in schools, instead if the traditional cry of "Viva la Patria!" ("Long Live the Nation!") at the play end, out of own initiative the kids started to replace it with Milei's cry of "Viva la Libertad Carajo!". That's it, that's THE victory, right there, a society unfucked from the roots.
The boomer generation here is completely lost. After all of what happened, they still are nowhere even close to start to grasp what's going on, what's inflation, why socialism fails, what is socialism to start (despite having lived their entire lives in it), what is money, what's politics, "didn't USA made a brick wall all around Cuba?", etc etc. They are little innocent kids lost in a mall, eager to hold the hand of the first stranger that offers them to go to their minivan full of candies. So I'm not even trying there, my hopes are only in the youth, for which I'm working on making a more comprehensive libertarian manifest using my experience to more transparently and concretely express and unify the political, economical en philosophical concepts.
About Argentina being a Bitcoin paradise: it has been for long now! Even during the height of the power of the last socialist regime there was nothing they could do against Bitcoin, and lord they tried! But they failed so miserably that companies providing services with bitcoin could be legally registered all along unscathed. Now there is of course a more favourable context, but I think that the true "bitcoin paradise" premise was demonstrated when it was accomplished in the worst context, so that should give you more confidence than if it was to be true only in a favourable context.
I take the word sacrifice. Might sound dramatic but that's exactly what I did, and it felt terrible and distressing every second amidst a non-stop madness that I could translate into a complete netflix series... my goodness...
But the reason I openly say and repeat that is because people needs to let sink in the reality that even in the era of democracy, to create such a major political change painful and massive sacrifices are needed.
I hated every second of it. It's not my field (I'm and engineer, full techie), it's not my game (I'm the computer/workshop guy, not a social extrovert), it's 24/7 hostile, it's 24/7 demanding, it's 24/7 world-ending drama... I started it just as a plain banzai charge: straight to the bullets, not the enemy. With time, it unexpectedly and thankfully became a trade-off, and now I just can't conceive my existence without knowing what I now know. Had I know I would end up learning what I did, I would have done it as a trade-off, not a sacrifice.
I have now a massive baggage to unpack, and a new self assigned mission, which is part of the reason I'm here.
Thank you, I appreciate your words :')
I really don't have a baggage to unload, it's more like to "unpack". From my experiences, like I commented in another answer to you, I can only take notes, and link them. With time that has lead me to have material that, specially in the last 3 years, became useful and battle tested, so the notes started to become something more of a manual, which I keep developing. I will be sharing with all of you many things along the days :)
As for living the Bitcoin standard, you will find similar levels of integration. Salvador made BTC legal tender but that only means that the state accepts bitcoin as payment. The apps we have here in Argentina are excellent and make using BTC a breeze, but making BTC legal tender is on the roadmap. In practice you will not see any difference, so we can consider "living by the BTC standard" a tie.
One thing we have a great reputation of is about Bitcoiner communities, the best of latin-america, as of yet unrivalled.
Your decision will also leverage on other aspects, for which I might list:
Woman: beautiful, intelligent, fit, with attitude ... god they drive me crazy...
Food: asado. I can not live without it.
Social life: warm people, lots of hugs, lots of "please come" if they like you, and they mean it
Beautiful cities: you will probably love Buenos Aires, but a lot of people also loves the simple villages, having nature so close.
Nature: stark advantage of Argentina, the extension is vast and is place of magnificent scenarios. The south, the north of Argentina, and Los Andes, google it. It's like in the picture.
To top it up: we have the only Libertarian government on earth, so the best is yet to come ;)
Public spending slashed, public employment gutted, massive austerity and evisceration of handouts.
Milei himself, I believe, said that "it will get worse before it will better".
Do you think the Argentinians have the patience to live through that with Milei? It's one thing to vote in a charismatic, populist politician, but it's another to let him do the radical things he promised and keep him in office for another term if you are scraping the barrel just to feed your family.
Do you think he has a realistic shot at winning a legislative majority too, so that the old guard stops roadblocking his efforts?
Is Bitcoin as legal tender actually on the menu? Or was it just a populist bait?
Yes, not only Argentinians, but people in general can endure lots of grief if they think it's for a purpose. That's common nature, and something with counted on blindly.
Here crisis is a day-to-day reality so not only not much changed for the majority of people, but since public spending was slashed on the parasites, Milei voters are only seeing the benefits of the consequences which is decelerating inflation and increased freedom through deregulation.
That, plus the permanent public disclosure and dismantlement of previously hidden parasitic state structures and state mobs, as only lead to a permanent increase of his image. Literally most people will tell you "I don't care how bad it gets, as long as he makes those despicable criminals pay".
The situation is bad but no one is scrapping the barrel, and everyone in a vulnerable condition is still receiving full support.
Literally no one that voted for him ever thought "one thing is to vote him but other to actually let him do what he says". All the opposite, the one great fear his voters had, a question they made to me permanently, was: "do you think he will fulfil his promises?"
Seeing him doing what he said has only gained him more supporters than during the election.
That leads to the answer to your last question: it's a given that he will get the majority he needs next year, I'm not even worried about it. The process has started and it's irreversible. My only worry is to make my part, to underpin the rise of libertarianism as both a political force and a philosophy of life.
About Bitcoin, yes, it's going to be declared legal tender. But remember that that only means that the government will start accepting Bitcoin as payment. Bitcoin is already a usable day-to-day currency here, and I personally live that way. It's not only fully legal to have and use, but even more than that, it's completely outside of the radar by any means, so there are legal and registered service providers which offer superb usability services.
That request for evidence is interesting. At first, I might answer it in a rather paradoxical way, for I can tell you from direct experience that the best evidence I have is that there is nothing else to see than what you see yourself. He is what you see. I can confirm that the perk is that there is no perk.
But in a more interesting note, I can speak for the less known aspects (though not secret at all) of working "backstage". One the things that permanently amazed me was how strict and serious he was with his internal rules: "no dirty money, no selling". Said and done, NO ONE received money, and candidates where all responsible for their own spendings, something I saw myself. The campaign was made with no funding, everyone was a volunteer, and the symptoms of "every candidate pays for his own" could be felt whenever a candidate performed poorly in their local elections (under Milei's name), for they where quick to complain as if the money spent should have assured them the election.
PD: honoured to receive a question from one of the crew! :D
Please write in english so that everyone can understand. You saw what he said in his speech in the WEC, you want him to be there for exactly that purpose. Giving up ground only leads to monopolization of opinion.
And he had to become a politician in order to implement his ideas, which otherwise stay in the realm of lame keyboard warriors.
Was it worth it? Not only we achieved the impossible and made history worldwide, but never in my life I though I could be any more satisfied with the performance of a government. That was actually a big plus because, like I said on other comments, I started by being certain that we were going to fail, and I only wanted to have the peace of mind that, if asked in a distopic future what I did to prevent it, I could answer "everything, I gave everything". And I did. So it was already worth it from the start, regardless of the result.
I decided to step aside because, first, the main short-term objective had been achieved, second, I realized that there's still needed a deep reform regarding the law that governs the conformation of parties to allow them to be actual institutions and not mere franchises offered for rent. Milei knew that perfectly and made his strategy so that not only he was going to give no money to anyone, but also so that immediately after the elections all ties were cut. He still haves no party of his own, precisely because he distrusts those structures. He is an anarchist of hearth.
Third, and not less important, I had to start over. For 3 years I left my life completely to the side. I'm on my 30's and in no way to sustain a family. I'm thank god not in an bad economical condition, I don't need money, but I can't do anything above that (like, for example, having a family). After all of the craze was over, I watched to my sides and saw many of my friends who had kept on their lives, now, having a wife, sons, a car, a house... dude I felt like if I had come back from war...
Here we still have to vote by putting paper ballots in a box. Every piece of paper is manually counted and reported. To ensure that the entire process isn't adulterated, every contending party needs to have a person of his own trust on every table where people votes, so to oversight everything. Established parties use the money they squeeze out from public money to pay for every "volunteer". We didn't had nor that nor any source of money to pay anyone, so the entire structure had to be completely composed of volunteers. 10,000 volunteers in my state alone. I had a good and heavy quote of responsibility on the coordination of the effort of getting and coordinating that "army", in most territories designating and helping local coordinators, and being personally responsible of my own. I made in google drive the entire database people used to list and coordinate the volunteers, helped to define the structure of coordinators, designated and instructed many, gave countless of training sessions, etc etc...but, by far and large, what consumed the most of my time was bringing emotional balance to people, volunteers and coordinators alike. My nerves being essentially fried out from past terrible experiences in the field plus the base assumption that losing was by all means a possibility, allowed me to talk to people that was crying to me on the phone with a non forced calmed tone that never failed to appease. Every one called me to thank me when we won, something I keep warmly in my heart.
We need this in the US! for sure! and a lot more voting regulations to ensure there is voter integrity and no corruption, coups, cheating, etc. I commend you on helping!
Back in 2019 I was under crippling despair for the situation of my country, for the unthinkable happened: the socialists won an election against the less socialists. It was the last time it seemed that things could finally improve. Once in power, the new socialist regime promptly started the full sovietization of the country. They were not going to let the power go this time. Some nights, when watching news digests, I just cried. I felt miserable, but mostly impotent. Imagine that you see your country descending head first into a distopic soviet regime and it looks like nothing at all can be done. Back then I understood nothing about politics and economics and to me it just seemed that it was irreversible. I felt miserable thinking: nothing can be done? that's how it is? this is the direction? this is what's supposed to be?
In the elections of 2019, one candidate (who works now for Milei), the less known, said vividly at the end of the only presidential debate hosted: "Argentina has a future, and that future is Libertarian!". When he said that, he did so with much conviction, so I started to investigate a little more. The next year, a new party started to take shape around libertarianism, by other referents I didn't know until then. So I took a deep breath and "enlisted" into the absolute unknown (I'm a full "techie"). I started with the right mindset, and is a mantra that allowed me and the people I worked with to keep on forward even during terrible experiences and when everything seemed ill fated: "If things fall apart, if asked in the future what did I do to stop it, I don't want to say 'nothing' ". I know all of this sounds dramatic but to put it simply, I was certain that we were going to fail. So I gave everything, literally, everything, to be sure that at least I was going to have the peace in my mind that I did so.
As months and years passed, I kept learning permanently about libertarianism, and being able to make the permanent contrast of it's principles against the realpolitik I was living first-hand, was like a revelation. Everything made sense, I could finally see how everything was going to evolve. But now, we needed the right vector. For 3 years, a sad parade of potential candidates rose and fell permanently. Milei wasn't even in the equation, until for everyone's surprise, he announced is candidacy. I barely knew him, but I was amazed to see that he had the strongest support in the poorest classes. So I started to learn more about him, and started to understand, and admire, how he was achieving the impossible: making libertarianism politically viable. Has he demonstrated stern determination and unmovable principles, working for him finally allowed us to stop thinking if the guy "in front" was going to wane any second. We knew he wouldn't.
lesssocialists. It was the last time it seemed that things could finally improve. Once in power, the new socialist regime promptly started the full sovietization of the country. They were not going to let the power go this time. Some nights, when watching news digests, I just cried. I felt miserable, but mostly impotent. Imagine that you see your country descending head first into a distopic soviet regime and it looks like nothing at all can be done. Back then I understood nothing about politics and economics and to me it just seemed that it was irreversible. I felt miserable thinking: nothing can be done? that's how it is? this is the direction? this is what's supposed to be?