Javier Milei's Address at the 54th Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum

The premise is flawed. The last few centuries were (also?) exceptional because we got to use millions years of stored sunlight in a much shorter amount of time.

We got used to live way above our means. Since the 1970s, this "freeloading" has been slowing down. In fact Argentina's own situation might (or might not) be heavily related to that ?

(For an example I am more familiar with, see Egypt's gas exports, commercial balance, and grain imports in the last decades, and compare with their social troubles.)

We're going to have to learn to do with a lot less in the 21rst century.

I find the introductory sentence fascinating:

> Today I am here to tell you that the West is in danger; it is in danger because those who are supposed to defend the values of the West find themselves co-opted by a vision of the world that -- inexorably -- leads to socialism, and consequently to poverty.

Why is that fascinating? Because that's pretty much the gist of Hayek's best-seller The road to serfdom that he wrote in 1944 to warn the world about the misery that the New Deal and Welfare State was going to unleash upon the world.

Yes, you read that right: some reactionary dude leaning on edgy economics wrote a pamphlet in the 40s to warn us about what latter turned out to be the most prosperous period of economic growth the Western World has ever witnessed in history, and despite the incredible forecasting failure of Hayek's prophecy, for some reason it still sounds cool to some people…