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Comment by kragen | Hacker News Reader

it sounds like the kirchners' allies in bolivia are going through the kind of crisis we were headed for here in argentina before they lost power here in the election in november. not that we aren't still in a crisis, but we have two things going for us:

1. recognizing the wrongheadedness of the kirchners' policies, we elected an opposition leader who favors capitalism. unfortunately, he's a total nutbag, and his advocacy of freedom seems to be strictly limited to freedom of enterprise (not, for example, freedom of abortion, freedom to protest, or freedom to use public transit anonymously)

2. we aren't a petro-state

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> we elected an opposition leader who favors capitalism. unfortunately, he's a total nutbag

many such cases!

no, nothing like this has ever happened before in recorded history. probably that's fortunate

i mean people have elected all kinds of madmen as heads of state, so that's not the unprecedented part. but i don't think any country has ever elected a minarchist as a head of state. two weeks ago he gave a speech at a cato forum here describing the state he now heads as by nature a violent and criminal organization. he may be right about that, but generally believing such things makes you unelectable

we are in uncharted waters. this is going to be exciting!

You're closer to the action than me and very probably much better informed, but the opinion I've formed from across the Southern Pacific is that Millei's 'minarchist' rhetoric is mostly theatre and that he's in fact very similar to the many leaders that have been put in place or helped into power in South America before by the (mostly external) financial interests who want to keep plundering and extracting its resources.

he gives every sign of sincerely believing it except for donating his salary (as he did when he was just a legislator)

certainly external financial interests are helping him a great deal, and there's been significant plundering historically, but it remains to be seen what happens with that. since perón, investing in non-portable assets in argentina has historically been a 'heads i win, tails you lose' deal with the government; your losses will be privatized, but your profits will be nationalized. so generally it's the argentine politicians doing the plundering, not barrick gold or the ypf investors

Peronism is weird and incomparable with other non-right wing movements. Argentina's modern history is largely defined by left-wing Peronists vs. right-wing Peronists.

Hence, you can't evaluate other countries governments based on whether they're aligned with the Kirchners or not, it says almost nothing other than they're not on the extreme right. You have to judge them on their own terms.

the policies that led to the bolivian crisis were the same policies the kirchnerists were applying in argentina; it was an ideological alliance, not one of convenience

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