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Comment by friend_Fernando | Hacker News Reader

If you're center-left like me, here's something you might not have realized yet. The conventional wisdom is that racial cleansing is the goal and that the economic cost of mass deportations is the price. It's actually the other way around.

The economic cost is the goal. The racial cleansing is just how that cost is initially justified to the base.

Once the economy really starts heading south, blame Democrats and other phantom enemies. It's much harder to jail the opposition and overturn democracy when things are going well. The blueprints are Venezuela and Argentina.

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You’re saying that the advocates of deportation are aiming to intentionally destroy the economy so that they can increase their political power?

That seems less likely to me than either simple racism or a poor understanding of economics.

Obviously not all the advocates share that goal - that's the whole point. Most people would not be OK with intentionally trashing the economy to overturn democracy. It's a camouflaged poison pill policy.

Here are two other Russian proxies achieving totalitarianism. Economically, they're not doing it by racking up pats on the back:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_in_Venezuela

https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/PPPPC@WEO/VEN

https://apnews.com/article/argentina-economy-crisis-javier-m...

How is Argentina under Milei a Russian proxy? And why are you implying that he trashed the economy?

I guess you're saying he's unlike Bolsonaro, Orban, Vucic, Kickl, Trump, Weidel, Le Pen, Duterte and Farage? He's larger-than-life and bombastic. He's overthrown the political order and engineered a downward spiral faster than Maduro's. Putin couldn't ask for more. Argentina has always had problems, but economic suicide is not a disease cure.

Having voiced support for Ukraine doesn't mean much. Even Trump has once or twice.

Argentina has lower inflation, is solving their deficit and is seeing larger than expected economic growth now that Millei is in charge. Maybe he won't fix all the issues, but it seems like things are improving and it is not an "economic suicide".

A 53% poverty rate is economic suicide.[1] Scrambling for food is not economic activity, it's idleness and ruination.

Incidentally, this conversation parallels the one that would follow mass deportations. People complaining of the crashing economy, and the fans of racial cleansing claimimg that it had to be done and that it's a good thing in the long run.

This is exactly the point I was making.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/27/poverty-rate-a...

Having massive economic changes will cause short term economic problems. Fixing the inflation will make Argentina better in the future. Just because things are not perfect as quickly as you want does not mean things are not improving.

Advocating for the massive inflation that Argentina had and is now improving is economic suicide. Inflation makes it impossible for average people to save and build wealth. That is economic suicide.

That's a strawman. Using the right economic policies would fix the problem. Argentina had a cold, maybe pneumonia. The right fix was antibiotics, not a bullet to the head.

You have yet to prove anything you stated. If you have a good economy with low inflation allowing the average person to save and build wealth, poverty will eventually lower. If you just focus on the poverty and don't fix the core issues you won't solve anything.

To continue with your analogy, you are treating the symptom, not the disease. Millei appears to be curing the disease, but the treatment is painful.

This just mirrors the fake zealotry babbled in Venezuela while the country was cratering. I don't have to prove that mainstream economics works. That's risible Putinist nonsense like the rest of your line of "reasoning."

Mainstream economics doesn't think 1000% inflation is fine.

Of course, a poor understanding of economics can be nearly as damaging as actual malice...

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