Javier Milei at Cato Conference: “I’m a Liberal Libertarian … I Don’t Believe Politicians Are Gods”

Michael Chapman

During a conference in Buenos Aries sponsored by the Cato Institute and Libertad y Progreso, Argentine President Javier Milei explained why socialism always fails, why big government (the “State”) is criminal, why Argentina is now on the side of the private sector and those who innovate, and why he is a libertarian who believes in freedom.

“My friends, I’m a liberal libertarian” and “I believe in freedom,” said Milei in explaining his rejection of the “socialist and controlling policies” of the politicians who ran Argentina’s economy into the ground over the last 100 years. “I’m not going to do” what they did, he added. “I don’t believe that politicians are gods.”

Milei gave his speech on June 12, following a live interview on X between entrepreneur Elon Musk and Cato Senior Fellow Johan Norberg at the event. The two-day conference (June 11–12), attended by up to 1,000 people, was entitled “The Rebirth of Liberty in Argentina and Beyond.”

Milei, the most outspoken and orthodox libertarian elected to the presidency of a major country, took office in December 2023. Although his critics and much of the mainstream media have tried to characterize him as an impractical zealot—El Loco, the madman—so far Milei has implemented a good portion of his agenda. In turn, Argentina’s economy and quality of life are slowly improving.

For instance, since taking office, Milei has slashed government spending up to 30%, fired more than 25,000 federal workers, reduced federal agencies, frozen public works projects, lowered a major import tariff, maintained budget surpluses every month, reduced monthly inflation to 4.2% (August 2024) from 25% (December 2023), and is pushing for currency competition among the peso, US dollar, and other currencies.

It is not all roses, however, as he explained in his speech because his administration is fighting against 100 years of government intervention. This soft socialism has corrupted the government, the courts, the economy, the culture, the schools, and the people.

“We have governed these first six months of the year uphill, managing the worst inheritance in history and without the legislative power or instruments that all governments before ours have had,” said Milei. “Politics, since before we took power, has put sticks in our wheels. They put sticks in our wheel by tearing up the balance sheet of the central bank. And they put sticks in our wheel every single day that we try to govern.”

“But you know what?” he said. “All this is proving that the ideas of freedom are stronger because, despite the foul political caste, we’re doing right. We’re beating inflation.”

“There is no doubt that Argentina is facing a turning point,” he added. “[W]e can return to the path of freedom that we should never have wandered from and return to the values and ideas that once made Argentina a global power, resume the defense of life, freedom, and private property, and aspire to be a country at the level of our identity and our history once again.”

Between 1860 and 1930, Argentina “grew more rapidly than the United States, Canada, Australia, or Brazil” in terms of “population, total income, and per capita income,” according to Agriculture and Economic Growth in Argentina, 1913–84. By 1913, Argentina was among “the 10 wealthiest countries in the world,” with a per capita income similar to Switzerland, the Latin American Economic Review reported. 

That changed with a military takeover in 1930, which introduced statist, big government policies tainted by socialist thinking. Government intervention and economic malaise have characterized Argentina for the last 100 years. Milei is trying to reintroduce the libertarian policies that once made Argentina great.

“[I]n Argentina we are rediscovering ideas that made the modern Western world the greatest civilizing and economic development achievement in human history,” said Milei. “We want to be a haven for those who defend and live these ideas throughout the entire planet.”

Today, “Argentina is on the private sector side, not the state,” he said. “On the side of those who work, those who trade, those who strive; on the side of those who take risks, those who invest, who innovate.”

“As developed countries become bogged down in unnecessary regulations and obligations, we remove the regulations that have bound our people for decades,” said Milei, “and we invite capital from around the world to cooperate with Argentina because we understand free economic activity as the most natural act of cooperation of the human race.”

Milei also explained how big-government bureaucrats in Argentina and other countries corrupt the economy with socialist policies. “As Hayek said, every time the state intervenes, it generates a worse result than if it hadn’t intruded,” said Milei. “Why? Because state intervention causes distortions in the pricing system. It prevents correct economic calculation and consequently nullifies what Hayek called the correct functioning of the market as a discovery process.”

With capitalism and free pricing you have better “information about quantities of goods or services that are wanted and at what price,” said Milei. Collectivism, however, inhibits the discovery process and “binds the entrepreneur’s hands and impedes them from producing better goods and offering better services at a better price.”

Part of the reason why the Soviet Union collapsed and why Cuba and Venezuela are economic basket cases today is because the government tries to control prices instead of allowing the marketplace and “discovery process” to operate freely. (In the US, both Donald Trump and Kamala Harris have proposed price controls and import tariffs, destructive policies that hurt American consumers.)

Where economic freedom is allowed, there is more political freedom, said Milei. “[F]reer countries have a GDP per capita 12 times larger than oppressed countries. Even the inhabitants of the lowest decile of the free system live better than 90% of the population in the repressed countries. That is, free enterprise capitalism is superior to socialism even on the main task that socialism supposedly does better, which is to help the less fortunate.”

Social justice, charity for “those who have the least,” said Milei, “it is good, but if you do it with your own pocket [money]” and not with money that belongs to someone else. When the state intervenes in the name of social welfare, it confiscates “assets from a private person, which are theirs by natural right, which means that the state is a criminal and violent organization, as it is funded with a coercive source of income called taxes.”

Echoing Hayek, Milei said the more the state intervenes “the less free the markets are and the worse they work, producing misery instead of wealth.”

In closing, he said, “If we manage to remove the state enough for society to flourish, we will have succeeded because free economic activity will lead to benefits for all of society. If we achieve this, it won’t be a triumph of ours but of society as a whole, which will have left behind 100 years of statism and decadence. Therefore, as we travel the road to that new Argentina, I thank you all for being here. God bless the Argentines and may the force of Heaven be with us.

“Long live freedom, damn it! Long live freedom, damn it! Long live freedom, damn it! Thank you.”

To watch the entire speech, click here.