An Argentinean here. It is worth taking a look at who's voting for Milei. Most votes concentrate in the 18-35 years old age range; most of them do not have a formal job or university-level education (they are called the "Rapi boys" or "Uber boys"); a good proportion comes from poor sectors or a degraded middle class; and certainly most of them are not libertarians (most of them probably voted for the Peronism just four years ago!). I think the key for his astonishing success was to talk directly to these hopeless people with very simple and easy-to-grasp slogans: dollarization (instead of a "free competitive system of currencies"), against "La Casta" (easily identifiable people that in the Argentinean imaginary are the responsible for the perennial crisis); and a very efficient social media management (for instance, there are small villages in the middle of the Andes where young people got access to internet just three years ago and came to know Milei by TikTok or Instagram; then they talked with their parents and grandparents about him, convince them to vote for him and he finally obtained more than 60% of the votes, without putting a single sign on walls and spending anything). Long story short, the campaign was not about to convince to those already convinced; it was not about targeting middle-upper class educated people; it was mostly about targeting the poorest. He's not going to eliminate the Argentinean state (zero votes for a state-dependent society), he's going to even keep social well-being assistances (at least in the short term), but he was effective in identifying the main issues, convincing people that those were the issues, and communicating all this in a straightforward way.*
(*probable, but not very relevant -in his public appearances, and even more intensively before announcing his candidacy, he was very aggressive (at least for Argentinean standards) and politically incorrect. Surprisingly, many saw this as honesty, but more importantly, many saw themselves identified with his anger: he wanted to break everything up, as many Argentineans wanted to do. This highly contrasted with the empty call for "pacific dialogue", "overarching agreements", etc., that many politician were preaching for decades)
I agree with you on basically everything here (see my response to Mary). Good point on dollarization as evidence for his incremental approach.
Hopefully Millei will bring more attention to libertarianism in Argentina, though. Perhaps when his term is over he'll endorse another libertarian candidate and they could win too.
Topically it could fit the first one, the second one less. We could also do a shorter summit in between - I would just be hard-pressed to get sponsorship and invite a lot of people.
I'd recommend to also visit Ciudad Morazan on the mainland as part of the trip - philosophically very interesting differences to Prospera, and very successful with residents.
Hi @niklasanzinger, interesting post and I agree it would be great to see many of Bryan's ideas go a little more mainstream.
My questions for you might be:
- From what I can tell, Vivek seems to be another "outsider" that has the potential to bring a lot of important issues to light during the campaign (even if he doesn't get nominated). Could this approach - having Bryan talk to and convince other politicians - also work for other politicians for the same reasons? Or are there no other prominent libertarians worth speaking with?
- Do you think Trump would actually listen to Vivek? All of the "moderating" forces that surrounded Trump during his presidency failed. (FWIW, I am a never Trump-er and even more so after the last election. I think all of Bryan's ideas are better off not being associated with Trump.)
- I've thought of that, but i don't know any other politicians that would be that beneficial to talk to. Rand Paul is already pretty libertarian, and unless he gets a Cabinet position one day, he's probably not going any further. Justin Amash is great and probably my favorite politician, but his chances of office again are slim to none. He'd have to run libertarian probably, and the Libertarian Party gets like no votes. Same problem with whomever the libertarian party nominee will be.
- Yeah, I'm not betting on Trump listening to Vivek. My idea is that Caplan could influence Vivek and maybe something cool could happen if he gets into power.
For your interest in Prospera, I am surprised you don't seem to know of the Free State Project. David D Friedman, Vivek, Huemer, Ron Paul, Keith Knight, Larken Rose, Scott Horton, Stefan Kinsella, etc have all attended PorcFest, FSP's huge libertarian camping event, many of them last year!
I don't think Bryan's been to the camping event but he has visited us in NH on short notice for a lunch as he was debating immigration policy at Dartmouth.
I'm aware of it. It just hasn't had as much success yet. Millei has gotten lucky and taken advantage of the Argentinian economic crisis and current wave of Trumpian populist "drain the swamp" rhetoric to make waves with a large section of the population and Prospera is taking advantage of a good policy allowing the creation of private cities. The charter city has been Caplan's preferred solution to promoting libertarianism because of the low population requirements and therefore relatively small policy transformation it would require. Prospera seems to be the most successful application of that so far.
The free state project has had none of those advantages.
An Argentinean here. It is worth taking a look at who's voting for Milei. Most votes concentrate in the 18-35 years old age range; most of them do not have a formal job or university-level education (they are called the "Rapi boys" or "Uber boys"); a good proportion comes from poor sectors or a degraded middle class; and certainly most of them are not libertarians (most of them probably voted for the Peronism just four years ago!). I think the key for his astonishing success was to talk directly to these hopeless people with very simple and easy-to-grasp slogans: dollarization (instead of a "free competitive system of currencies"), against "La Casta" (easily identifiable people that in the Argentinean imaginary are the responsible for the perennial crisis); and a very efficient social media management (for instance, there are small villages in the middle of the Andes where young people got access to internet just three years ago and came to know Milei by TikTok or Instagram; then they talked with their parents and grandparents about him, convince them to vote for him and he finally obtained more than 60% of the votes, without putting a single sign on walls and spending anything). Long story short, the campaign was not about to convince to those already convinced; it was not about targeting middle-upper class educated people; it was mostly about targeting the poorest. He's not going to eliminate the Argentinean state (zero votes for a state-dependent society), he's going to even keep social well-being assistances (at least in the short term), but he was effective in identifying the main issues, convincing people that those were the issues, and communicating all this in a straightforward way.*
(*probable, but not very relevant -in his public appearances, and even more intensively before announcing his candidacy, he was very aggressive (at least for Argentinean standards) and politically incorrect. Surprisingly, many saw this as honesty, but more importantly, many saw themselves identified with his anger: he wanted to break everything up, as many Argentineans wanted to do. This highly contrasted with the empty call for "pacific dialogue", "overarching agreements", etc., that many politician were preaching for decades)
I agree with you on basically everything here (see my response to Mary). Good point on dollarization as evidence for his incremental approach.
Hopefully Millei will bring more attention to libertarianism in Argentina, though. Perhaps when his term is over he'll endorse another libertarian candidate and they could win too.
Hey - nice to get a shoutout here!
Good idea to come down to Prospera to visit - times I can offer is this November where we already do 2 conferences:
Nov 3-5 https://lu.ma/crypto_legal2023
Nov 17-19 https://lu.ma/longevity2023
Topically it could fit the first one, the second one less. We could also do a shorter summit in between - I would just be hard-pressed to get sponsorship and invite a lot of people.
I'd recommend to also visit Ciudad Morazan on the mainland as part of the trip - philosophically very interesting differences to Prospera, and very successful with residents.
Another option would be in Jan - Feb 2024 during Vitalia: https://www.vitalia.city/
Hi @niklasanzinger, interesting post and I agree it would be great to see many of Bryan's ideas go a little more mainstream.
My questions for you might be:
- From what I can tell, Vivek seems to be another "outsider" that has the potential to bring a lot of important issues to light during the campaign (even if he doesn't get nominated). Could this approach - having Bryan talk to and convince other politicians - also work for other politicians for the same reasons? Or are there no other prominent libertarians worth speaking with?
- Do you think Trump would actually listen to Vivek? All of the "moderating" forces that surrounded Trump during his presidency failed. (FWIW, I am a never Trump-er and even more so after the last election. I think all of Bryan's ideas are better off not being associated with Trump.)
- I've thought of that, but i don't know any other politicians that would be that beneficial to talk to. Rand Paul is already pretty libertarian, and unless he gets a Cabinet position one day, he's probably not going any further. Justin Amash is great and probably my favorite politician, but his chances of office again are slim to none. He'd have to run libertarian probably, and the Libertarian Party gets like no votes. Same problem with whomever the libertarian party nominee will be.
- Yeah, I'm not betting on Trump listening to Vivek. My idea is that Caplan could influence Vivek and maybe something cool could happen if he gets into power.
For your interest in Prospera, I am surprised you don't seem to know of the Free State Project. David D Friedman, Vivek, Huemer, Ron Paul, Keith Knight, Larken Rose, Scott Horton, Stefan Kinsella, etc have all attended PorcFest, FSP's huge libertarian camping event, many of them last year!
I don't think Bryan's been to the camping event but he has visited us in NH on short notice for a lunch as he was debating immigration policy at Dartmouth.
Any who https://www.fsp.org/calendar
I'm aware of it. It just hasn't had as much success yet. Millei has gotten lucky and taken advantage of the Argentinian economic crisis and current wave of Trumpian populist "drain the swamp" rhetoric to make waves with a large section of the population and Prospera is taking advantage of a good policy allowing the creation of private cities. The charter city has been Caplan's preferred solution to promoting libertarianism because of the low population requirements and therefore relatively small policy transformation it would require. Prospera seems to be the most successful application of that so far.
The free state project has had none of those advantages.