How to pitch the Austrian economy for stable economies

The images from Latin America are difficult to ignore. Tens of thousands of gang members in Bukele’s El Salvador drawn upstanding shoulder to shoulder, waiting to be placed in jail, their rights suspended as a result of the crackdown on gang activity. Hundreds of government workers for AFIP – Argentina’s version of the IRS – standing in a multi-level gallery, papers floating to the bottom floor when they learn the agency is closed. Although the two presidents pursue radically different policies – Bukele a totalitarian and Milei an anarcho-capitalist influenced by professor Jesús Huerta de Soto – they are parallels in their willingness to act, something conspicuously lacking in Europe and the United States.

Most of the developed West is engaged in some form of bureaucracy-dominating, lotus-eating, right-wing liberal politics. Europe is just as far removed from that of Hans Herman Hoppe dream of “1,000 Liechtensteins” as seems humanly possible, with ten more countries hoping to gain access to the European Union from October 2024. The United States is driven by general elections that largely ignore down-ticket candidates, leaving political machines on both sides of the aisle in control. As Ron Paul has notably noted, the result is that most politicians have been bought by outside interests long before they ever begin a campaign for office, and are therefore likely driven primarily by financial interests.

This creates a homogeneity far removed from the turmoil necessary to bring a Bukele or Milei to power. Despite the predictions of doom by political pundits – as noted by Robert Nozick in his book Anarchy, state and utopia– a gentle decline in the West is much more likely (and preferable to the aspirations of libertarian idealologists) than an open revolution.

As Hayek repeatedly warned The road to serfdomextreme political ideologies will usually regard gaining control over a country as a monumental task. But where totalitarianism can seize power with a ‘might makes right’ style of coup, anarcho-capitalists will find this method distasteful, and like Murray Rothbard noted in his book For a new freedom: the libertarian manifestothe means must be aligned with the ends. Therefore, one might believe that the anarcho-capitalist must argue his position to demonstrate to the general population of a country that this is the only reasonable way forward. Unfortunately, this would assume that the population is completely reasonable, a mistake that Hayek advised against making in his book. The sensory order.

Instead, hopeful anarcho-capitalists should use Argentina as a kind of “show home” for other countries. Without mounting a sales campaign, the anarcho-capitalist project – limited to Argentina – will be too burdened to spread abroad. Therefore, any positive achievement in Milei’s government must be reduced to talking points, slogans and advertising activities. This will allow stable Western democracies to taste what an anarcho-capitalist government has to offer from a safe distance. Only then will hopeful European and American anarcho-capitalists have the opportunity to begin their crusade at home.