Deregulation in Argentina: Milei Takes “Deep Chainsaw” to Bureaucracy and Red Tape

Argentine President Javier Milei has lowered inflation, drastically reduced government spending, and dismantled large parts of the federal bureaucracy. But as Ian Vásquez points out in his guest post, one of the most far-reaching efforts by his administration has been its deregulation push, with officials implementing about two deregulations per day on average since he took office, and using ingenious ways to discover where most needs deregulation. It's an Example for the World, if only New Zealand were not too sclerotic to learn from it ...

Deregulation in Argentina: Milei Takes “Deep Chainsaw” to Bureaucracy and Red Tape

by Ian Vásquez
At the heart of Argentina’s chronically crisis-prone economy is a political system that encourages unconstrained public spending and overregulation in the extreme. It is the system set up by Juan Domingo Perón in the 1940s that strengthened in subsequent decades, and that President Javier Milei promised to cut down with a chainsaw and replace with classical-liberal policies of the kind that made his country one of the most prosperous in the world a century ago.

Since assuming power in December 2023, Milei has been slashing government to that end. His priorities have been to get spending under control and to deregulate. Milei cut the budget by about 30 percent and balanced it one month into his term. That facilitated more disciplined monetary policy and the reduction of inflation from 25 percent per month when the president came to office to 2.2 percent in January 2025.

The success that Milei’s economic stabilisation has had so far is now widely acknowledged. The president took an economy from crisis to recovery much faster than most people expected: Growth returned in the second half of 2024, wages have increased, and the poverty rate, after having initially risen, has fallen below the 40 percent range that the previous government left as part of its legacy.

How much Milei has been deregulating, however, and the role that deregulation plays in Argentina’s success, is less widely appreciated—yet it is every bit as important as cutting spending. To understand why, it helps to know something about what makes Argentina’s politics different from that of most countries.

Argentina’s Peronist System

For more than seven decades, Argentina has had a corporatist system that Perón set up using Mussolini’s fascist Italy as a model. Under that system, the state organises society into groups—trade unions, business guilds, public employees, and so on—with which it negotiates to set national policies and balance interests. It’s a kind of collectivism that erases the individual, centralises power in the state, and incentivizes interest groups to compete for government favoritism through public spending and regulation.

This system gave rise to a proliferation of rules intended to protect and promote particular sectors through price controls, licensing schemes, differential exchange rates depending on type of economic activity, capital controls, preferential borrowing rates, compulsory membership in (and support of) guilds, and other interventions.

The system that the Peronist party set up discouraged free exchange, competition, and productivity but became deeply entrenched. Privileges accorded by regulation were politically difficult to lift. Legal scholar Jorge Bustamante, moreover, notes that regulation plays a more significant role in redistributing wealth in Argentina than fiscal policy does. He adds that “the waste of scarce resources caused by regulations is more serious than the direct activity of the state in the economy itself [fiscal policy], which is known to be in deficit.”

Unions in particular gained immense political power. Such was the case that Bustamante describes the Argentine system as one that “converts the unions into organs of the state when the party to which they belong [the Peronist party] is in power or converts the state into a prisoner of the unions when the party is in the opposition.”

Federico Sturzenegger, Argentina’s minister of deregulation and state transformation, made a similar point at the Cato conference we held in Buenos Aires in June 2024 with President Milei and other leading classical liberals. “The Peronist party,” Sturzenegger said, “is the manager of the status quo.… It is the manager of the vested interests; it is the conservative party of Argentina.”

The Peronists may want to conserve the system, but Milei is right in cutting it down. According to Cato's Human Freedom Index, the Argentina that the president inherited is one of the most regulated countries in the world, ranking 146 out of 165 countries in terms of the regulatory burden. As of last year, it ranked 81st.

Milei’s Cuts in One Year

Since coming to power, Milei has made wide-ranging cuts to Argentina’s bureaucracy. In his first year, he reduced the number of ministries from 18 to 8 (eliminating some and merging others), fired 37,000 public employees, and abolished about 100 secretariats and subsecretariats in addition to more than 200 lower-level bureaucratic departments.

The president has also aggressively pursued deregulation. Using a conservative methodology, my colleague Guillermina Sutter Schneider and I calculated that during Milei’s first year in office, he implemented about two deregulations per day. Roughly half of the measures eliminated regulations altogether, while the rest modified existing regulations in a generally market-oriented direction.

Milei has implemented these reforms legally and constitutionally, and they have resulted mainly from two broad measures. First, Milei began his administration by issuing an emergency “megadecree” that consisted of 366 articles. Emergency decrees are consistent with Argentine law if they meet certain conditions. They are also reviewable by Congress, which has the right to reject the orders within a specified period of time. Since the legislature did not object, most of the deregulations in the megadecree went into effect.

Second, Congress approved a massive bill (“Ley Bases”) last June that allows the government to issue further deregulatory decrees for one year. Most of Argentina’s deregulations are taking place under that authority and have been led by the new Ministry of Deregulation that began operating the following month.

The ministry is literally in a race against time, and its sense of urgency is palpable. When I visited Minister Sturzenegger and his team in November, they showed me a countdown sign outside his office that read “237 days left,” indicating the time remaining for the government to continue issuing deregulatory decrees. Sturzenegger’s team—made up of legal experts and accomplished economists—also has a clear sense of mission: to increase freedom rather than make the government more efficient. When reviewing a regulation, therefore, they first question whether the government should be involved in that area at all.

Following that approach, the government implemented deregulations in sectors of the economy ranging from agriculture and energy to transportation and housing. 

Looking at Prices

To help prioritise those reforms, the ministry looks at prices. If the cost of a good or service is significantly higher in Argentina than internationally, the regulatory burden often explains the price differential. Sturzenegger reports that deregulation in Argentina has tended to make prices fall by about 30 percent. The ministry has also set up a web portal called Report the Bureaucracy that takes recommendations from businesses and the public, resulting in numerous reforms.

Some of the reforms have been procedural. For example, government inspections are now sometimes conducted after a firm begins engaging in business (on the assumption that it is following the law and may be subject to inspection), rather than before any business is allowed to even go forward. This “ex-post” inspection of the labeling of imported textiles, for instance, led the price of textiles to fall by 29 percent. 

The government has also instituted a “positive administrative silence” rule affecting several activities by which requested permission is considered approved if the government bureaucracy does not respond within a fixed period of time. In yet another example, Milei prohibited legally sanctioned hereditary positions that had become normal practice at numerous government agencies.

Much of the impact of the deregulations has not yet been measured, but the hard or anecdotal evidence that does exist suggests that the reforms are making a significant difference. The following are some accomplishments from Milei’s first year:

• The end of Argentina’s extensive rent controls has resulted in a tripling of the supply of rental apartments in Buenos Aires and a 30 percent drop in price.
• The new open-skies policy and the permission for small airplane owners to provide transportation services within Argentina has led to an increase in the number of airline services and routes operating within (and to and from) the country.
• Permitting Starlink and other companies to provide satellite internet services has given connectivity to large swaths of Argentina that had no such connection previously. Anecdotal evidence from a town in the remote northwestern province of Jujuy implies a 90 percent drop in the price of connectivity.
• The government repealed the “Buy Argentina” law similar to “Buy American” laws, and it repealed laws that required stores to stock their shelves according to specific rules governing which products, by which companies and which nationalities, could be displayed in which order and in which proportions.
• Over-the-counter medicines can now be sold not just by pharmacies but by other businesses as well. This has resulted in online sales and price drops.
• The elimination of an import-licensing scheme has led to a 
• 20 percent drop in the price of clothing items and a 35 percent drop in the price of home appliances.
• The government ended the requirement that public employees purchase flights on the more expensive state airline and that other airlines cannot park their airplanes overnight at one of the main airports in Buenos Aires.

Many more examples could be given, but there’s no doubt that Argentines are beginning to feel the results of the reforms. Those results also help explain Milei’s approval rating of 50 to 55 percent, according to recent polls.

Year Two of Milei: The “Deep Chainsaw” Begins

In his address to the nation on his one-year anniversary as president, Milei explained that the cuts he’s made so far are only a beginning. “We will continue to eliminate agencies, secretariats, subsecretariats, public companies and any other State entity that should not exist,” he promised, and then went further: “Every attribution or task that does not correspond to what the federal state is supposed to do will be eliminated. Because as the state gets smaller, liberty grows larger.” Milei declared that he would now begin applying the “deep chainsaw.”

Minister Sturzenegger is leading the charge. A decree in February instructed all ministers to review all laws and regulations under their purview and recommend comprehensive deregulations within 30 days. In a country with nearly 300,000 laws, decrees, or resolutions, that is no small task. But according to Sturzenegger, the government has cut or modified 20 percent of the country’s laws; his goal is to reach 70 percent. He adds that the pace of firing public employees will increase.

Regulatory reforms have already picked up pace. In January, Sturzenegger announced a “revolutionary deregulation” of the export and import of food. All food that has been certified by countries with high sanitary standards can now be imported without further approval from, or registration with, the Argentine state. Food exports must now comply only with the regulations of the destination country and are unencumbered by domestic regulations.

That innovative reform, which outsources regulation, is intended to generate “cheaper food for Argentines and more Argentine food for the world.” But it is also an example of how the ministry takes input from Argentine citizens about the need to change nonsensical regulations. As Sturzenegger explained: “Countless companies have told us of the incredible hardships they had to go through to meet local requirements that were not required by the destination market. A producer who needed to certify a sample to see if he could enter the US market was asked to set up a factory first.”

In another case, Argentina required a watermelon exporter to package his product in a way that was different from what the recipient country required. So, in practice, the exporter would load the ship in compliance with Argentine law and, once the cargo left port, the watermelons would immediately be repacked.

Other examples abound. A decree in February facilitated farmers’ use of new seeds by eliminating the requirement to conduct extensive testing of those seeds. As Sturzenegger observed, in a country where agriculture plays a significant economic role, those restrictions were especially perverse: “Brazil has tripled its soybean production, largely with seeds made by Argentine researchers, working in Argentine companies but based in Brazil. The dramatic thing is that the increase in production in Brazil sinks the price of the grain while we are relatively stagnant because we cannot access our own technology!”

Another decree reduces the cost of warehousing imported containers awaiting customs inspections by an estimated 80 percent because it allows importers to keep their goods in competing locations during that time rather than solely in places run by the customs service. That cost reduction, like countless others that result from accelerated regulatory reforms, will be passed on to Argentine consumers. And to the extent that the chainsaw really does go deeper and faster in year two, the benefits will be even more pronounced.

An Example for the World

Milei’s task of turning Argentina once again into one of the freest and most prosperous countries in the world is herculean. But deregulation plays a key role in achieving that goal, and despite the reform agenda being far from complete, Milei has already exceeded most people’s expectations. 

His deregulations are cutting costs, increasing economic freedom, reducing opportunities for corruption, stimulating growth, and helping to overturn a failed and corrupt political system. Because of the scope, method, and extent of its deregulations, Argentina is setting an example for an overregulated world.

* * * * 

Ian Vásquez is Ian Vásquez is vice president for international studies at the Cato Institute, holds the David Boaz Chair, and is director of Cato’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. He is a weekly columnist at El Comercio (Peru), and his articles have appeared in newspapers throughout the United States and Latin America.

His post first appeared at the Cato at Liberty blog.

Chloe Swarbrick's Green Party are promising a 2 percent annual cap on rent increases. At first glance that might sound compassionate, but as Matthew Horncastle observes, "In reality it is a textbook example of bad economics."

As virtually every economist has told us for decades, “In many cases, rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city except for bombing.” Politicians keep promising the same thing not so they can actually fix the problem -- even the most inept political reptile is aware of this -- but to win votes from people who still think that emotions can trump the reality of a rent cap.

As Marcos Falcone points out in this guest post, it's not even necessary to understand the reasons for rent control being do destructive. In contrasting the experience of Spain and Argentina, where xxx, he shows what the Greens and Green voters should realise before helping to destroy rental accommodation here...

Rent Control Always Fails—Argentina Shows a Better Way

by Marcos Falcone

On Friday, March 20, in light of the Iran war, which has pushed up energy and other prices, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced measures to lower the cost of living. Rent control was included among those measures, even though it is already failing in Spain.

Reportedly under pressure from one of its left-wing coalition partners, Sánchez decreed a nationwide contract extension at current prices for rentals about to expire, effectively amounting to a rent freeze. He has also instituted a 2 percent annual cap on rent increases through the end of 2027, which will apply to existing contracts currently indexed to inflation.

Ironically, a report published by the Instituto Juan de Mariana the same week as Sánchez’s announcement shows the extent of the harm that various forms of rent control are already causing in Spain. Following the introduction of rent caps in the region of Catalonia in 2024, the supply of rental housing has declined by 23 percent. Even more dramatically, the city of A Coruña and the region of Navarra saw rental supply fall by 44 percent and 51 percent, respectively, only six months after they designated certain areas as “stressed” housing markets and also imposed rent caps. 

In a country with an estimated deficit of 700,000 housing units, rent control is making things even worse.

Rent control in Spain not only cuts supply but also fails to improve conditions for renters. As the Instituto Juan de Mariana shows, wherever rent control has recently been introduced, average rental unit space has decreased, and prices per square meter have either stayed the same or increased—in Barcelona, for example, prices reached a record high in the third quarter of 2025.

The Spanish experience contrasts sharply with Argentina’s, which has adopted the exact opposite approach since Javier Milei became president in December 2023. 

Before then, listings had plunged by a massive 53 percent following the passage of a rent control law in 2020. But after Milei repealed it ten days after taking office, supplies rose by a staggering 180 percent less than a year and a half later. (My colleague Ryan Bourne and I documented that extensively here). 

As of December 2025, rental prices in the city of Buenos Aires were still almost 30 percent down in real terms from two years before, and supply has not declined.

Rent control does more harm than good, as Ryan Bourne explains in The War on Prices. Hopefully, Spain will correct course as Argentina did before things get much worse.

* * * * 

Marcos Falcone is a policy analyst focusing on Latin America at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. His research interests range from contemporary public policy in his home country of Argentina to the history, theory, and language of classical liberalism. His essays have received awards by the Mont Pelerin Society, Caminos de la Libertad, and the European Center for Austrian Economics, among others. His columns appear frequently in Argentine and US media.

His post first appeared at the Cato at Liberty blog.

"Economic theory has identified four sources of economic progress"

In January Javier Milei explained to a room of Davos delegates to the WEF forum how the world works, and how economic progress and prosperity happens. This is an excerpt. [Milei's speech was originally in Spanish, and the English version at the WEF website has been transcribed by AI. I have edited slightly it for smoothness and clarity. Emphases mine]

As early as 380 BC, Xenophon pointed out that economics is a form of knowledge that enables men to increase their wealth while arguing that private property is the most beneficial vehicle for the life of individuals.

Xenophon ... [first] highlight[ed] the benefit of private property by stating that the owner's eye fattens his cattle. [Or as the English saying has it: "It's the master's eye that makes the mill go"]... Xenophon then delves into the dynamic realm, noting that efficiency also entails increasing wealth: that is, increasing the available quantity of goods through entrepreneurial creativity, namely through trade, innovation, and recognising opportunity. ...

"[T]he institution of private property deserves a separate chapter. By focussing on it, the Austrian School of Economics from Mises, Hayek, Rothbard, Kirzner and Hoppe to Huerta de Soto has demonstrated the impossibility of socialism, thereby dismantling the illusory idea of John Stuart Mill that postulated independence between production and distribution; a form of academic deafness that led to socialism, and cost the world the lives of 150 million human beings -- while those who managed to survive the terror, did so in absurd poverty.

In line with [those writers'] previous remarks, and consistent with Xenophon's second [point], economic theory has identified four sources of economic progress.

First, there's the division of labour, which was illustrated by Adam Smith through the pin factory example. At its core, this is a mechanism that generates productivity gains, manifested as increasing returns. Although its limit is determined by market size, the size of the market is positively affected by this process. However, it is also worth noting that this virtuous process is not infinite and that its ultimate limit lies in the endowment of initial resources.

Second, there is the accumulation of capital, both physical and human. With regard to physical capital, the interaction between saving and investment is crucial, highlighting the fundamental role of capital markets and of the financial system in carrying out such intermediation. On the human capital side, the focus should not be limited to education alone, but should also include the development of cognitive capacities from birth, as well as nutrition and health, basic elements for gaining access to education and the labour market.

Third, there is technological progress, which consists in being able to produce a greater quantity of goods with the same amount of resources, or to produce the same output using a smaller quantity of inputs.

Finally, there is entrepreneurial spirit, or rather the entrepreneurial function, which, according to Professor Huerta De Soto constitutes the main driver of the economic growth process. Because, although the three factors mentioned are important, without entrepreneurs, there can be no production, and living standards would be extremely precarious.

In fact, the entrepreneurial function is not so much focused on short-term efficiency, but rather on increasing the quality of goods and services, which, in turn, leads to higher standards of living. On this basis, what truly matters is to expand the frontier of production possibilities to the maximum extent possible.

Thus, dynamic efficiency can be understood as an economy's capacity to foster entrepreneurial creativity and coordination.

In turn, the criterion of dynamic efficiency is inseparably linked to the concept of the entrepreneurial function, which is that typically human capacity to perceive profit opportunities that arise in the environment and to act accordingly to take advantage of them. This makes the task of discovering and creating new ends and means fundamental, driving spontaneous coordination to resolve market imbalances.

Moreover, this definition of dynamic efficiency proposed by Huerta de Soto coherently and appropriately combines Schumpeter’s idea of creative destruction with North's concept of adaptive efficiency.

Naturally, given the role of the entrepreneurial function, the institutions under which it develops are of vital importance. In this regard, both Douglass North and Jesús Huerta de Soto consider one of the key functions of institutions to be that of reducing uncertainty.

So, while North presents them as a set of humanly devised constraints that structure social interaction in a repetitive manner, Huerta de Soto considers that these institutions, conceived by human beings, emerge spontaneously from a process of social interaction without being designed by any single individual, and that they reduce uncertainty in the market process.

As Roy Cordato points out, the appropriate institutional framework is one that favours entrepreneurial discovery and coordination. Accordingly, within this framework, economic policy should aim to identify and remove all artificial barriers that hinder the entrepreneurial process and voluntary exchanges.

Given the decisive influence of institutions on economic progress, this directs our attention to the importance of ethics, as societies that adhere to stronger moral values and ethical principles in support of institutions will be dynamically more efficient and will therefore enjoy greater prosperity.

Accordingly, the fundamental ethical problem is a search for the best way to foster entrepreneurial coordination and creation.

Therefore, in the field of social ethics, we conclude that conceiving human beings as creative and coordinating actors entails accepting axiomatically the principle that every human being has the right to appropriate the results of their entrepreneurial creativity.

So the private appropriation of the fruits of what entrepreneurs create and discover is a principle of natural law because if an author were unable to appropriate what they create or discover, their capacity to detect profit opportunities would be blocked, and the incentive to carry out their actions would disappear. Ultimately, the ethical principle just stated is the fundamental ethical foundation of the entire market economy.

So, what we've just demonstrated is that free enterprise capitalism is not only just but also efficient and also that it is the one that maximises growth.

[Full speech here]

RELATED: Here's Per Bylund at the latest Ludwig Von Mises conference explaining that it's entrepreneurs, not politicians, who change the world for the better.

"The real battle of our time is a cultural one, is a philosophical one, is a moral one."

"There are moments in history when a civilisation must choose its future.

"We have been told that the State is our protector; that bureaucrats are our saviour, and that politicians know more than the free man. That we must obey, that we must depend. 

"But the truth is different. 

"The world only has two types of people: those who live off what others produce, and those who produce everything that makes modern life possible. 

"The former draft regulations, the latter create wealth. The former promise [to equalise everyone], the latter generate prosperity. The former spread poverty, the latter multiply abundance. 

"The real battle of our time is a cultural one, is a philosophical one, is a moral one. 

"That's why we chose the system that lifted millions out of extreme poverty: free-market capitalism. 

"Because you don’t negotiate freedom, you defend freedom." 

~ Argentine President Javier Milei from his inauguration speech 'Moral Values as State Policy'

“The traditional politician asks for your vote so that they can fix your life, as if they know what you need."

“The traditional politician asks for your vote so that they can fix your life, as if they know what you need. What I say is, I ask for your vote so that I can give you back the power to be the architect of your own life.” 

~ Javier Milei, from his Nov 2024 interview with The Economist

Doug Casey's advice on distributing assets

"My hobby, for many years, was sitting down with the rulers of basket-case countries—preferably military dictatorships—to give them a plan that I promised would make them loved by the people, internationally famous, and legitimately a multibillionaire without stealing.

"Basically, I proposed taking 100% of all State assets (land, parastatals, the works) and putting them in a corporation. 70% of the shares would then be distributed pro-rata to every citizen, 10% put in trust for the next generation, 10% taken public internationally, and 10% reserved for those who could make it happen.

"There’s much, much more to say. But it would get the government out of the economy, and liberate dead capital. By giving the people what they theoretically own, it would be very hard to steal the shares back. I had some wonderful adventures pitching the deal in a dozen countries.

"How does that relate to Argentina? It’s the only way to solve the problem of what to do with the Vaca Muerta oil deposits and Aerolineas. Barring a distribution of shares to the citizens, the assets will just be stolen when the next leftwing government is elected [anyway]. And used as a piggybank for the political caste."

~ Doug Casey from his post 'Doug Casey on How Milei is Flirting with Failure in Argentina'

Javier Miliei's victory in congressional elections means his free-market reform agenda can continue, says guest poster Marcos Falcone, and even accelerate ...

A Resounding Win for Milei’s Reform Agenda in Argentina

by Marcos Falcone
Argentine President Javier Milei won a clear victory on Sunday (October 26) over the opposition in the midterm elections, ensuring that his ambitious reform agenda will continue. With almost 99 percent of votes counted, Milei’s coalition, La Libertad Avanza (LLA), obtained 40.7 percent of the national vote, whereas the Peronists, who competed under the name of Fuerza Patria, received 31.7 percent. LLA carried 15 of 24 provinces.

Milei’s victory is significant for two reasons. First, he won by a large margin. Though most polls favored LLA, some still favored the Peronists. Additionally, virtually all polls indicated that Milei would lose the province of Buenos Aires, Peronism’s stronghold, which he ultimately won by a margin of half a percentage point. In fact, the province of Buenos Aires had been a source of trouble for Milei in September, when his coalition lost a state election 47 percent to 34 percent against the Peronists. This triggered a wave of pessimism in the markets, as well as a run against the peso, which should subside for now.

Second, Milei’s victory will enable him to withstand opposition pressure in Congress and, particularly, to uphold his vetoes of bills that threaten budget stability or of any bills that go against his reform agenda. The LLA coalition (which includes his ally PRO, the party of former President Mauricio Macri) is set to obtain107 seats in the House, or about 42 percent of all seats. This is a much higher figure than the 86 seats (or 34 percent) that the government had set as a goal. Under Argentine law, vetoes can be overridden by Congress only with a majority of over two-thirds. At least until the next election in two years, the opposition will not be able to reach such a figure. In practice, the Peronists’ power has been significantly reduced.

Last night’s results, while not giving Milei a majority in Congress, will put his party and allies much closer to one. Besides being only 20 votes short of a majority in the House, Milei and his allies will now have 24 senators and thus control one-third of the Senate—exactly the same proportion as the Peronists. For Milei, this is unexpectedly good news. But for the Peronists, who held an absolute majority in the Senate from 1985 to 2021 and a near-majority until last night, this is catastrophic news.

Because of yesterday’s results, Milei will be in a stronger position to negotiate with Congress in implementing tax and labour reform, which he announced two weeks before the election. Although the opposition has recently tried to overturn some of his vetoes, there are still a few precedents of collaboration between the Milei government and non-Milei factions. Ley Bases, an omnibus bill named after classical liberal Juan Bautista Alberdi’s most famous book and passed in 2024, is one of them. The government has recently signaled it wants to further deregulate the economy through a second version of Ley Bases. Political compromise by some segments of the opposition is more probable today than before yesterday’s election, given the strong mandate Milei received. This is the case, for example, of the centrist Provincias Unidas, a party that obtained 7 percent of the vote on Sunday.

Finally, Sunday’s results also give Milei a chance to advance a broader reform agenda that includes dollarisation, trade liberalisation, the end of remaining capital controls, and the privatisation of state-owned enterprises, among other measures. Those pro-growth reforms will only strengthen Milei’s now improved position to be reelected in 2027 and further solidify his market revolution.

* * * * 

Marcos Falcone is a policy analyst focusing on Latin America at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity. His post first appeared at the Cato Institute blog.

"A movement that changed a country." Peacefully.

It's been risible watching statists here struggling over recent months to get their heads around the Atlas Network think tank—and what exactly think tanks do.

What troubles them most perhaps is the word "think" in the description. Many have forgotten how to.

Nonetheless, to help them understand, the think tank Students for Liberty sets out to explain what they do. 

They begin by asking: "Why is the President of Argentina wearing THIS pin while announcing major policy changes?"

The story goes back to 1945, when a war hero wanted to save his country—and a Nobel Prize winner told him to forget about politics.

This isn't just about a pin. It's about how ideas travel from university classrooms to presidential palaces. And why every student needs to understand this journey—because you're living through it right now.

In 1945, World War II just ended. F.A. Hayek, teaching at the London School of Economics, meets Antony Fisher—a combat aviator and war hero. Fisher had read Hayek's The Road to Serfdom and was terrified about Britain's socialist direction. "I want to enter politics," Fisher declared.

Hayek stopped him cold. "The political battle isn't won in the political arena," he explained. "It's fought—and ultimately won—by intellectuals." Politicians follow public opinion. But intellectuals? They shape it. 

 

Fisher listened. Instead of running for political office, he founded the UK's Institute of Economic Affairs. For decades, IEA scholars published papers, hosted debates, and educated a generation about free markets. The result? Britain elected Margaret Thatcher. 

 

Legend has it that in her first Cabinet meeting, Thatcher slammed down Hayek's book Constitution of Liberty—published by the IEA—and declared: "This is what we believe!" Ideas had become policy. Intellectuals had changed a nation. 

This wasn't an accident. Hayek had studied how ideas spread. It's like a pyramid:

        Scholars develop ideas ...

                ... Intellectuals* spread them 

                        ... Media amplifies them

                                ... Politicians adopt them

Every revolution starts at the top of that pyramid.

[* Note that the bar for "intellectual" here is clearly set very low.] 

Now look at American universities today (and this is fairly universal everywhere):  

X Professors teaching government as the solution to everything  

X Students defending socialism (70% of Gen Z consider voting socialist)  

X 53% of graduates feel unqualified for jobs in their field  

X Ideology of resentment toward achievement

 The pyramid is working—just not for liberty.

This is why Students For Liberty exists. 

Our Local Coordinators host events, educate peers, and develop as leaders worldwide. 

In 2024 alone: 3,881 events reaching 150,000+ people. 

One person who helped SFL in Argentina? An economist named Javier Milei.

Milei didn't just wear our pin—he partnered with us. 

He attended our events, explained our mission on TV, and mentored pro-liberty students across Argentina. 

Why? Because he understood: to change politics, you first have to change culture. 

 

Take Ethan Yang. Started with "no leadership experience, no professional skills. Just a small libertarian club that met in the basement of our dining hall." 

As a Students for Liberty coordinator, his Freedom of Information Act request helped halt the Biden administration's social-media censorship. The case reached the Supreme Court.

A federal judge called the Biden Administration's collusion with/threats to Big Tech "the most massive attack against free speech in US history." 

Stopped by one student. One request. Supreme Court case. 

That's the power of the pyramid when it works for liberty. 

 

Here's what every student needs to understand: 

You're not just getting a degree. 

You're being shaped by ideas that will define the next fifty years. 

The question isn't whether ideas will spread from campus—it's which ideas will spread.

Milton Friedman explains the point: "Our basic function is to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive until the politically impossible becomes the politically inevitable." 

Before Milei became president, he was attending SFL events. 

That pin? It represents a movement that changed a country.

Tired of feeling outnumbered, silenced, or lost in campus groupthink? 

The College Survival Kit is your first step into this global movement. 

Learn how real change begins—with students who refuse to stay silent: DOWNLOAD YOURS HERE. 

Seymour’s a what?

NOT SURE ABOUT YOU, but it looks to me like a whole lot of the commentariat are melting down about David Seymour becoming Deputy Prime Minister — despite the role being as much use as a glass eye at a keyhole.

The most absurd critiques, and here I'm looking at Wee Willie Jackson and Mihinarangi Forbes, goes at him for being "a libertarian." Which poses some kind of a dangerous threat, apparently, despite libertarians famously not caring what goes on behind your closed doors. 

You can just watch Jackson, especially, foaming at the mouth over the weekend:

"David Seymour is an extremist ... 

"his far right libertarian 'solutions' ... 

"his Free Market Libertarian extremism ...  

"David is a dangerous libertarian extremist ... 

"David Seymour is a very dangerous libertarian extremist."

Etc.

Wow. 

At least Willlie seems fully aware of hyperbole. 

But is Seymour really a libertarian?

And if so, how would that be a threat to anyone?

It's pretty clear his critics have no idea, since they can't articulate any.

After all, what is it to be a libertarian?

The most topical answer comes from Javier Milei:

What's a libertarian?
Someone who believes in unrestricted respect for the life projects of others.

A libertarian is someone who believes in unrestricted respect for the life projects of others. It's damned hard to see how that's a threat to anyone.

Unless, that is, your life project is like Willie's, which is to place your snout permanently into a race-based trough.

Click through for video ...

ANYWAY, TO FURTHER ASSIST poor Mihi and Wee Willie, who remain confused on this point, Javier Milei explains in the video above the difference between right wing, left wing, and libertarian. (Maybe Mihi could use it in her next scare story re-running her vacuous Atlas conspiracy): 

Interviewer: What is it to be libertarian? ... Why do you define yourself as a libertarian?

Milei: I define it for you by default [by opposites].

What would someone on the right be like? Someone who doesn't mind who you trade with -- is a liberal economically speaking -- but it bothers him who you get into bed with. Who is a "cultural conservative."

Int.: Repeat that?

Milei: A right-wing person is someone who is economically liberal, someone who doesn't care who you trade with, but cares who you sleep with. Who is a "cultural conservative." 

Int.: Okay. I get it.

Milei: On the other hand, a left-wing person is liberal culturally --- they don't care who you get into bed with -- but is interventionist economically; they don't let you trade with whomever you want.

So, what would a libertarian be?

Someone who believes in unrestricted respect for the life project of others. [W]ho believes consenting adults can get into bed with whoever you want -- with every one you want. 

Int.: Is that how a libertarian thinks? 

Milei: Exactomento.

And obviously you can trade with whoever you want. 

Int.: You are libertarian then?

Milei: Exactomento. 

So in Spanish ...

[Pic by LaNewzViewz]

 

Every day we hear numb-nuts accusing this Luxon-led government of privatising, de-regulating and defenestrating the state (I wish!). Yet over in Argentina we learn from this guest post that every single day Milei has actually done there what our numb nuts here fear most, and with transforming effect: increasing economic freedom, reducing opportunities for corruption, creating greater transparency in government, helping to formalise the informal sector, stimulating growth, and setting an example for countries around the world to follow —including this small, over-regulated South Pacific one ...

Milei Has Deregulated Something Every Day

by Ian Vásquez and Guillermina Sutter Schneider

Argentina’s President Javier Milei promised to take his chainsaw to regulations when he assumed power a year ago this week. His newly created Ministry of Deregulation began functioning in July and, virtually every day, Minister Federico Sturzenegger announces one or numerous regulatory reforms.

Getting public spending under control and cutting red tape have been Milei’s two policy priorities this year. His success in shrinking government largesse, balancing the budget, and reducing inflation are well known. Less appreciated is how much he’s been deregulating, so we decided to try to measure that effort.

We should note that prioritising deregulation makes sense. A legacy of the corporatist state that Peronism entrenched, Argentina is one of the most regulated countries in the world. On the Fraser Institute’s economic freedom index, Argentina ranks 146 out of 165 countries in terms of regulatory burden.

Measuring regulatory reform is challenging. Argentine government data is sometimes incomplete or vague. How to quantify reform can also be open to judgment. (Does the elimination of various articles of a regulation affecting different forms of economic activity count as one reform or several? What about the elimination of an entire law or its modification?)

The best source on deregulation in Argentina is the deregulation 'czar' himself, Federico Sturzenegger. We used his posts on X and those of his ministry, where deregulations are regularly announced, and cross-checked them on other government websites. We were conservative in our quantification. If one or dozens of articles were eliminated or modified within one law, we simply counted that as one deregulation. (Each law that was deregulated, no matter to what extent, counted as one deregulation.)

What did we find? From December 10, 2023, when Milei assumed the presidency, to December 7, 2024, there were 672 regulatory reforms. On average, that means that during his presidency, Milei has been issuing 1.84 deregulations per day, counting weekends. Out of the total amount of reforms, 331 eliminated regulations and 341 modified existing regulations.

The heat chart above shows how many regulatory reforms Milei’s government has issued per week over the past year. Milei, in fact, began his administration with a deregulatory bang, introducing an emergency “megadecree” last December that consisted of 366 articles and has continued this drive with the creation of the new ministry. Argentine law allows emergency decrees, which are reviewable by Congress, under certain conditions. Most of the deregulations in the “megadecree” are in force.

In June of this year, the congress passed a massive bill that Milei presented (“Ley Bases”) that gave the president the ability to issue further deregulations for a period of one year. That is the authority under which most of Argentina’s deregulations are currently taking place. (The majority of Milei’s deregulations have since come out in the second half of the year.)

The laws and regulations that Milei has abolished or modified date back well into the 20th century and, in some cases, even further. We found that 12 percent of the laws that Milei deregulated took effect during military dictatorships, and 88 percent originated during democracy, including under populist governments of the left. (The chart below is based on deregulations for which we could obtain sufficient information. Some of the laws that were deregulated took effect in the administrations that followed the ones that introduced them.)

Argentina’s deregulation drive covers a wide range of sectors: housing, pharmaceuticals, technology, non-tariff trade barriers, transportation, tourism, energy, agriculture, etc. Some reform has been procedural, affecting a range of areas. For example, Milei has instituted a “positive administrative silence” rule affecting numerous activities by which a requested permission is considered approved if the government bureaucracy does not respond to the request within a determined period of time.

It’s too early to measure the full impact of the deregulations, but there’s no doubt that they are significant given the bureaucratic weight they are lifting. Some indication of that can be seen in the following examples:

• The elimination of an import licensing scheme has led to a 35% drop in the price of home appliances and a 20% drop in the price of clothing items. 
• The lifting of Argentina’s burdensome rent control system has resulted in a tripling of the supply of rental apartments in Buenos Aires and a nearly 50% drop in price.
• The elimination of a floor price of yerba mate, which is widely consumed in Argentina as a tea, led to a 25% drop in its price.

Many other deregulations, whose impact has not yet been measured, could be cited. Argentina has begun implementing an open-skies policy that has increased the number of airlines operating there. The government has also lifted regulations that favoured the state-owned airline Aerolineas Argentinas, such as the requirement that public employees book their flights on the more expensive state airline, or that other airlines cannot park their airplanes overnight at one of the main airports in Buenos Aires. Milei has gotten rid of legally-sanctioned hereditary positions at numerous government agencies (yes, you read that right). The government has permitted Starlink and Amazon to provide satellite internet service in the country, providing connectivity to vast swaths of Argentina that until now had no such connection. Etc., etc.

When one of us and a colleague visited Sturzenegger and his team at the ministry last month (below), we were struck by their sense of urgency, professionalism, and commitment to the task. They made clear that their priority was to increase freedom. When reviewing regulations, their first question is not about how to increase efficiency but rather about whether the government should be involved in a particular regulation at all.

 

The deregulation team, made up of accomplished economists and legal experts, is up against the clock. During our visit, a countdown sign outside the minister’s office read “237 days left,” indicating the time remaining, according to current law, for the government to continue issuing deregulatory decrees. Argentina is a target-rich environment for the ministry’s work, and it is taking recommendations from the public at large (when the ministry recently set up a web portal to that effect called “Report the bureaucracy,” it received more than 1,300 entries within the first eight hours). The biggest challenges are doing as much as they can with the time remaining and prioritizing regulatory reform, which is sometimes informed by large differences in Argentine versus international prices.

Milei and Sturzenegger have their work cut out for them. But what they are accomplishing is more than most thought could be done in such a short period of time. Their deregulations are increasing economic freedom, reducing opportunities for corruption, creating greater transparency in government, helping to formalize the informal sector, stimulating growth, and setting an example for countries around the world to follow.

* * * * 

*Guillermina Sutter Schneider is a data scientist and information designer and a coauthor of the Human Freedom Index. This article draws partially from “Desregulacion: Argentina vs. Estados Unidos,” by Ian Vasquez (November 20, 2024) and “Argentina’s Escape from Kafka’s Castle,” by Guillermina Sutter Schneider (December 5, 2024).

The post previously appeared at the Cato at Liberty blog.

 

Javier Milei has revolutionised regulatory reform in his Argentina, taking a virtual chainsaw to useless bureaucracies. In a recent interview with Lex Fridman, Javier Milei revealed his method, described here in this guest post by Daphne Posadas. Here's ere's how his "chainsaw model could still inspire real reform in Washingtom, and even back here in Wellington...

Javier Milei’s Chainsaw on Bureaucracy

by Daphne Posadas

“What is the difference between a madman and a genius? Success.” That opening line set the tone for Javier Milei’s two-hour interview with Lex Fridman. In it, Argentina’s libertarian president reflected on the first few months of his administration following his historic electoral victory on November 19, 2023.

Milei has been called many things, but his methods and philosophy thrive under scrutiny. In a free society, being questioned is both a challenge and an opportunity. What sets Milei apart is his ability to answer tough questions with logic, evidence, and, most importantly, results.

His anarcho-capitaliist rhetoric is—as he said—rooted in a libertarianism that has an “unrestricted respect for the life project of others based on the principle of non-aggression and in defense of the rights to life, liberty, and property,” a definition championed by Alberto Benegas Lynch, Jr., and that follows John Locke’s ideas.

A Model Exported

Milei’s reforms haven’t gone unnoticed in the U.S., especially after the announcement of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), to be led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

In the interview, Milei highlighted how Argentina’s Ministry of Deregulation and State Transformation, led by Federico Sturzenegger, is systematically dismantling protectionism and privilege by eliminating 1 to 5 economic restrictions daily.

This approach is catching attention worldwide, as Musk and Ramaswamy have hinted at adapting this “chainsaw” strategy. Ramaswamy recently posted on X: “A reasonable formula to fix the U.S. government: Milei-style cuts, on steroids.”

The Chainsaw Reforms

If there’s one image that defined Milei’s 2023 campaign, it’s the chainsaw. He carried a real chainsaw to his rallies, chanting “¡Motosierra! ¡Motosierra!” (Spanish for “chainsaw”) as a symbol of his promise to slash Argentina’s bloated bureaucracy.

When Milei took office, Argentina’s inflation was out of control, climbing at almost 1% per day. Fixing the fiscal deficit became his top priority, knowing nothing else would work without a solution on that front. In just a few months, he made drastic changes: cutting over 50,000 government jobs, shutting down more than half of the ministries, slashing regulations, and removing subsidies.

The results? Inflation has dropped from 211% year over year in December 2023 to 107.4% in November 2024, according to the latest inflation data from INDEC. According to UFM Reform Watch’s Daniel Fernandez, Javier Milei’s government has now achieved 10 consecutive months of primary fiscal surplus: “Between January and October 2024, the Argentine government accumulated a primary fiscal surplus equivalent to nearly 1.7% of GDP”—a remarkable turnaround.

Milei: A Former Academic

As a former economics professor, Milei excels at breaking down complex economic concepts. Early in the interview, he provided a roadmap for those interested in understanding Austrian economics with big references: Human Action by Ludwig von Mises and Principles of Economics by Carl Menger, two starting points for him. He also name-dropped other thinkers, including Murray Rothbard, Friedrich Hayek, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Jesús Huerta de Soto, Juan Ramón Rallo, Philipp Bagus, and Walter Block—a quick guide to both Anglo and Hispanic perspectives on libertarian thought.

When Fridman dug deeper and asked about his economic philosophy, Milei replied: “Ideally, anarcho-capitalist; in reality, minarchist.” This summarizes his pragmatic approach to reducing the state’s size through what he calls “the largest structural reform in Argentina’s history” while being realistic about what’s possible. Here Milei also addressed criticism from some libertarians, saying they often fall for the “nirvana fallacy”—expecting perfect solutions in an imperfect world.

Key Takeaways

There are two main takeaways from Milei’s interview with Fridman. First, Milei knows what he’s talking about. Too many politicians don’t really understand economics, but Milei clearly does. He doesn’t just memorise numbers; he explains the reasoning behind his decisions, and it makes sense. Second, market-driven reforms can deliver results. Contrary to popular belief or experts’ advice, these changes don’t require decades to show their impact.

Will these reforms catch on all the way to the White House? [Or here in Wellington?] Only time will tell. But for now, it’s clear that Milei’s approach is turning heads around the world.

I highly recommend watching or listening to the full conversation [dubbed into English]. It’s an incredibly stimulating discussion, particularly for economics enthusiasts eager to see theory translated into real-world policy action.

Daphne Posadas is a Project Manager at the Foundation for Economic Education's FEE en Español, the Spanish branch of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE). She holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Universidad Francisco Marroquín, andis pursuing a Master’s degree in Economics at the University of Troy, Alabama. In 2021, she was a panelist at the Mont Pelerin Society conference, becoming one of the youngest speakers in the conference’s history.

Her post first appeared at the FEE blog.

Regulatory Reform: Timid and too easily tamed?

 

David Seymour's regulatory reform bill: less chainsaw and more milquetoast

While one crowd over there are making a fuss about one of David Seymour's bills—his Treaty Principles Bill—another one is heading to be cemented in as law. And it's ... not bad. 

It's his bill for "regulatory reform." And, you know, it's not Javier Milei's "chainsaw" model of bureaucratic reform, unfortunately, that's seen around 50,000 government jobs slashed and more than half Argentina's ministries shuttered — and inflation plummeting from a high of up to one-percent per day to arond 2.7% per month. That would be something to see.

But it might be longer lasting.

“The Bill will codify principles of good regulatory practice for existing and future regulations,” says Mr Seymour.
    “It seeks to bring the same level of discipline to regulation that the Public Finance Act brings to public spending, with the Ministry for Regulation playing a role akin to that of Treasury."

Wishful thinking, I suspect. 

There's already one problem here, of course: that before any regulations are even reformed we already have a whole new bureaucracy: a Ministry of Regulation. And there's a strong suspicion that this new ministry might be less a Treasury-like entity chainsawing offending clauses from new legislation, and more an ombudsman-like sounding board for regulatory nerds.

We shall see.

Seymour is optimistic however. (Well, he has to be.) He says his proposed Regulatory Standards Bill will include:

• a benchmark for good regulation [sic] through a set of principles of responsible regulation 
• mechanisms to transparently assess the consistency of new legislative proposals and existing regulation with the principles
• a mechanism for independent consideration of the consistency of existing regulation, primarily in response to stakeholder [sic] concerns.

The last two will see whether or not the ministry will be any more than another drain on taxpayers' wallets. ("Issuing non-binding recommendations" suggests not.) It's the first one I want to look at here. What "principles of responsible regulation" could give a reliable standard for "good" regulation? (Given that, by my standards, I would say "none.")

The principles [says the Bill's preamble] cover 7 key areas, including the rule of law, protection of individual liberties, protection of property rights, the imposition of taxes and charges, the role of the courts, review of administrative decisions, and good law-making processes.

Rule of law, individual liberties, property rights ... sounds good. As enumerated principles. Except "Any incompatibility with the principles is justified to the extent that it is reasonable and can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society." Justification for which is to be cleared by either a court so constituted, or a minister signing a certificate. (A bit like our toothless Bill of Rights.)

So expect to hear that exception wheeled out many times, as future ministers explain why keeping society "free and democratic" requires violating your individual liberties.

If they bother at all.

The problem of course is that "You can't address a fundamental problem by making marginal changes." Which is all this really is: raising the political cost of making bad laws, as Seymour admits, without actually stopping the bad laws being made. As Gus Van Horn comments on a somewhat similar approach being made in the US:

Absent a fundamental shift in which our politicians are guided by restoring government to its proper purpose, the protection of individual rights, there will only be this nibbling at the margins. Meanwhile the leviathan will grow out of control until the unsustainable mess mercilessly self-corrects.