I first wrote about Javier Milei back in August when he surprised everyone by winning the first round of Argentina's presidential race. I wrote back then that I didn't hold much hope for him winning the race, but I have been proven wrong. He won by a good margin, and he's now Argentina's new president.
This is astonishing because he's a self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalist. That's as libertarian as it gets.
An interesting thing that has happened as a consequence of this is that journalists who have been quick to label libertarians as right wing in the past have suddenly become more nuanced. They realize that libertarians aren't similar to Nazis, and have started to admit this indirectly by refraining from using that label. They are instead calling him ultra-libertarian, or simply anarcho-capitalist.
Most journalists don't like libertarians, so they probably hope that Milei will make a big mess of things so that the labels 'libertarian' and 'anarcho-capitalist' will be remembered as failed philosophies. But I think the libertarian cat is now out of the bag, and I don't think it can be put back into it. The philosophy is no longer a fringe idea from a distant past. It has returned, and it's likely to become the main driver of the new era that we've just entered.
This doesn't mean that I believe Milei will have great success in his endeavour to restore Argentina's former glory. I'm not even sure he's as libertarian as he claims to be. But none of that matters. What matters is that it's now clear to everyone that there is an alternative route forward that's neither socialist nor conservative, and that route is where we're now headed.
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