The political adage ''if you cannot beat 'em, join 'em" has been well-known for centuries. So, the left made one extra step and arrived at the "if you cannot beat 'em, lead 'em." They have been trying-rather unsuccessfully-various methods to eliminate capitalists, private property, and individual freedom.
Eventually, leftists learned their lesson and decided to preside over private property instead of confiscating and sharing it. Lenin used the so-called "New Economic Policy" in the Soviet Union from 1921-28. Mussolini used it; so did Hitler, and then Mao. It blatantly violates a well-demarcated borderline between the government and the governed. More recently, it has become the very cornerstone of globalism.
The systematic and deliberate infiltration of the state into private economic affairs did not begin with Mussolini and the proto-fascists. In 17th century France, for example, Chief Minister Cardinal Richelieu established state-sponsored and directed cartels. That resulted in public-private entities being granted monopoly status in their respective fields. Richelieu aimed not to build a proto-fascist state per se; his cravings were more pragmatic. France had a war to win with England. In this context, let us be clear about definitions. Socialism is a state where most wealth belongs to the government. Fascism is a form of socialism where most wealth is effectively controlled by government.
Richelieu nevertheless deployed state power to consolidate and perpetuate itself. His offer to French merchants was one they could not refuse-guaranteed profits under the protection of the state, or else certain imprisonment at the Bastille.
The resulting economic landscape in mid-17th century France was comprised of many stable, privately owned cartels controlled directly or indirectly by the state. It did however strengthen and consolidate French economic power, especially in relation to its rivals-the Hapsburgs and England. But the other side of the coin was unavoidable: government-chartered monopolies, insulated by the state from external competition, pressed the brakes on innovation. Ultimately, Richelieu drew the Hapsburgs into bankruptcy and led France to become the dominant European power.
England and her colonies were provided more economic freedom during this same time period. That sealed the fate of two revolutions at the close of the 18th century. The French had no choice but to continue to turn left. Meanwhile, the thirteen overseas British colonies turned right.
The story of the proto-fascist policies of Richelieu demonstrated the trend observable in all future left-wing economies-a short term boost in economic activity due to crushing, inescapable state intervention, followed by steady decline and stagnation. As we know, the Soviets, Nazi Germany, Cuba, Venezuela, and the entire Iron Curtain Soviet bloc suffered this fate. The demise of Communist China is inevitable for the same reason. A similar future awaits the Davos Oracles of "stakeholder capitalism". From that outlook, all four of Dumas' three musketeers were the pioneer proto-anti-fascists.
State-managed "stakeholder capitalism" was known in the 1600's as mercantilism. To use 21st century terminology, Richelieu established a form of stakeholder capitalism in France, whereby the government served as the only principal stakeholder.
Klaus Schwab publicizes "the third way", "stakeholder capitalism" as the ultimate solution. His capitalism must be in air quotes because it corresponds to free-market capitalism in only the remotest sense. National Socialists of the Third Reich also ran under the banner of the "the third way". Schwab is painfully aware that the 'stakeholder concept' competed head-on with Milton Friedman's notion that "the business of business is business-and it ultimately lost out."
There are no surprises here. Schwab's stakeholder capitalism is just more leftism rebranded for the 21st century, and is more aptly known as fascism. Of course, it is a replica of the 20th century version that sparked WWII; it has been updated, and modified to incorporate climate change, digital technologies, the pandemic, and global outreach. "Planetary health" has become the central stakeholder in the global economic system.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 provided conclusive evidence of the unendurable socialist economy. With its fall, progressive intellectuals were forced to find a new source of inspiration and income, with the latter being their primary concern. Therefore, the myths conceived by the previous generation of leftists had to be revised so that "global cooling" quickly became "global warming". As for the new income source, the international left panicked for many years before realizing that its quintessential enemy-capitalism-could be exerted to combat itself.
From that account, the WEF's ascendancy as the international left's de facto leader directly resulted from the Soviet crash of 1991. The WEF was founded in 1971 under the name of the European Management Forum once Solzhenitsyn made cracks in the Soviet Union an open secret. Shortly thereafter, a campaign began to rehabilitate corporatism. But the time the European Management Forum became the WEF in 1987, the term "neo-corporatism" had sufficiently emasculated from any link to old corporate fascism.
Despite this, the organization went unnoticed for over two decades, remaining in the shadow of the more powerful socialist organizations. The tool the WEF used to win the international socialist race was not its invention; they simply modernized the old 1930's leftist guaranteed profits thesis of getting political power from the semi-educated by utilizing control mechanism instead of ownership redistribution. Thus, the evolution of the WEF runs parallel to the revival of corporatism.
By 2012, the WEF had decisively won the evolutionary struggle with its left wing peers. Davos became ecumenical council of the New Left Caliphate, and the race for Assets Under Management was catapulted to the top leftist strategies. Davos is where the blossoming romance between the rich and the left wing beau monde happens.
The Davos gatherings each January are a microcosm of what the Left has in mind for the rest of the world. Davosians cling to one of the strictest caste societies, indicated by the colour of their badges. Meritocratic considerations do not solely determine the ranking of these individuals in the WEF hierarchy. The colour ranking in Davos is loosely based upon one's position in the greater world; but like all other left-wing movements, the actual hierarchy in the WEF strictly adheres to inner-Davos priorities-namely, proximity to the party Fuhrer.
The alpine resort town of Davos has emerged as a symbol of modern anti-capitalism, but this is only half-true. Indisputably, Davos has been propelled to the apex of leftist imperialism and become the de-facto summit of left-wing executive demigods. They genuinely believe that they have found the cornucopia and met the Goddess Abundantia, who now embodies the administrative state.
The Liberal Party has been taken over by people who want power, the left. Our system makes it hard to accumulate power. Liberals must destroy our system. Tribalism is a great weapon for doing just that. The leftist Liberal leaders of today care only about getting and keeping power. They do not care about people of colour, gays or trans, or even environmentalists. Such groups are just weapons of convenience with which to pound Canadians into permanent submission.
Stoking pre-existent tensions in our society, or creating new ones where none existed before has been an effective tactic. The Liberals are tribalizing Canada by destroying our current broad-based national culture and replacing it with a tribal one. In their neo-tribalism, we would get our identity from differences, slicing and dicing us along racial, gender, and environmentalist ideological lines. In primitive cultures, someone trying to do this would probably be cast out or punished by the tribe or its leaders for threatening the established order the keeping everyone alive. There will ever be radicals and bigots in our society hovering about the fringe; waiting for the chance to spread their poison of division and hatred. As a nation, we have welcomed them back when we see genuine contrition and strived to keep them marginalized when their hatred resurfaces. But now they have taken over the Liberal Party, our government, and large swaths of our culture.
Tribalism's power is that it sows division. Division is effective when trying to conquer a nation. In today's world, there seem to be few nations governed as a group of tribes that are stable and secure. They might be able to survive perpetual internal conflict, but they cannot survive in a world of external intrigue and national threats if they cannot make decision and act with dispatch as a unified people. The Fathers of Confederation understood this. Canadian society has its own tribal issues. Early on, the colonies and later Provinces were our tribes. But the thing that made our society better than other tribal ones was that we shared a common identity and ideals that were more important to us than arbitrary external differences.
In the left's tribal Canada, every tribe has to tiptoe through the minefield of every other tribe's delicate sensibilities, while living in fear of having your reputation, your livelihood or your life destroyed. The reason that the Liberals want a tribal culture is that it is easily controlled and perpetually in a state of chaos. Dissidents cannot marshal collective resources to meet any major crisis. Canada is stronger when we are all Canadians, but weaker when we are black, white, Muslim, Asian, French, gay, trans, or gender fluid. A shared sense of identity is critical to the health and resilience of a society and a nation. The idea of being one people, the story we tell ourselves about who we are as a people. Some nations share racial or ethnic unity; some a common history; some a sense that the land in which they live binds them together. The Canadian sense of unity has always been based upon principles and ideals about the inherent value, dignity, and freedoms bestowed on us by God. Our society, our government and our nation were designed and constructed to enshrine this.
Canada has long been the envy of peoples around the world. That is why millions of people each year seek to emigrate here. Not because they hate their land, their traditions or their own people; but because their aspirations for a good life have been oppressed or corrupted by those who crave only power. It is also a constant reminder to oppressed people that there is hope for a better life, and that idea is the single greatest threat to despots. The Canadian ideal is an inclusive one, provided your goal is not destruction of civilization itself.
Long ago, the Roman thinker Cicero understood that a nation's greatest threats come from within:
Ideas like tribalism suffer close scrutiny in the cold light of day. We need to remember what we learned in our history classes. We need to keep talking to each other, keep debating, arguing, whatever it takes. When given the facts, everyday Canadians of any political stripe will recognize danger approaching. If rank and file Liberal voters ever break through the myriad layers of deception and gain a clear view of how they have been manipulated, there will be a fierce cultural and political reckoning in this country, the likes of which we have never seen before.
In the meanwhile Canadians must vigilantly remind ourselves and each other about who we are and why our identity and way of life need constant protection. Should a man in a dress be given extra legal rights to sue anyone who sees through his delusions? Why should rational men be expected to allow mentally unstable ones to use public restrooms with our wives and daughters? Why should parents be expected to entrust the welfare of their children to psychologically troubled people who have sought out jobs at schools, amusement parks, and daycares? Why would government agents intervene to support the fantasies of those inclined to mutilate their bodies and traumatize others with their deceptions? How can any government maintain its legitimacy for long when it embraces insanity as reality and condemns reality as fantasy?
For a long time, psychologically balanced people have done their best to ignore the government's increasingly psychotic behaviour. When pressed, they have even reluctantly played along: you need me to wear this filthy paper mask that does nothing to prevent transmission of viral particles floating in the air, so that you know that I know that this is somehow China's fault? Fine, do not break down in tears or start screaming or call the police. I will play along.
Playing along, however, has gotten us nowhere. For every insane concession we make to government authorities, they invent a dozen new demands. Remember when all those truckers exercised their Constitutional rights to assemble to petition the Trudeau government to lift pandemic travel restrictions? Yeah, even though all those people were unarmed and expressed no interest in overthrowing anything, that was a totally violent "insurrection", justifying emergency police action. The government and its lapdog media need people to believe insane things. Facts are dangerous and reserved for those of us who live in reality.
In another absurd example proving how playing along only invites further government psychopathy, the UK is now telling public employees that they must actually believe in the transgender delusions flooding the workplace. That's right: it is no longer enough to merely play along with someone's autoerotic fantasies. Using an unbalance person's "preferred pronouns" does not sufficiently demonstrate submission to the coercive state. If you want to keep your government job in the U.K., You must commit yourself to "thinking of the person as being the gender that they want you to think of them as." Such virtue signalling, shared madness even requires a dogmatic faith in biologically impossible things-such as the state's assertions that men can experience menopause and give birth.
Back before the days when the mentally unwell were put in charge of our mental health organizations (the WHO just added a set of transgender activists to a policy committee seeking global rules for kids), playing along with mental delusions was discouraged. This was because doing so enables dangerous and self-destructive behaviour. Now refusing to play along can get you fired. How long before those who should be committed to mental institutions instead commit sane people for insufficiently pretending to believe in things that are untrue? When the choice is between reality check and paycheque, desperate people will accept insane things to get paid. Add this observation to the growing list of reasons why freedom-minded people should not only thwart introduction of central bank digital currencies, but also embrace forms of money free from government-induced inflation and manipulation.
It would be small comfort if this kind of insanity remained isolated in the leftist enclaves that misshape minds by distorting language. Alas, as leftists successfully captured our major institutions, they saw no reason not to capture those institutions that were once staunchly conservative as well. Churches, family values organizations, and even prestigious medical journals have all thrown reason and science out the window to supplicate before the high priests of "political correctness".
The ruling class defends all such government imposed delusions as some kind of justice. Of all the words the Marxist globalists have misappropriated and perverted, their torture of "justice" has been the most heinous. Whenever a person in a position of power says something about 'justice' these days, you can be assured that the government is either orchestrating a crime in plain sight or issuing a new wave of malicious propaganda dressed up in false virtue and empathy-baiting psychobabble. When you think about it, governments have done to 'justice' what delusional men do with castration, boob jobs, and hormone therapy-they have mutilated reality in order to play pretend.
In the name of 'social justice', governments have responded to rising violent crime and general lawlessness in our cities by attacking police officers as "white supremacists" (even the non-white ones) and reducing penalties for and enforcement against violent crimes. As the economists say, when you want more of something, subsidize it. Citizens and businesses have been left defenceless against organized theft and even been told not to resist the robbers and thieves who assault them. When "justice" loses all meaning, injustice becomes pervasive. When delusional behaviour is celebrated and honesty is outlawed as "bigotry", insanity thrives. Why are Western governments pushing irrational, unscientific, ludicrous nonsense that is physically and emotionally abusive, socially dangerous, and economically destructive? Perhaps because those with power find it useful to sow division and subsidize madness.
At long last, one newly elected Western leader finally summoned the courage to tell the Davos crowd just what he thinks of their Marxist, globalist agenda, and so he accepted their invitation to attend the annual WEF summit to do just that. Here is what Argentine President Javier Milei said to them in a 16 January 2024 address which for this generation might signal a had right turn away from globalism:
"Today I'm here to tell you that the Western world is in danger. And it is in danger because those who are supposed to defend the values of the West are co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism and thereby to poverty. Unfortunately, in recent decades, the main leaders of the Western world have abandoned the model of freedom for different versions of what we call collectivism. Some have been motivated by well-meaning individuals who are willing to help others, and others have been motivated by the wish to belong to a privileged caste. We are here to tell you that collectivist experiments are never the solution to the problems that afflict the citizens of the world. Rather, they are the root cause. Do believe me: no one is in a better place then us, Argentines, to testify to these two points.
Thirty five years after we adopted the model of freedom, back in 1860, we became a leading world power. And when we embraced collectivism over the course of the last 100 years, we saw how our citizens started to become systematically impoverished, and we dropped to spot number 140 globally. But before having the discussion, it would first be important for us to take a look at the data that demonstrate why free enterprise capitalism is not just the only possible system to end world poverty, but also that it is the only morally desirable system to achieve this. If we look at the history of economic progress, we can see how between the year zero and the year 1800 approximately, world per capital GDP practically remained constant throughout the whole reference period. If you look at a graph of the evolution of economic growth throughout the history of humanity, you would see a hockey stick graph, an exponential function that remained constant for 90 per cent of the time and which was exponentially triggered starting in the 19th century. The only exception to this history of stagnation was in the late 15th century, with the discovery of the American continent, but for this exception, throughout the whole period between the year zero and the year 1800, global per capita GDP stagnated. Now, it is not just that capitalism brought about an explosion in wealth from the moment it was adopted as an economic system, but also, if you look at the data, what you will see is that growth continues to accelerate throughout the whole period.
And throughout the whole period between the year zero and the year 1800, the per capita GDP growth rate remains stable at around .02 per cent annually. So almost no growth. Starting in the 19th century with the Industrial Revolution, the compound annual growth rate was .66 per cent. And at that rate, in order to double per capita GDP, you would need some 107 years. Now if you look at the period between the year 1900 and the year 1950, the growth rate accelerated to 1.66 per cent each year. So you no longer need 107 years to double per capita GDP-but 66. And you take the period between 1950 and the year 2000, you will see that the growth rate was 2.1 per cent, which would mean that in only 33 years, we could double the global per capita GDP. This trend, far from stopping, remains alive and well today. If we take the period between 2000 and 2023, the growth rate again accelerated to three per cent annually, which means that we can now double global GDP in just 23 years. That said, when you look at per capita GDP since the year 1800 until today, what you will see is that after the Industrial Revolution, global per capita GDP multiplied by over 15 times, which meant a boom in growth that lifted 90 per cent of the global population out of poverty.
We should remember that by the year 1800, about 95 per cent of the world's population lived in extreme poverty. That figure dropped to 5 per cent by the year 2020, prior to the pandemic. The conclusion is obvious. Far from being the cause of our problems, free trade capitalism as an economic system is the only instrument we have to end hunger, poverty and extreme poverty across our planet. The empirical evidence is unquestionable. Therefore since there is no doubt that free enterprise capitalism is superior in productive terms, the left-wing doxa has attacked capitalism, alleging matters of morality, saying-that is what the detractors claim-that it is unjust. They say that capitalism is evil because it is individualistic and that collectivism is good because it is altruistic. Of course, with the money of others.
So they therefore advocate for social justice. But this concept, which in the developed world became fashionable in recent times, in my country has been a constant in political discourse for over 80 years. The problem is that social justice is not just, and it does not contribute to general well-being. Quite the contrary, it is an intrinsically unfair idea because it is violent. It is unjust because the state is financed through tax and taxes are collected coercively. Or can any one of us say that we voluntarily pay taxes? This means that the state is financed through coercion and that the higher the tax burden, the higher the coercion and the lower the freedom. Those who promote social justice start with the idea that the whole economy is a pie that can be shared differently. But that pie is not a given. It is wealth that is generated in what Israel Kirzner, for instance, calls a market discovery process. If the goods or services offered by a business are not wanted, the business will fail unless it adapts to what the market is demanding. They will do well and produce more if they make a good quality product at an attractive price. So the market is a discovery process in which the capitalists will find the right path as they move forward. But if the state punishes successful capitalists and gets in the way of the discovery process, they will destroy their incentives, and the consequence is that they will produce less. The pie will be smaller, and this will harm society as a whole. Collectivism, by inhibiting these discovery processes and hindering the appropriate discoveries, ends up finding the hands of entrepreneurs and prevents them from offering better goods and services at a better price. So how come academia, international organizations, economic theorists and politicians demonized an economic system that has not only lifted 90 percent of the worlds' population out of extreme poverty but has continued to do this faster and faster? Thanks to free trade capitalism, the world is now living its best moment. Never in all of mankind or human history has there been a time of more prosperity than today. This is true for all. The world of today has more freedom, is rich, more peaceful and prosperous. This is particularly true for countries that have more economic freedom and respect the property rights of individuals. Countries that have more freedom are 12 times richer than those that are repressed. The lowest percentile in free countries is better off than 90 percent of the population in repressed countries. Poverty is 25 times lower and extreme poverty is 50 times lower. And citizens in free countries live 25% longer than citizens in repressed countries. Now what is it that we mean when we talk about libertarianism? And let me quote the words of the greatest authority on freedom in Argentina, Professor Alberto Benegas Lynch Jr., who says that libertarianism is the unrestricted respect for the life project of others based on the principle of non-aggression, in defence of the right to life, liberty, and property. Its fundamental institutions are private property, markets free from state intervention, free competition, and the division of labour and social cooperation, in which success is achieved only by serving others with goods of better quality and price. In other words, capitalist successful business people are social benefactors who, far from appropriating the wealth of others, contribute to the general well-being. Ultimately, a successful entrepreneur is a hero. And this is the model that we are advocating for the Argentina of the future. A model based on the fundamental principle of libertarianism. The defence of life, of freedom, and of property. Now, if the free enterprise, capitalism and economic freedom have proven to be extraordinary instruments to end poverty in the world, and we are now at the best time in history, it is worth asking why I say that the West is in danger. And I say this precisely because in countries that should defend the values of the free market, private property and the other institutions of libertarianism, sectors of the political and economic establishment are undermining the foundations of libertarianism, opening up the doors to socialism and potentially condemning us to poverty, misery and stagnation. It should never be forgotten that socialism is always and everywhere an impoverishing phenomenon that has failed in all countries where it has been tried. It has been a failure economically, socially, culturally, and it also murdered over 100 million human beings. The essential problem of the West today is not just that we need to come to grips with those who, even after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the overwhelming empirical evidence, continue to advocate for impoverishing socialism. But there is also our own leaders, thinkers and academics who are relying on a misguided theoretical framework to undermine the fundamentals of the system that has given us the greatest expansion of wealth and prosperity in history. The theoretical framework to which I refer is that of neoclassical economic theory, which designs a set of instruments that, unwillingly or without meaning to, end up serving intervention by the state, socialism and social degradation. The problem with neoclassicals is that the model they fell in love with does not map reality, so they put down their mistakes to supposed market failures rather than reviewing the premises of the model. Under the pretext of a supposed market failure, regulations are introduced. These regulations create distortions in the price system, prevent economic calculus, and therefore also prevent saving, investment, and growth. This problem lies mainly in the fact that not even supposed libertarian economists understand what the market is because if they did understand, it would quickly be seen that it is impossible for there to be market failures. The market is not a mere graph describing a curve of supply and demand. The market is a mechanism for social cooperation, where you voluntarily exchange ownership rights. Therefore based on this definition, talking about a market failure is an oxymoron. There are no market failures.
If transactions are voluntary, the only context in which there can be market failure is coercion and the only one that is able to coerce generally is the state, which holds a monopoly on violence. Consequently, if someone considers that there is a market failure, I would suggest that they check to see if there is state intervention involved. And if they find that is not the case, I would suggest that they check again, because obviously there is a mistake. Market failures do not exist. An example of the so-called market failures described by the neoclassicals is the concentrated structure of the economy. From the year 1800 onwards, with the population multiplying by eight or nine times, per capita GDP grew by over 15x, so there were growing returns which took extreme poverty from 95 down to 5%. However, the presence of growing returns involves concentrated structures, what we would call a monopoly. How come then, something that has generated so much well-being for the neoclassical theory is a market failure? Neoclassical economists think outside of the box. When the model fails, you should not get angry with reality but rather with a model and change it. The dilemma faced by the neoclassical model is that they say they wish to perfect the function of the market by attacking what they consider to be failures. But in so doing, they do not just open up the doors to socialism but also go against economic growth. For example, regulating monopolies, destroying their profits and destroying growing returns would automatically destroy economic growth. However, faced with the theoretical demonstration that state intervention is harmful-and the empirical evidence that it has failed could not have been otherwise-the solution proposed by collectivists is not greater freedom but rather greater regulation, which creates a downward spiral of regulations until we are all poorer and our lives depend on a bureaucrat sitting in a luxury office. Given the dismal failure of collectivist models and the undeniable advantages in the free world, socialists were forced to change their agenda: they left behind the class struggle based on the economic system and replaced this with other supposed social conflicts, which are just as harmful to life and to economic growth. The first of these new battles was the ridiculous and unnatural fight between man and woman. Libertarianism already provides for equality of the sexes. The cornerstone of our creed is that all humans are created equal and that we all have the same inalienable rights granted by the Creator, including life, freedom, and ownership. All that the radical feminist agenda has led to is greater state intervention to hinder economic process, giving jobs to bureaucrats who have not contributed anything to society. Examples are ministries of women or international organizations promoting this agenda. Another conflict presented by socialists is that of humans against nature, claiming that we human beings damage a planet which should be protected at all costs, even going as far as advocating for population control mechanisms or the abortion agenda. Unfortunately, these harmful ideas have taken a stronghold in our society. Neo-Marxists have managed to co-opt the common sense of the Western world, and this they have achieved by appropriating the media, culture, universities and also international organizations. The latter case is the most serious one, probably because these are institutions that have enormous influence on the political and economic decisions of their member states. Fortunately there is more and more of us who are daring to make our voices heard, because we see that if we do not truly and decisively fight against these ideas, the only possible fate is for us to have increasing levels of state regulation, socialism, poverty and less freedom, and therefore, worse standards of living. The West has unfortunately already started to go along this path. I know, to many it may sound ridiculous to suggest that the West has turned to socialism, but it is only ridiculous if you limit yourself to the traditional economic definition of socialism, which says that it is an economic system where the state owns the means of production. This definition in my view, should be updated in the light of current circumstances. Today, states do not need to directly controls the means of production to control every aspect of the lives of individuals. With tools such as printing money, debt, subsidies, controlling the interest rate, price controls, and regulations to correct so-called market failures, they can control the lives and fates of millions of individuals. This is how we come to the point where, by using different names and guises, a good deal of the generally accepted ideologies in most Western countries are collectivist variants, whether they proclaim to be openly communist, fascist, socialist, social democrats, national socialists, Christian democrats, neo-Keynesians, progressives, populists, nationalists, or globalists. Ultimately, there are no major differences. They all say that the state should steer all aspects of the lives of individuals. They all depend on a model contrary to the one that led humanity to the most spectacular progress in its history. We have come here today to invite the Western world to get back on the path to prosperity. Economic freedom, limited government and unlimited respect for private property are essential elements for economic growth. The impoverishment produced by collectivism is not a fantasy, nor is it an inescapable fate. It is a reality that we Argentines know very well. We have lived through this. We have been through this because, as I said earlier, ever since we decided to abandon the model of freedom that had made us rich, we have been caught up in a downward spiral-a spiral by which we are poorer and poorer, day by day. This is something we have lived through and we are here to warn you about what can happen if countries in the Western world, that became rich through the model of freedom, stay on this path of servitude. The case of Argentina is an empirical demonstration that no matter how rich you may be, how much you have in terms of natural resources, how skilled your population may be, how educated, or how many bars of gold you may have in the central bank-if measures are adopted that hinder the free functioning of markets, competition, price systems, trade and ownership of private property, the only possible fate is poverty. Therefore, in conclusion, I would like to leave a message for all business people here and those who are not here in person but are following from around the world. Do not be intimidated by the political caste or by parasites who live off the state. Do not surrender to a political class that only wants to stay in power and retain its privileges. You are social benefactors. You are heroes. You are the creators of the most extraordinary period of prosperity we have ever seen. Let no one tell you that your ambition is immoral. If you make money, it is because you offer a better product at a better price, thereby contributing to general well being. Do not surrender to the advance of the state. The state is not the solution. The state is the problem itself. You are the true protagonists of this story and rest assured as from today, Argentina is your staunch and unconditional ally.
Thank you very much, and long live freedom!"
Viva Milei.
