An Existential Threat to Humanity

February 13, 2024  |  [View Online](  |  [Sign Up]( An Existential Threat to Humanity, Indeed “I didn’t come here to lead lambs… I came here to wake lions!” ~ Javier Milei Dear Reader, “It's called…” writes Mark Jeftovic, “Bill C-372.” Many of our readers are Canadian. We try not to hold that against them. Mark J. is a Canuck, too. He’s also the founder of Bombthrower Media, which among other things publishes dollarcollapse.com, one of the newsletters on my reading list. (He’s “the real deal,” say editors from Zero Hedge. "Mark gives you a comprehensive roadmap. Not to just survive,” writes our friend and contributor Charles Hugh Smith, “but to prosper in these crazy times.” He’s received props from Steve Bannon, as well.) We bring up Mark today to make a point. And to help illustrate why we’re embarking on the new project we alluded to yesterday. Mr. Jeftovic would fit right in as a member of the “fraternity” of thinkers we’ve collected over our years in the financial publishing business.  To start, Mr. J alerted us to a bit of insanity north of the border this morning. Notably, that a Canadian MP from the country's “far-left” NDP party has submitted Bill C-372, which calls for “any speech that ‘promotes fossil fuels’ - even truthful statements like comparing the relative emissions of natural gas to coal - to be banned and criminalized.” “Bill C-372  seeks penalties up to $1,000,000 and two years in prison,” Jeftovic explains, “for promoting fossil fuels as anything less than an existential threat to humanity.” Will it pass? Heh, anything goes in Ottawa these days. That is, as long as you agree with the prevailing ideology of the government.  We suppose it’s the same kind of radicalized thinking used by the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to invoke the nation’s Emergencies Act and threaten to seize bank accounts of anti-vax protestors in February, 2022. Or the same authoritarian zeal that Deputy Prime Minister Christie Freeland used to assert “banks would be able freeze personal accounts of anyone linked with the protests without any need for a court order.” Ms. Freeland also threatened in a press conference that vehicle insurance of anyone involved with the truck demonstrations could be suspended. The pair also planned to broaden Canada's "Terrorist Financing" rules to cover cryptocurrencies and crowdfunding platforms as part of the effort. Trudeau and Freeland, by way of bringing the details around to the point of our story, are both prized fellows of Klaus Schwab’s Global Leadership Forum, an activist partition of the WEF. You may recall, yesterday we shared some of Argentine president Javier Milei’s address to the WEF on January 18, 2024. We share a question Milei asked: why do academics, international organizations, economic theorists, politicians and policy makers demonize an economic system that has not only lifted 90% of the world's population out of extreme poverty, but has continued to do so faster and faster as technology evolves? “If we take the period between the years 2000 and 2023,” Milei said in his address, “the growth rate again accelerated to 3% a year, which means that we could double world per capita GDP in just 23 years. That said… ” he continues: “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% of the global population out of poverty. We should remember that by the year 1800, about 95% of the world's population lived in extreme poverty. And that figure dropped to 5% 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.” We admit it. Our beat is money, finance, economics, history and… increasingly… basic freedom. In Milei, we find a cross section of all these areas of interest. And some entertainment, too. As a short read on Wikipedia reveals, notable moments in Milei's campaign include “a viral video of him tearing cards from a wallboard with the names of ministries that he wants to abolish and tossing them into the air as he said afuera (‘out’), wielding a chainsaw on stage, smashing a piñata on air to symbolize his plans, calling Pope Francis ‘a filthy leftist,’ and praising American gangster Al Capone as ‘a hero.’” What’s not to like? “Since there is no doubt that free enterprise capitalism is superior in productive terms,” Milei asked the Davos crowd, “why have the left-wing doxa attacked capitalism” on moral grounds? Milei: “They say that capitalism is evil because it's individualistic and that collectivism is good because it's altruistic. Of course, they say so with the money of others. They therefore advocate for social justice. But this concept, which in the developed world became fashionable in recent times, in my country [Argentina] has been a constant in political discourse for over 80 years. The problem is that social justice is not just, and it doesn't contribute to general well-being. Quite on the contrary, it's an intrinsically unfair idea because it's violent. It's 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's 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 capitalists when they're successful 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 appropriation of discoveries, ends up binding the hands of entrepreneurs and prevents them from offering better goods and services at a better price.” With an attitude like that, Milei’s got his hands full back in Buenos Aires. “He spends his days not on ideological matches with the neoclassical economic theory ‘which opens the doors to socialism’,” writes Juan Pablo Spinetto in a Bloomberg opinion column, “but in very real fights and negotiations with provinces and the opposition-controlled congress. He even had to announce tax increases…” Spinetto continues: “Milei’s speech can’t be dissociated from Argentina’s recent history of economic failure. After decades of interventionism and regulations that entrenched crony capitalists and left almost half of its population in poverty, his focus on a dysfunctional state that spends too much and delivers too little is welcome.” We can’t help but watch with amusement. The editors of the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) seem to have felt left out of Milei’s speech, calling it a “fascist rant” and proof that “the more ‘respectable’ layers of the oligarchy and establishment are shifting toward fascism in the entire ruling class.” According to proper socialists, it couldn’t have been a thoughtful speech, apparently, because Elon Musk praised it as a “good explanation of what makes countries more or less prosperous.” Similarly, they damn Fox News and other “right-wing media outlets” for hailing Milei, declaring he had “dazzled Davos” with “truth bombs” and “common sense.” God forbid a government pursues “common sense.” Anything less would be an existential threat to humanity. So it goes, Addison Wiggin, The Wiggin Sessions P.S. “Many had wondered whether Argentine President Javier Milei was the real deal,” our fellow fraternity member, Joel Bowman, wrote regarding Milei’s trip to Switzerland,  and “whether his anarcho-capitalist bona fides were genuine, whether he would walk the walk when it came to delivering on his audacious promises... both to the Argentine people, and those die-hard libertarians cheering him on around the world. “Was he just another ‘far right’ wack-job? Was he a puppet? Or worse still, ‘controlled opposition’? “Healthy skepticism and conspiracy theories danced a daring tango... until yesterday, when, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, El Señor gave them their answer, good and hard…” Joel contacted me this week wondering where the Wiggin Sessions had gone. The last time we’d spoken was, in fact, during a Wiggin Session recorded the day after Milei won the election. Joel, Anya, and their daughter Frieda have been holing out at The End of the World in Buenos Aires for several years. From there, Joel takes [notes](  We’ll hear more from him tomorrow… as our quest to define our new project continues. Stay tuned. The Daily Missive from The Wiggin Sessions is committed to protecting and respecting your privacy. We do not rent or share your email address. By submitting your email address, you consent to The Wiggn Sessions delivering daily email issues and advertisements. 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