The more I think on it, the more is strikes me that Argentina is the dark future of the western world.
The Europeans saw it first with their similarly ungovernable nations of Italy and Greece (once it returned to democracy). With Portugal, Spain, and even France tilting that way all through the 1980s, the European Union tried to save Europe by removing the ability of national governments to adopt Argentine-style tax/spend and anti-productive policies. The Euro and monetary role is the most famous mechanism for this, but Brussels has been gradually assuming various national governments' powers for decades, narrowing their fiscal marge de manoeuvre.
At the same time, World Bank/IMF and a host of other institutions and arrangements (GATT/WTO/regional trade agreements with enforceable settlement dispute mechanisms) - essentially the entire neoliberal system - took this national. People called it coca cola capitalism and rioted and the rest, but at some basic level, it was all designed to prevent your Venezuela/Argentina type scenarios by folding countries into extra-national rule systems for trade, taxation, etc.
Whatever the successes, this schema - which prioritized stability and growth as the basis of shared prosperity - is clearly on the wane, and national governments led by populists is the order of the decade.
As the neoliberal system breaks up, two great populist coalitions have already taken shape in most western nations: on the left, it's class politics supercharged by a equality-of-condition rather than opportunity (aka 'equity') mobilizing call; on the right, it's the last stand of a (sometimes incoherent) coalition of old national identitarian groups in the various nations.
The populist left is obviously going to win just as
it has in Argentina. The simple fact is that if you promise people free stuff, paid for by wealth you take off wealthy individuals, 'greedy businesses,' banks, 'big tech,' etc. they're going to vote for you. The internet is a grievance-making machine, and it will only progress. Even the US is doomed.
What we're seeing here in Argentina is the future of the west, and why the Asians will run the 21st century.
