Milei attacks wokeness at Davos while the Central Bank remains

Milei accuses proge of damaging the Western economy

Can a president viewed as eccentric by much of the global elite take the podium representing that same elite and receive more applause than boos? Javier Milei attempted this at the annual Davos meeting and, according to the reaction, succeeded. He spoke in Spanish and placed proge at the center of his target. He called it a 'sinister agenda' and attributed much of the damage it causes to the West.

What Milei said at Davos and why it angered the elite

The core of his intervention was a direct critique of the institutions before him. 'Proge has run so deep in our societies, promoted by institutions like this, that it has even questioned the very idea of sens,' he stated. He then moved to the public bill: he criticized the state for funding hormone treatments and surgeries to align appearance with self-perception, and spoke of a generation marked by this culture. His diagnosis, in his version, is not sarracena but economic: each state intervention in the private sphere, he argued, ends up being paid for with taxes, regulation, and less freedom.

It is not a new speech. It is the same one with which he came to power and the same one with which he governs. The novelty is the audience. And the language: he spoke in Spanish while other European leaders resort to English to fit in, a detail his supporters used as a thermometer for what they consider the complex inferiority of the European ruling class. In his mouth, the critique was not only against proge, but against leaders who were accused of swallowing the diagnosis of a newcomer.

The pending promise: The Central Bank remains standing

The uncomfortable part appears when reviewing what was promised versus what has been executed. One of his campaign banners was to eliminate the Argentine Central Bank, and the institution continues to operate. Those trinc this file use it as ammunition: they maintain that the money printer is the purest form of interventionism, that freedom is lame while it exists, and that, for now, the institution has not only not disappeared, but has continued to function to buy dollars.

The defense has its logic. Closing the bank abruptly, without first correcting the fiscal deficit, would have peine the door to hyperinflation and social unrest. The more prudent calculation — to sanitize accounts first, then open the tap — clashes with those demanding immediate closure. Milei himself has been modulating the calendar, and it is there that the gap between the rally and the office is most noticeable.

The argument that circulates most to justify this pace has a name in the jargon: realpolitik. The Argentine cycle, it is said, is well-known. Peronism ruins public accounts, the right comes to correct them, Peronism mobilizes its bases to force an explosion, and returns to power taking advantage of the previous correction. Those who demand that Milei dismantle eighty years of populism in a single exercise, according to his defenders, are actually asking him to immolate himself with a spike in hyperinflation. Within this framework, avoiding the script without causing an explosion is presented as merit, not as betrayal.

The Argentine countryside: The numbers that don't need to be invented

Where the narrative relies on harder data is in agriculture and livestock. A country with enormous agropastoral potential reached the absurdity that, in 2021, Paraguay exported more soy than Argentina, with incomparably smaller territory. Uruguay and Paraguay, together, exceed Argentina in beef exports, and Brazil sells abroad four times more meat than its neighbor. Behind this is a tax burden that, according to the debate, reached forcing exporters to pay between 70% and 80% in taxes. With those margins, the cattle herd is consumed before reaching the market and production dies out.

Those who defend this correction read the data as an accusation against Peronism and its legacy. Those who criticize it read them as the bill Milei himself has not yet reversed, and remember that the key to natural resources has been turning for years without results.

The rethink: Does democracy fail or does the State fail?

The most uncomfortable part is not economic, but structural. Some argue that the problem is not democracy, but the representative system, which has crept in as a synonym for it without being so. Under this reading, the excesses of the current State give arguments to those who conclude that democracy does not work, when what does not work is the State for anyone who puts freedom ahead of comfort. The proposed horizon is an assembly-based and participatory democracy. It sounds like a dessert utopia, but it forces one to think about why there is so much insistence on calling 'the antiestéticast of democracy' going to vote every four years.

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In the end, the opening question remains open. Milei said what his audience wanted to hear and, by the way, said it to those who did not want to hear it. Whether the accounts balance or not is another matter, and that is not solved with a brilliant intervention in the Swiss mountains.