The article <a href="https://reason.com/2024/01/18/javier-milei-tells-world-leaders-the-state-is-not-the-solution/" author="Katarina Hall" source="Reason">Javier Milei Tells World Leaders: 'The State Is Not the Solution'</a> start off with this sentence, <bq>Argentina's libertarian President Javier Milei praised the virtues of free markets and warned political leaders about the dangers of collectivism in a speech at the World Economic Forum on Wednesday.</bq> Talk about red meat for Reason magazine. I've been following this magazine for a while and I appreciate some of their content, but man they just can't resist this bullshit. This obvious mental incompetent is spouting off about collectivism and they <i>love it</i>. He says that the only way to improve everything that capitalism has broken is because we haven't been <i>doing it hard enough</i>. That's why Argentina's president is suddenly at the WEF---after years and years in the wilderness under Kirchner et. al. Despite its name, the World Economic Forum is just a bunch of billionaires and lobbyists fellating each other about what a great job neoliberalism is doing enriching them while ruining everyone else's lives. <bq>"The West is in danger, it is in danger because those who are supposed to defend Western values find themselves co-opted by a worldview that—inexorably—leads to socialism, consequently to poverty," Milei said in the opening of his keynote speech in Davos, Switzerland, during his first overseas trip as president.</bq> OMG. Tell me more, you unheralded genius. It literally doesn't matter how undereducated his background, if he spouts the right thing, then he's in the club. Listen to this slobbering idiot of an author just rehashing the same tired, old tropes. <bq>Milei argued that collectivism punishes business owners and stifles innovation by destroying any incentives "to produce better goods and better services at a better price." Countries embracing greater economic freedom are eight times wealthier than their repressed counterparts, Milei asserted.</bq> OMG, yes, everything that isn't exclusively awesome for business is bad for business and must be eliminated. The goal of every society obviously has nothing to do with people, and must be built for the thriving of business. Those businesses will then bring bounty to people, right? To recap: The prime purpose of society is to build businesses and earn rent for their owners, from which a potential side-effect is well-being for the people. Business first, people second. If the side-effect doesn't appear, then too-bad-we-tried. And we aren't going to try super-hard. That's been the story for decades. Give all of your shit to those that already have everything, they'll do something magical with it, and return the favor manyfold. Except they don't. They never do. They just keep what you give them and demand more. It's nothing more than a scam and fools like this author have no pity, no empathy, and no bullshit detectors. They just sploosh all over literally <i>anyone</i> who tells them the bedtime story they've been programmed---or programmed themselves---to believe. They can afford to because they never, ever get under the wheels of the mindless, voracious, society-killer that they constantly demand we need more of, nor do they really know or associate with anyone who does. If they happen to hear about it, they reassure themselves that anyone who can't flourish in this glorious neoliberal paradise isn't trying hard enough and deserves what they get. Which is nothing. I mean, look at this guy. This is the picture the author published. I feel like they're taking the piss. She can't possible revere this guy. He looks like he just got up out of one of those Austin Powers time capsules from the 70s. <img src="{att_link}javier_milei_at_wef.jpeg" href="{att_link}javier_milei_at_wef.jpeg" align="none" caption="Javier Milei at WEF" scale="75%"> The author <a href="https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Sploosh">splooshes</a> on, <bq>Despite internal challenges, <b>Milei's radical agenda has garnered support from external observers, including Kristalina Georgieva, head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).</b> "The Argentine economy is in such bad shape that it has to be shaken up. President Milei and his team are doing exactly that," she said during an interview in Davos. Argentina is currently the IMF's largest debtor, with an outstanding debt of $46 billion.</bq> Oh, yeah, not just Reason magazine, but the IMF is absolutely ready to slob his knob. The IMF has never seen an economy it didn't think it couldn't bleed dry. It loves this shit: bleed the people dry to pay back the IMF---that's the way! And the IMF has an especial axe to grind with Argentina, which has defaulted a few times in the last couple of decades. Look, this stuff is not new, despite what you might have read. The article <a href="https://scheerpost.com/2024/01/19/global-1-own-43-of-financial-assets/" author="Ben Norton" source="Scheer Post">Global 1% Own 43% of Financial Assets</a> writes, <bq>The world’s richest 1% own 43% of global financial assets, and <b>the wealth of the top five billionaires has doubled since 2020, while 60% of humanity – nearly 5 billion people – collectively got poorer</b>, according to a report by Oxfam, a leading international humanitarian organization.</bq> <bq>A staggering 69.3% of the world’s wealth is located in the Global North, which has just 20.6% of the planet’s population.</bq> Despite the Reason author's fears, the world doesn't need Milei to tell it to plunder. The plunder party is already going extremely well. Only a racist would say that this is how things should be. Why would that make you a racist? Because the only way you could support the existing system is to believe that northern-hemisphere people deserve to have most of the world's wealth---which is largely built on resources extracted from the part of the world they don't live in. It's odd how, in a capitalist economy, the people who live on top of the most valuable resources are the poorest, while those with the least scruples and the biggest guns are the richest. These obvious facts on the ground speak to a global organizational structure that has very little to do with any of its own espoused ideologies---those are just fairy tales to keep the ignorant masses quiet while their pockets are picked, again and again and again. Right on cue, the article <a href="https://reason.com/2024/01/19/the-world-could-soon-have-its-first-trillionaire-good/" author="J.D. Tuccille" source="Reason">The World Could Soon Have Its First Trillionaire. Good!</a> decides to laud having a trillionaire because that would be an unalloyed good, a tremendous achievement. King of the world. He argues that even a trillion dollars isn't that much because, <bq>A trillion dollars (Oxfam is UK-based, but the report is framed in U.S. dollars) is impressive. But it doesn't represent a fixed measure of wealth, since governments constantly succumb to the temptation to devalue money.</bq> You see? The same person who can bemoan the government spending millions on food stamps can argue that a person with a trillion dollars barely has any money at all. Tada! I don't have cite any more about his further arguments that it's the nigh-altruistic beneficence of billionaire's gracing us with their genius and acumen that have dragged so many benighted souls out of poverty. It sure as hell wasn't socialist China, right? No, all of those poor, simple folk wouldn't have been able to help themselves, but the rich and savvy employers saw fit to grant them jobs so that they could no longer be poor. The author might as well just cite Ayn Rand as a source on all of his essays. Almost no-one at Reason ever spares a thought for how much of a drag on the economy billionaires are, about how we've managed to conquer some poverty <i>despite</i> them, not <i>because</i> of them. That, if we'd have a more humane system, we'd have even <i>fewer</i> poor people---and fewer billionaires as well, which would lead to a river of tears from nearly all of the writers at Reason magazine. I just finished watching <i>Midnight Mass</i>---which features a vampire, but not how you think. Vampires have their servants called familiars. They just suck up to the vampires for no clear reason other than a child-like adulation, a desire to bask in the reflected light of their idols. That's how I think of people who love billionaires. In related news, the article <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2024/01/19/xlsk-j19.html" author="Benjamin Mateus" source="WSWS">Long COVID specialist tells US Senate that “the best way to prevent Long COVID is to prevent COVID in the first place!”</a> writes, <bq>As Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, a physician-scientist at Washington University in St. Louis who is a leading expert on Long COVID, with numerous high-impact publications on the devastation wrought by COVID-19 infections, stated bluntly during his testimony, “<b>The best way to prevent Long COVID is to prevent COVID in the first place.</b> This requires a multilayers/multipronged approach. We must develop sustainable solutions to prevent repeated infections with SARS-CoV-2 and Long COVID that would be embraced by the public. This requires acceleration of development of oral and intranasal vaccines that induce strong mucosal immunity to block infections with the virus. Ventilation and air filtration systems can also play a major role in reducing the risk of infection with airborne pathogens. <b>We did an amazing job proofing our buildings against earthquakes that happen once every few decades or few centuries. Why don’t we proof our buildings against the hazards of airborne pathogens?”</b></bq> Because there's no money in it, you goddamned hippie. The profits margins on making buildings safe for people sound pretty shitty, buddy, not gonna lie. Hey, though, if you think of some way of making the rich richer while you're stopping COVID, then you'll have a winner. Yup. Get back to us when you do, OK? Thanks, bye. <bq>As he noted in his testimony, “<b>At least 20 million Americans are affected by Long COVID.</b> It affects people across the lifespan—from children to older adults. It affects people across race, ethnicity and sex. The burden of disease and disability in Long COVID is on par with heart disease and cancer. Long COVID has wide and deep ramifications on the labor market and the economy—<b>some estimates suggest that the toll of Long COVID in the US economy is $3.7 trillion—on par with the 2008 recession.</b>”</bq> It's adorable that he tries to tie it the pocketbook because he knows that all of these societies that break their arms patting themselves on the back for being civilized and enlightened really <i>only care about money.</i> It's really a nice try, but so naive. You see: the people who matter <i>made a f#@king killing</i> in 2008. They all got richer. All of the losses were borne by others, people that they don't know and will never meet. You're not making an argument that will convince the rich. So the U.S. economy loses $3.7 trillion---all they hear is that <i>someone's gotta be picking up that money.</i> It's usually them, so they see Long COVID as a <i>f&#king windfall</i>, another absolute tsunami of free money from the government flowing into their coffers via subsidies for health care and experimental medications that won't even have to go through all of the procedures and testing because <i>we need them so bad.</i> They realized that the way to sell quickly in the traditionally moribund and highly regulated health-care market is to <i>manufacture crises</i> by <i>not handling them before they happen.</i> Sure, it would be great for <i>people</i> if we would plan for epidemics and <i>prevent</i> disease rather than <i>healing</i> it, but that's not where the money is, unfortunately, so there's no mechanism whatsoever for making it happen. <bq>The pandemic, as a trigger event, has accelerated the rot at the core of bourgeois democracy that is unable to address any of the maladies that have been created out of capitalist production. <b>The Senate hearing on Long COVID is an exercise in futility for those who continue to harbor illusions in reform.</b></bq> Yes. Yes, it was.