Welcome to the Chainsaw Republic: Milei’s Argentina, One Year Later

A year or so in, Argentina under Milei is not exactly a shining city on a hill—but it’s certainly no longer a flaming shantytown sliding into the Río de la Plata on a raft made of defaulted bonds and cow hides.

Chainsaw in One Hand, Hayek in the Other

Milei’s signature prop is a literal chainsaw, which he waved around during his campaign like a man running for president of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Part XV: Fiscal Responsibility. He promised to “take a chainsaw” to public spending, which in Argentina’s case is like promising to drain the ocean with a bendy straw. But damn if he didn’t try.

He slashed subsidies. He axed ministries. He defunded tango lessons for civil servants. He even cut state funding for a national institute devoted to yerba mate tea research. In short, he did what every politician says they’ll do and never does: he stopped paying people to be useless.

The reaction, naturally, was hysteria. The international press—those tireless defenders of government jobs they don’t have to do—called him dangerous, authoritarian, a fascist with funny hair. And yes, if you squint, you might mistake him for a low-budget Marvel villain shouting about the Austrian School of Economics. But if being loud and weird disqualified you from reforming a country, we’d still be ruled by powdered-wig monarchs who think plumbing is for peasants.

Goodbye Peso, Hello…Vibes?

Milei also announced he wants to “dollarize” the economy. For most countries, this would be considered radical. For Argentina, it’s considered housecleaning. The Argentine peso is a currency in the same way a piñata is a financial instrument. You beat it senseless until candy—or, more often, black-market USD—falls out.

Critics howled that abandoning the peso was a loss of national dignity. But let me say this clearly: if your currency has to come with a scientific notation to express how many zeroes it’s lost, dignity left the building decades ago. Swapping it for the dollar is like trading in your rusted Fiat for a used but functioning Ford. Nobody calls it glamorous, but at least it starts in the morning.

And despite the libertarian wet dream of eliminating the central bank, Milei hasn’t actually nuked it yet—perhaps out of the realization that even Ayn Rand needed a printing press now and then.

Crying for Argentina

Not everyone is thrilled, of course. The unions are protesting as if someone took away their right to sleep on the job in shifts. Students have taken to the streets, furious that they may one day have to pay for their education—or worse, actually learn something. And the political class is in full existential crisis, which is to say, they’re finally doing something productive.

The inflation rate—once galloping like a cocaine-fueled polo pony—is now slowing. Slowly. Prices haven’t exactly dropped, but at least they’re not being launched into low-Earth orbit. And the economy is showing signs of actual discipline. That’s not sexy, but neither is a collapsed state handing out IOUs for your grandmother’s pension.

Milei the Madman, or Milei the Medium?

Here’s the thing: Milei is mad. Undeniably. He claims he talks to his dead dog Conan, who speaks to him through a team of other cloned dogs. That’s not libertarianism, that’s LSD-bertarianism. But in a country that’s tried every flavor of corruption short of installing a mafia pope, a little madness might be the secret ingredient.

I have spent years chronicling bureaucratic idiocy, fiscal malpractice, and the kinds of economic decisions that should require helmet laws. Argentina has been a crown jewel in that tiara of stupidity. It was the country that sold its oil rights, nationalized them, sold them again, then complained that nobody was investing. Its government was like a drunk ex-boyfriend: always promising to change, always stealing your wallet.

Now, for once, they’ve got someone who doesn’t want the wallet. He wants to light it on fire to make a point about fiat money.

Grudging Admiration, with a Side of Laughter

Do I agree with Milei? Not entirely. The man is basically Murray Rothbard with Tourette’s. But God help me, I kind of love what he’s trying to do.

It’s one thing to talk about liberty at a Cato Institute cocktail party over artisan gin. It’s another thing to actually implement it in a country where people think free markets are a foreign plot and consider “state-owned” a synonym for sacred.

Milei is trying to do the unthinkable: make a deeply broken state behave like an adult. And if that requires a man in a leather jacket quoting Ludwig von Mises and barking at ghosts, well, Argentina could do worse. (And has. Repeatedly.)

So here’s to Milei, the Chainsaw Libertarian. May he keep cutting. May Argentina keep not defaulting. And may Conan, wherever he is in the dog afterlife, keep the advice coming.

Because for the first time in a long time, Argentina is weird in a good way.

It’s not sane, it’s not safe—but at least it’s not Perón in drag again.

P.J. O’Rourke covers politics the way others cover bar fights—with glee, bruises, and no guarantee of moral clarity. He died once, but came back for Milei.

Note: This piece of writing is a fictional/parodic homage to the character cited. It is not authored by the actual author of the character or their estate. No affiliation is implied. Also, the Rolling Stone magazine cover above is not an official cover. This image is a fictional parody created for satirical purposes. It is not associated with the publication’s rights holders, or any real publication. No endorsement or affiliation is intended or implied.

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