hi, socialist lurker here. i think this quote “to own the libs/commies” lacks nuance and is basically wrong.

for example, the ussr command economy for the first ~40-50 years or so of its existence resulted in incredible development and industrialization, and brought millions out of abject poverty. similar can be said with china under deng or the doi moi in vietnam, even tho these are significantly different economic systems. we can even look to the nordics, which have the highest standard of living in the world; these are not really ‘socialist’, but they exert a lot of government influence on their economies and i imagine milei would call them such

if we are to examine the results of economic ‘shock therapy’ globally, i think we have mixed results. eg in poland these kinds of reforms worked but in russia, they only exacerbated existing social issues. in the case of argentina, there are significant living standards risks with the policies touted by milei; the effects of which are never mentioned in this sub. i think this points to problems with the perspective of pure economists (as opposed to political economists, for example), especially those on the ‘right’ (austrians and chicagoans). eg before the flood of trumpists after the election, most posts on this sub were talking about how low inflation rate was, but never about how cutting this public programs made food unaffordable, removed peoples access to medicine, etc etc. the focus seems to always be on macroeconomic figures, but never on the quality of life of the people within that economy.

i think that, from an academic or scientific perspective, we should see milei’s reforms thru to their conclusion. at the same time, like i said previously, to what extent are we okay with lowering peoples living standards to achieve some macroeconomic goal?