From Breadbasket to Basket Case [Argentina]

The Wall Street Journal ^ | 2008-06-23 | Mary Anastasia O'Grady

[rabscuttle385]

As the presidential campaign drones on, Barack Obama and the Democrats are fleshing out the promise of "change" with some specific, big-government policy proposals. Many are familiar, perhaps because they already have been tried – in Argentina.

That country has gone from South American breadbasket to world-class basket case. For the long version of how it happened and why Americans might not want to try it, hop on a flight to Buenos Aires.

[rabscuttle385]

This gets us to the root of the problem, which developed long before the Kirchners' abuses of market and legal principles. The constitution once held limited government and private property to be among the highest ideals of the land. But in the 1920s these protections, which had made the country a magnet for immigrants and the seventh-largest economy in the world, began to erode.

[elpinta]

“... why Americans might not want to try it, hop on a flight to Buenos Aires...”

I have done that more than once and experienced first-hand the decline over the last few decades.

A real-life experience: how to totally screw up a beautiful land.

[A_perfect_lady]

Why don’t people learn? Seriously? I just don’t understand it!

[Prokopton]

Why don’t people learn? Seriously? I just don’t understand it!

The Rhodesians thought a Communist Dictatorship was a god idea. This depth of ignorance is impossible to understand.

[Citizen Tom Paine]

In my mind the question is, “Why do people continue to do things which do not work.” When the method fails, they put more people on it and allocate more money to it with the inevitable failure again.

It apparently is one characteristic of humans.

[rabscuttle385]

Why don’t people learn? Seriously? I just don’t understand it!

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." -Albert Einstein

[SoDak]

Geez, what a disheartening article. Socialism sucks and it’s just so terribly obvious, yet people vote for it time and again.

[Walrus]

True insanity is doing the same things over and over...and expecting different results.

[massgopguy]

Don’t cry for it.

[Billthedrill]

Stubbornness, mostly, I think. People who have what they consider moral reasons for why a program ought to work tend to project the reason for its failure on the wickedness of others. This is especially true with socialists for whom economic decisions are moral decisions. Inequity is injustice, injustice is to be opposed, opposition must conquer the unjust. Comic-book morality works fine in politics but not, I'm afraid, in economics.

[TLI]

The Rhodesians thought a Communist Dictatorship was a god idea.

Come again? The Rhodies fought a war, a shooting war, against communist terrorists, REAL terrorists and called it just that in the face of world media that called them rebels and racists They endured a world of krap from every direction and as is becoming quite typical, they were so good at winning the battles the only way to beat them was with treason from within. . They were betrayed by government and stabbed in the back by a United States President.

[Right Winged American]

Stubbornness, mostly, I think. People who have what they consider moral reasons for why a program ought to work tend to project the reason for its failure on the wickedness of others. This is especially true with socialists for whom economic decisions are moral decisions. Inequity is injustice, injustice is to be opposed, opposition must conquer the unjust. Comic-book morality works fine in politics but not, I'm afraid, in economics.

Ok, I'm stealing that wholesale. That's the most cogent and concise description of the fallacy of socialism I've ever seen.

Bravo Zulu!

[adorno]

Why don’t people learn? Seriously? I just don’t understand it!

We did learn. But, forgot the lessons, or more likely, it's that the new generations, far removed from those lessons of the past, haven't had the benefit of those hard times. They of course, have to relive those hard times to learn again those hard lessons. New generations don't benefit from the past unless they themselves have lived those dark chapters of history.

The generation of the Carter years learned its lesson and thus sparked the corrections which turned the country around which has seen huge growth in the U.S. economy in the last 25 years or so.

The new naive generation is of course composed of the young and dumb and naive and idealistic. They start out that way until they hit a brick wall of reality and then, it's too late and the corrections will take a few years, or a generation or more. People are not born with the lessons of the past within their instincts. That's why people, even with history books at their disposal, fail to learn to lessons of the past and of course, are doomed to repeat those mistakes.

We are again, a full generation removed from the lessons of the Carter years, perhaps two generations removed from the lessons of Vietnam, and perhaps 3 generations removed from WW2. And we are almost a full generation removed from the death of the USSR, and the young ones will not have the memories of the cold war and the height of the communist system; thus, they won't know how tough those years were..

Perhaps it's in the nature of human beings that they're doomed to repeat the same mistakes in order to re-learn the lessons from those mistakes. Instinctively, we human beings can recognize a physical threat, like a person wielding a knife with an angered look in his face. But, we lack the instinct to recognize the threats from repeating the same mistakes of the past. Even when we recognize the symptoms of the mistakes of the past which got us into such trouble, we insist on carrying through with those mistakes.

Thus, we have people fawning over an Obama who is promising to make the same mistakes of the Carter years. And it's mostly the young that are being duped because they haven't had the "privilege" of living through the mistakes and devastation of the Carter years. Heck, they and Obama aren't even learning the lessons of 9/11, so how could we expect them to learn from history which is even 20 years or more in the past?

[Maine Mariner]

The reason the left keeps trying is quite simple.
The failures are not due to socialism, communism, etc.
It is the fault of individual leaders who are corrupt or who have not been committed to the cause.

The left will always keep trying because they do not believe in individual freedom, individual choice. Friedman's book “Free to Choose” is much of what the conservative movement is about. The left does not get it and they never will-they don't trust people to make choices.
It is the elitist attitude “We know what is best for you.”

[Lancey Howard]

This sounds like the same thing the Democrats did in the former “breadbasket of Africa”, Rhodesia. What a great socialist utopia Zimbabwe has turned out to be. Now, naturally, the end goal for the Democrats is to do the same thing for the United States.

[agere_contra]

Anyone who thinks America would be better off with high tariffs on exports should have a good look at Argentina.

A really good look.

[snarks_when_bored]

Why don’t people learn? Seriously? I just don’t understand it!

It works for the few people with the money and the guns, and they couldn't care less about everybody else.

[Centurion2000]

Anyone who thinks America would be better off with high tariffs on exports

bump ... actually I think that is what sparked the first Revolution.

[<1/1,000,000th%]

Why don’t people learn? Seriously? I just don’t understand it!

Because people get old and die and leave the education of their children in the hands of people who exploit them.

[neverdem]

A Meltdown for Argentina’s Hillary