The West is heading into degrowth socialism while China is escaping from it. Europe is in steep decline, accelerated by the euro and the EU.

The new Argentinian President's speech at Davos, as Count Dancula said, resembled Ricky Gervais introducing the Golden Globes awards. 

Senor Milei defended freedom and private property and attacks the big state which impoverishes everyone. 

Western rulers had been 'co-opted by a vision of the world that inexorably leads to socialism, and therefore to poverty'. He attacked 'radical feminism' and the idea that men and women or man and earth are in conflict, and the 'bloody agenda of abortion'.

'The state is not the solution but the problem itself.'

I wonder what his compatriot the Pope thinks.

I used to think libertarians wanted abortion and to abolish public libraries. I realise I almost am one. Freedom and traditionalism go together well.

The next thing I read (I am supposed to have given up the news) was from an article by the always interesting Thomas Fazi in Unherd on 'degrowth communism'. He has described himself as 'an old school socialist' who finds himself agreeing with the right more than the left on the EU, freedom of speech and gender.  (He notes correctly that thanks to Hamas and Gaza the right is as opposed to free speech as the left.) I quote:

But perhaps even more dramatically, we live increasingly atomised, purposeless lives: there’s no higher meaning binding us together as a society. French sociologist Émile Durkheim coined the term anomie to describe a society defined by a breakdown in social norms and moral values. Aside from the diminishing returns of abiding by society’s rules — finding a job, creating a family — many young people wonder what the point of it all is. No wonder they are attracted by radical ideas such as degrowth communism, which promise less stuff but richer, fuller, deeper, more meaningful lives.

As Saito writes, under degrowth communism “there will be more opportunities to do sports, go hiking, take up gardening and get back in touch with nature. We will have time once again to play guitar, paint pictures, read. We can host those close to us in our homes and eat together with friends and family.” It’s easy to see the appeal of this vision. Not only does it offer the prospect of a better life; perhaps even more importantly, it offers meaning. And the climate issue only strengthens the project’s secular-theological grounding: it’s not just about transforming society — but about “saving the world”.

In this sense, ideas such as degrowth communism and climate doomerism are, ultimately, the flipside of the anomic societies created by late-stage capitalism. Perhaps Marx was right: capitalism really does end up sowing the seeds of its own demise — not because of ever-rising levels of productivity, but because of ever-decreasing levels of meaning.

I agree with that and also this from a recent article of his on the 25th anniversary of the euro about how it has been a terrible failure. (So has the Single Market.)

Since 2008, the euro area has essentially been stagnating — and its overall long-term growth trend has been negative. This has led to a dramatic divergence between its economic fortunes and those of the US: adjusted for differences in the cost of living, the latter’s economy was only 15% larger than the euro area’s economy in 2008; it is now 31% larger. Today, the euro’s share of global currency reserves is significantly lower than its predecessors — the Deutsche Mark, French franc and ECU — in the Eighties.

But this is far from the only result of the euro’s failure. When it was introduced, it was hoped that the single currency’s “culture of stability” would narrow the difference in terms of its members’ economic performance. In effect, as the IMF has noted, the opposite has happened: “the envisaged adjustment mechanisms under monetary union have been insufficient to support convergence, and have in some cases contributed to divergence”. Added to this, exports between euro nations as a percentage of total eurozone exports have been on a downward trend since the mid-2000s

It seems clear, then, that the introduction of the euro was a mistake — but only if we take its proponents’ stated intentions at face value. For it is important to understand that the euro was always as much a political project as an economic one. And, from that standpoint, it has been an extraordinary success.