I will briefly present what I am trying to develop in this article.
The Argentine government is firmly committed to dollarizing the economy.
Whether it succeeds or not (we are not at all certain), dollarization would have three converging dimensions.
The first is social economic;
It would basically put an end to our stubborn and desperate inflation.
The second is political: for Javier Milei, the powerful start of a dollarization venture would be the political forge to convert an electoral rush into a much more consistent socio-electoral coalition.
What is volatile today would look more solid and lively.
The third dimension is ideological: it is born from a conception of Argentine politics and society and the appropriate ways to change them.
In the first dimension, dollarization would be effective.
I don't know economists who argue otherwise.
Regarding the political dimension, dollarization could be perceived by many as the exceptional fulfillment of a promise (a president who delivers) and as a great collective undertaking (everyone for freedom);
a rebirth and ties that would reconnect a popular leadership with the majorities that voted for it.
The ideological dimension is in my opinion the most sinister.
I read between the lines in the presidential rhetoric (which is never hypocritical) a conviction: we Argentines need an exercise, a drastically coercive act, that establishes the rules of cooperation (freeing the spontaneous cooperation of the market from ties, paying the minimum state and voting from time to time, and little more), because on our own we would not be able to establish these rules.
We know we need a (simple) set of cooperative rules, but we can't set them ourselves.
We are not able to establish for ourselves the force of law that requires us to comply with them.
That act that comes from outside of us to shape the rules that we want, but cannot institute, that Leviathan, is precisely dollarization (and there is no social pact here).
Milei pretends to be our deus ex machina.
In my opinion, this is pure ideology.
Although it makes sense, and a lot of historical experience behind it.
But it's horrible.
The historical experience is that of repeated failures to establish rules and incentives effectively and democratically, and of the no less repeated failures of liberalizing (literally or figuratively) dictatorships.
The present experience occurs in the context created by a calamitous management, the Kirchnerist one, and a demand for a new understandable order.
But it offers no hope in terms of democracy, prosperity, equity and freedom.
For now, the basis that dollarization would establish for us would be very precarious.
It would tie our social economic order to an economy that is explosively different from ours: we trade very little with it, the rules of its labor market are very different, its economic cycles have nothing to do with ours.
We would be left without a lender of last resort.
Finally, dollarization would consolidate an almost unchangeable legacy: a salary profile of exclusion and impoverished inclusion.
That legacy is already the same today, but the Argentine economy would have to advance on a permanent adverse inclined plane.
A panorama of concentrated economic dynamism and lasting, stable social disincorporation.
A triumph of the social “tiebreaker.”
Dollarization is irreversible.
But the current government is not interested in fighting chronic inflation by other means, which do not combine the economic, social, political and ideological dimensions.
In constitutional, economic and social terms, is dollarization viable?
The debate is very rich regarding its basic viability.
But even if it were unfeasible, it does not follow that the president will not try it.
Or he simply awaits the opportunity.
But, along with the enthusiasm of those who hope that Milei will comply by eliminating inflation, what political and social resistance will it face?
With what discretion will dollarization be decided and designed?
What will be the level at which the value of the monetary mass that will leave the scene will be set?
It is of crucial relevance when it comes to salaries, and the social bias is also clear: the alteration does not equally affect those who already have dollars and those who do not.
If it is carried out, dollarization will be the terminal station of a long journey towards social disaster, certainly not started by this government.
Although he is undoubtedly fueling the locomotive's boilers with firewood.
If the train arrives at this new station, we Argentines will suffer no less than what Kirchnerism brought us.
The current scene, with the painful conflict between the Executive and the government of Chubut (and all the provincial governments), evokes the Goyesque Club Duel, two energetic giants hitting each other and sinking inexorably.
An archaic and current Argentine conflict emerges in a crude way (how can a dispute over subsidies and debts lead to such a grotesque interstate dispute?).
The giants may not sink, and the Leviathan of the ferocious order of dollarization will help them, to the detriment of all.
Man is the only animal – observes Mancur Olson – capable of passing up the opportunity for an immediate improvement while waiting to promote a much greater improvement.
Dollarization is the immediate improvement that would refute Olson's anthropological acuity.