Milei's fifth dog

A sophisticated example of what Mukand and Rodrik call “changing the relevant dimension” (to distract from income inequality) by oligarchic sectors is explained by Slobodian (2025), in a book that narrates the details of what the author considers the national-populist mutation of neoliberalism. Trumpism would not be a rectification of neoliberalism, but a pathological but very elaborate evolution of it, when its most transparent objectives are difficult to achieve through conventional democratic means. 

Murray Rothbard (Murray is the name given to one of Milei’s clonned dogs, others are Milton, Robert and Lucas, and the first is Conan, after the original), is one of the economists who star in Slobodian’s book. He was in favor of the secession of white South Africans and from neoliberal positions close to Hayek he gradually evolved towards openly racist positions. For many neoliberals, the rejection of democracy (as in Chile) was not an accident. 

Milei himself considers himself a neoliberal economist, in favor of reducing the size of the state (the “chainsaw”). The German far-right party AfD was also founded by economists. 

For Hayek’s “bastard children,” as Slobodian calls them, if international trade and capital mobility work, immigration will not be necessary. Culturally and ethnically homogeneous populations are a prerequisite for the proper functioning of markets, as is the protection of property rights. The “three hards of hard money, hard borders and hardwired culture” are central to the national-populist drift of neoliberalism, as Slobodian explains. 

New strategies to promote a hard currency, however, run into contradictions when they try to promote digital assets such as “stable-coins”, theoretically linked to real-world stable assets, but which, according to many experts, can give rise to episodes of financial instability such as those that characterized the times of existence of private currencies before the establishment of the United States Federal Reserve. 

Interestingly, Slobodian (p. 149) explains:

“The three hards of hard money, hard borders, and hardwired culture were central to the paleo ideology. It was a philosophy of exclusion… the central intellectual line of connection between old conservatives and libertarians is the theme of regionalization, decentralization, including secession. They recommended individual provinces, regions, cities, towns and villages… proclaim their status as free territories to prevent from being swamped by immigrants”