It has not been highly publicized in our media but the events in Brazil in the last few weeks are nothing short of extraordinary and underscore how socialist, crony policies and actions are always doomed to fail. What is most notable is that Mises is being preferred to Marx by the young people in the streets; 4 million of them! This is worth noting as we have watched the "Latin Miracle" go up in flames in recent years. In the 1990s, led largely by movements in Chile and Argentina, it looked like the decades of "Banana Republics" were finally over and free enterprise was taking hold.
Many businesses were being privatized, most notable Telebras, the Brazilian telecom monopoly that was broken up in favor of regional "baby bras's". Over the course of the next several years however, many of the nations that were leading the charge seemed to give up on the experiment and allowed characters like Lula in Brazil, Kirchner in Argentina, Morales in Bolivia and of course, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, in one form or another to set back or completely reverse the reforms that had made it look in the 1990s as though Latin America was going to join the ranks of the "free enterprise" nations.
Maybe they will someday get it right?
