President Javier Milei used an address at the World Economic Forum in Davos on January 21 to argue that capitalism should be defended on grounds of justice, not merely output. The speech was an unusually direct exposition of the philosophy behind his government's Argentine reform agenda. Milei insisted that respect for private property and entrepreneurial activity could make a system both morally legitimate and economically effective. Whether his policies delivered those outcomes was a separate empirical question; the address explained the terms on which he wanted the argument fought.
Justice before technocracy
In the official transcript published by Argentina's presidency, Milei rejected the premise that policymakers must choose between efficiency and ethical values. Drawing on the work of Jesús Huerta de Soto and Murray Rothbard, he argued that the two could be compatible when institutions protected property and free exchange. He also invoked classical philosophy, Roman law and Judeo-Christian values as foundations for what he described as Western civilization. This was not an announcement of a new law or a set of budget figures. It was a statement of first principles from a president whose administration had made deregulation and fiscal restraint central to its program.
Milei described rights to life and liberty as fundamental and property as arising through work, exchange, inheritance and creation. He put particular weight on a non-aggression principle and argued against state coercion in economic life. His construction of property and justice was presented in the speech as a philosophical argument, not as an independently verified description of the effect of every existing Argentine policy. That distinction matters: a claim that a framework is just does not settle the distributional consequences of changing subsidies, labor protections or public services.
The argument against intervention
The address traced Milei's criticism of state intervention through economic theory, including his objections to using alleged market failures as a rationale for regulation. His target was not solely Argentina's old economic arrangements. He framed the argument as an international dispute about the political direction of Western countries. In the official transcript he recalled his Davos appearances in 2024 and 2025, in which he had similarly attacked socialist policy agendas. The continuity of his theme suggested that the president considered an ideological contest abroad part of his domestic political mandate.
For foreign investors, the message was designed to make Argentina's pro-market direction intelligible beyond a sequence of individual decrees. For domestic opponents, the same language sharpened the areas of conflict. A government that treats restrictions on property and contract as moral errors will view many inherited protections differently from unions or advocates of social provision. Those competing premises help explain why disputes over labor rules, tariffs and the scope of the state were not merely technical discussions about the short-term growth rate.
From platform to outcomes
The speech alone could not show how successful reform would be. Lower inflation, durable jobs, adequate reserves and greater investment would have to be measured separately, and the consequences for different households could diverge. Nor should every claim in the transcript about previous governments be adopted without independent evidence. Davos instead supplied a clear record of what Milei himself argued on January 21: ethical legitimacy, as he defined it, came first, and productive gains should follow from respecting enterprise and property. The more demanding test awaited the government at home, where Congress, businesses, workers and consumers would have to live with the practical effects of those ideas.
