Milei vs. Epistemic Tribes of Economists: Crisis, Consensus, and Argentina’s Recovery

In November 2023, a letter circled the globe. More than one hundred top economists, among them Thomas Piketty and Jayati Ghosh, signed their names to a stark warning: electing Javier Milei would spell “devastation” for Argentina. The word was chosen for its force. It appeared in headlines across the world, the very image of expert consensus. The Guardian declared the verdict: Milei’s radical economic plan would plunge the nation into ruin.

The Guardian declared the verdict: Milei’s radical economic plan would plunge the nation into ruin. Two years later, Argentina is telling a different story.

Two years later, Argentina is telling a different story. The National Institute of Statistics reports that in the second quarter of 2025, the economy expanded by 6.3 percent year-on-year — one of the fastest growth rates in the world. Inflation, which had spiraled above 200 percent under Milei’s predecessors, is now projected to fall into the 20–25 percent range by the end of the year. For the first time in fourteen years, the Argentine state has registered a fiscal surplus. Poverty, which had engulfed more than half the population at the start of 2024, has dropped to just under 40 percent. These are not the figures of devastation. They are the markers of a fragile but undeniable revival.

How did so many distinguished economists get it so wrong? The answer lies less in Argentina itself than in the intellectual habits of the guild. What failed was not simply forecasting, but the sociology of expertise.

Economics, at its best, is the dismal science: unflinching about trade-offs, coldly attentive to incentives. Yet it is also, like any intellectual community, susceptible to tribalization. To belong to a school — Keynesian, Marxist, monetarist, post-colonial — is to carry more than a method. It is to bear an identity. Tribes reward loyalty; they punish deviation. And once a tribe declares a figure like Milei a heretic, analysis follows condemnation.

Tribes reward loyalty; they punish deviation. And once a tribe declares a figure like Milei a heretic, analysis follows condemnation.

The 2023 letter was less an exercise in modeling than in moralism. The signatories decried Milei as “far-right,” a danger to democracy, a zealot. These may or may not be valid political judgments, but they are not economic forecasts. The specter of devastation was conjured less from Argentina’s fiscal arithmetic than from Europe’s anxieties about populism. In the language of Karl Popper, the open society was once again haunted not by falsifiable hypotheses, but by grand ideological verdicts (The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945).

Yet Argentina was not Europe. After decades of Peronist mismanagement, the country had become the world’s case study in economic dysfunction. Inflation in triple digits. Sovereign defaults recurring like the choruses of a tragic opera. Subsidies so sprawling that they devoured fiscal space and distorted entire industries.

Milei’s bet was simple and brutal: break the cycle. Slash public spending, liberalize trade, dismantle bureaucratic monopolies, court investors with promises of fiscal discipline. Economists called it reckless. But in its very extremity lay a kind of credibility. After decades of gradualist half-measures, Argentina’s markets finally believed rupture was real. The pain was immediate: cuts to transport subsidies, health budgets, and provincial transfers triggered mass protests. But the macro signals shifted. Inflation slowed. Debt markets opened. The IMF agreed to a $20 billion program, the largest in the country’s history. Capital began to trickle back.

The lesson is not that austerity is painless or that libertarianism is a panacea. It is that crises sometimes demand radicalism, and that radicalism can sometimes succeed where orthodoxy fails.

The lesson is not that austerity is painless or that libertarianism is a panacea. It is that crises sometimes demand radicalism, and that radicalism can sometimes succeed where orthodoxy fails.

Why did the consensus miss this possibility? Because consensus itself can become a mirage.

When a hundred economists sign a letter, the temptation is to treat unanimity as truth. Yet the history of economics is littered with failed consensuses: the certainty in the 1930s that balanced budgets were sacrosanct; the insistence in the 1970s that inflation could be tamed without recession; the blithe confidence in the 2000s that financial innovation had tamed risk. As Isaiah Berlin reminded us, pluralism is not only a political condition but an epistemic one: no single framework exhausts reality (Four Essays on Liberty, 1969).

By branding Milei’s project as unthinkable, the economists ceased to think. They mistook moral aversion for analytical necessity. Their language betrayed them: “devastation” was not a projection, but a verdict. And verdicts, unlike forecasts, are immune to data.

Their language betrayed them: “devastation” was not a projection, but a verdict. And verdicts, unlike forecasts, are immune to data.

Do they owe Argentina an apology? Strictly speaking, economists cannot be faulted for misjudging the future; prediction is always fraught. But when error arises not from complexity but from closure — from ideological reflex, from group loyalty, from the comfort of the chorus — then accountability matters. To admit error is not humiliation but humility, the very quality expertise requires to remain credible.

But when error arises not from complexity but from closure — from ideological reflex, from group loyalty, from the comfort of the chorus — then accountability matters.

Yet apologies are rare. The likely path is rhetorical shift: the recovery is “temporary”; the growth “unsustainable”; the politics “dangerous even if the numbers improve.” In short, the verdict remains unchanged, only the justification evolves.

This is how tribes preserve themselves. But it is also how authority corrodes. When experts refuse to concede error, publics cease to believe them. And when publics cease to believe, the fragile link between knowledge and trust collapses.

Argentina is not saved; its path is still perilous. Inflation, though falling, remains high. Poverty, though receding, still afflicts millions. Social peace is brittle, protests recurrent. The risk of relapse — into fiscal indiscipline, political paralysis, or populist backlash — remains real.

Argentina is not saved; its path is still perilous. Inflation, though falling, remains high. Poverty, though receding, still afflicts millions. Social peace is brittle, protests recurrent. The risk of relapse — into fiscal indiscipline, political paralysis, or populist backlash — remains real.

But the wider lesson is unmistakable: never confuse consensus with truth. Expertise must be plural, self-critical, willing to tolerate discord. Otherwise, it becomes what Raymond Aron once called “the opium of intellectuals” — ideology masquerading as science (The Opium of the Intellectuals, 1955).

Argentina’s fragile recovery is a warning, not just to economists, but to all of us. It warns against the seductions of tribe, against the comfort of unanimous verdicts, against the laziness of prediction by ideology. In politics as in economics, reality is always more unruly than consensus allows.

The devastation, it turns out, was not economic. It was epistemic: the devastation of a discipline when it mistakes its own tribe for the truth.

The devastation, it turns out, was not economic. It was epistemic: the devastation of a discipline when it mistakes its own tribe for the truth.