Hasan Piker, a hugely popular commentator on Twitch and YouTube, is a self-described socialist who praises and campaigns for candidates backed by the Democratic Socialists of America and in the Democratic Party. He also has a soft spot for Mao Zedong, the Chinese dictator whose communist policies caused the deaths of 65 million people.

Piker, who has more than 5 million followers, many of them young Americans, says Mao is “one of the great leaders of this world.” Piker, 35, is no dunce—his streaming has made him a multi-millionaire—and he is influential. Libertarians should use this opportunity to educate people about Mao and the horrors of socialism/​communism.

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On May 31, Colombians delivered a surprise to the world by placing right-wing Abelardo de la Espriella first in the first round of the 2026 presidential election. With 43 percent of the vote, De la Espriella surpassed Senator Iván Cepeda, the left-wing candidate, who received 40 percent but was widely expected to win. Since neither won a majority, the two candidates will face each other in a second round on June 21. 

So far, De la Espriella’s campaign has mostly focused on crime. A lawyer and businessman, De la Espriella has promised to crack down on criminal gangs by building 10 mega-prisons that follow El Salvador’s notorious CECOT model—one known for human rights abuses and violations. De la Espriella’s platform, while including a promise to deregulate the economy and reduce the size of the federal government, also pledges to subsidize mortgages and significantly increase public spending in health care, raising serious concerns as Colombia is already expected to post a fiscal deficit of 6 percent of GDP in 2026. Sometimes said to be inspired by El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele and Argentina’s Javier Milei, De la Espriella in fact seems much more like the former than the latter.

Cepeda’s platform, on the other hand, represents continuity with the policies of leftist Colombian President Gustavo Petro, under whose watch Colombia has seen an ever-worsening fiscal situation and increased crime, including a recent increase in political violence not seen in decades. In fact, this campaign season was marred by the assassination of presidential hopeful Miguel Uribe as well as dozens of attacks by left-wing guerrillas, with one attack resulting in the killing of two members of De la Espriella’s team. Moreover, Petro has repeatedly shown his contempt for the rule of law by attacking Colombia’s Congress, courts, and Central Bank. With the apparent goal of weakening these checks and balances, and following the far-left strategy that has been deployed from Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela to Evo Morales’s Bolivia in recent decades, Cepeda has signaled that he could call for a constitutional assembly, which De la Espriella rejects.

The Colombian election matters because of its potential impact on its neighbor Venezuela and its ideological significance in Latin America. For years, President Petro consistently refused to condemn Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship in Venezuela and, after Maduro’s ousting, even visited current dictator Delcy Rodríguez in Caracas. But a win by De la Espriella would mean the end of Colombia’s collaboration with the remnants of the Venezuelan regime, thus increasing pressure for democratization in the country.

To the rest of Latin America, a defeat of the Petro-backed Cepeda would send a signal that the left is still in retreat across the region, following a 2025 in which the candidates of left-wing governments were also defeated at the ballot box in Chile and Bolivia. With Petro out of the equation, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Brazilian President Lula da Silva—currently in a tight race for reelection—would remain the sole leaders of the Latin American left, which has routinely supported authoritarian regimes and political movements in the region. 

De la Espriella is now favored to win the June 21 runoff, as center-right Paloma Valencia, who placed third after receiving just 6 percent of the vote, has already announced her support for him. Former presidents Álvaro Uribe (2002–2010) and Iván Duque (2018–2022) have done the same. 

Abelardo de la Espriella is no classical liberal. What is clear, though, is that his victory would mark a decisive rejection of both President Petro’s legacy and the broader left-wing project that has governed much of Latin America for the better part of the past two decades.

The US indictment of Raúl Castro today raises hope for an end to the Castro tyranny, something that ideally would happen in a bloodless way. That end would be joyous for Cubans, who have endured one of the most brutal dictatorships in the world since 1959. The authoritarian rule of the Cuban Communist Party turned what was once one of Latin America’s most prosperous countries into one of the poorest, a situation that has severely worsened in recent years. Cubans today don’t just lack basic freedoms, they lack the most basic necessities like an adequate food supply, reliable access to water, gasoline, and electricity. As a result, some 1.7 million Cubans—about a quarter of its population—left the country between 2020 and 2024.

The harms that Cuba has inflicted on its own people for over six decades have also extended to other countries. Venezuela is the clearest, most recent example of a country with a Cuba-backed authoritarian regime. But the Castro dictatorship has routinely supported left-wing terrorism and authoritarianism across the region, ranging from the Che Guevara-led guerrillas in Bolivia in the 1960s to Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega, who is still in power today. From a hemispheric perspective, the end of the Cuban dictatorship is long overdue.

Nicolás Maduro’s extraction from Venezuela, however, should serve as a note of caution: removing a dictator does not necessarily end the dictatorship. Despite having a well-organized, legitimate opposition ready to take over, Venezuelans are still waiting for a transition to democracy and liberty. A democratic transition in Cuba may be more challenging because the Communist Party has long repressed any opposition on the island and exiled many of its leaders over the decades. Still, prominent Cuban dissident Rosa María Payá is right when she says that Cuba does not need a Delcy Rodríguez, in reference to the current regime head in Venezuela with whom the US government is working. When and if the Cuban dictatorship finally collapses, it would be best to let Cubans themselves determine their return to freedom. 

On May 15, the Cato Institute hosted a policy forum titled “Has the Time Come for Dollarization in the Americas?” featuring John Cochrane (Hoover Institution), David Malpass (former World Bank president), and Emilio Ocampo (UCEMA, Argentina). If you missed it, you can watch it here. The conversation covered a lot of ground, including how dollarization would benefit the United States, but it also focused on the monetary challenges facing Argentina under Javier Milei and Venezuela following Nicholas Maduro’s capture.

All three panelists ended up in a similar place: The case for dollarization is not about imposing the dollar, but about respecting the choice that Latin Americans have made and make on a daily basis when they use the dollar over their local currencies. Making dollarization official is about having a stable currency that enables higher growth and lower interest rates, and that stops rampant inflation and thus the silent, forced transfer of wealth from ordinary citizens to their governments.

The standard argument against dollarization goes like this: Countries need the ability to adjust their exchange rate in response to external shocks. If the price of copper falls, Chile can devalue and soften the blow—if it has dollarized, it has to absorb the shock through lower wages, which is more painful. The problem is that it assumes the central bank in question will behave like, say, the Swiss National Bank, responding to shocks in a competent and politically independent way. This assumption has not been a good description for Venezuela’s central bank over the last 25 years and has almost never been a good description of any Argentine central bank. In countries that have experienced chronic inflation or multiple episodes of hyperinflation, the relevant question is not, “Can we fine-tune monetary policy?” Instead, it is, “Can we credibly commit to not destroying our currency the next time a politician needs to finance a deficit?”

In the Americas, dollarization is best understood as a credible commitment to monetary stability. In that sense, as Cochrane put it, “dollarizing is burning the ships. Once you’ve dollarized, you can’t go back.” The value of the reform lies precisely in its irreversibility. A currency peg or a currency board can be broken—as Argentina demonstrated in August 2001, when Congress passed a law guaranteeing bank deposits as private contracts and the government violated it less than six months later, bringing the currency board to an end. But dollarization is the one mechanism that is genuinely difficult to undo in a democracy, because doing so means taking dollars out of people’s wallets and handing them something called the peso or bolívar instead. No politician who wants to be reelected does that.

In Argentina, the current disinflation process, which has taken yearly inflation from 211 percent to just over 32 percent, is not over and still leaves the question of what happens after Milei. Emilio Ocampo made the point that, in the end, Argentina’s problem is not fiscal, but institutional. In a country where the government has persistently violated its own laws without consequence, no constitutional amendments, guarantees of central bank independence, or IMF programs can be credible. The only mechanism that works in a democracy is one that voters themselves will defend. And Argentine voters, it turns out, have already made their choice: they hold at least $300 billion in dollars, while the entire formal peso supply amounts to roughly $80–90 billion. “This is not about imposing a currency,” Ocampo said. “It’s about freedom. It’s about freedom to use those dollars anywhere you want.”

Some argue that there are certain preconditions that countries need to achieve before dollarizing their economy. Here, the comparison with Ecuador is instructive. As Ocampo explained, Ecuador dollarized in 2000 under conditions that were, by any measure, worse than Argentina’s today: an unpopular president, a country in sovereign default, deposits frozen in the banking system, and the IMF actively opposed to the move. Yet the dollar has now outlasted every constitution Ecuador has had since 1830. Over the past two decades, inflation in Ecuador has disappeared, the country’s private credit as a share of GDP stands at roughly 60 percent, and Ecuadorians can get 20-year mortgage loans. Neither Argentines nor Venezuelans can.

Ocampo added that every year Argentina delays dollarization is a year of forgone growth—GDP is expected to grow by 3.5 percent in 2026, well below what a dollarized economy growing from a low base should be able to achieve. The reason growth is constrained, even with fiscal discipline, is uncertainty. Investors who might otherwise bring capital into Argentina hedge against the possibility that the peso will be debased by some future Peronist government. As Malpass put it, “the existence of the peso is a huge gigantic cost to Argentina.”

The panelists at the forum agreed that the path forward need not be complicated. Ecuador and El Salvador took different routes to dollarization—one announced a hard deadline for converting sucres, the other dollarized the banking system while leaving the nominal currency in circulation. There is no single template. What matters is the direction of travel and the credibility of the commitment.

The monetary base in Argentina is approximately $20 billion, and the country is now running consistent fiscal surpluses, which means that the arithmetic of dollarization is not the obstacle. As Malpass said: “The minute Argentina said it was going to stop imposing the peso, dollars would flood in.… There would be much more than [$20 billion] that would want to come to Argentina if they said that they would allow it to go back out if it wanted to.” And he added, “The world is stacked in favor of local currencies. The elite in the country benefit from it. The central bankers benefit from it. The IMF benefits from it from a staff level. And so the decision point has to be Milei saying ‘I want to fulfill my campaign promise.’” 

The United States has a direct stake in dollarization as well. A dollarized Argentina would eliminate the currency-driven devaluations that periodically distort trade between the two countries, including in politically sensitive agricultural sectors. A dollarized Venezuela would be in a better position to develop its resources, which would strengthen its ties to the US economy. There is also the straightforward network benefit: every country that adopts the dollar expands the reach of the world’s reserve currency at a moment when that status is being challenged. Supporting dollarization in Latin America costs Washington nothing and could return a great deal.

The window for dollarization in Argentina and Venezuela is still open. In some respects, the conditions are better than they have ever been, and the cost of not acting is measured in inflation and missed growth. If the U.S. is looking to support freedom, development, and stability in the Americas, dollarization is an obvious place to start.

European Central Bank officials pride themselves on championing democracy, but they seem to apply those values selectively. After submitting a public records request and conversing for weeks, the European Central Bank refused to provide information about its central bank digital currency (CBDC).

The request quickly turned sour. After explaining that I was interested in how much had been spent on developing their CBDC (the digital euro), I was asked for my papers. No, not my research on CBDCs. The central bank wanted me to provide identification to prove whether I’m a European citizen to ensure my request was in compliance with Article 2(1) of Decision ECB/2004/3 of the European Central Bank. 

While I don’t typically share my address with strangers, I let the central bank know that I am not a European citizen and that my request should be considered under Article 2(2). Although Article 2(1) states that the European Central Bank must respond to requests from European citizens, Article 2(2) states that noncitizens can use the same process to obtain information. 

Unfortunately, I soon learned that Article 2(2) means little in practice. The European Central Bank responded, saying, “Having examined your request, we concluded that, regrettably, at this juncture, it is not possible for the ECB to process it.” It later added that it “exercised its discretion not to process” my request because I am not a European citizen. 

With that said, it seems citizenship doesn’t actually matter. I’ve been lucky enough to meet many allies in Europe. And one such ally, Maya Thomas from Big Brother Watch, was happy to help by making the request as a European citizen. Unfortunately, this request was also denied. 

After extending the timeline to process the request, the European Central Bank decided not to share how much money has been spent on researching and developing its CBDC. The central bank argued that this information cannot be shared because it would (1) reveal the commercial interests of contractors and the central bank; (2) reveal the internal finances of the central bank; (3) reveal confidential information; and (4) reveal personal data.

In other words, revealing this information would make the European Central Bank accountable to the public. And, well, they can’t have that. 

This rationale is, to be blunt, wholly absurd. If for no other reason, it is absurd because there are central banks that already share this information. Although it should provide more details, the Central Bank of The Bahamas documents its own CBDC development as a line item in its annual reports. Sure, their CBDC has largely been a failure, but that failure is not because of transparency. 

What makes the European Central Bank’s justification even more absurd, however, is that officials have already shared some of these numbers in press announcements. A rough calculation suggests that at least €1.12 billion ($1.32 billion) has been allocated to the digital euro, and another €2.62 billion ($3.09 billion) would be spent in the launch year (Table 1). Yet, the true number is anyone’s guess. For example, one group estimated that costs could reach €18 billion ($21 billion).

Accountability is a fundamental piece of any functioning democracy. The public deserves to know how their money is being spent. That’s especially true given both the risks of CBDCs and the fact that the countries that are pushing the hardest for CBDCs are authoritarian. 

Alas, the European Central Bank appears to see the issue differently. They’d rather control the flow of information than let the public see what’s happening for themselves. 

When Javier Milei became president of Argentina in December 2023, one his first measures as part of a package of wide-ranging deregulations was to open up the economy to satellite internet. (I wrote about that and his broader deregulatory push here.)

At a meeting I attended last month with a small group of economists, Argentina’s Minister of Deregulation, Federico Sturzenegger, presented the graph above. It shows how satellite internet use exploded once the government lifted its ban, which had, until then, benefited a politically powerful local internet provider.

In a recent paper, Sturzenegger describes how Argentines and businesses that were previously isolated or harmed by the high cost of the internet benefited from the deregulation:

Within weeks, several companies—most notably Starlink—began service. Roughly a year and a half later, about two million Argentines, particularly in remote areas, had access to satellite internet. The impact was immediate: mining and energy operations became more efficient, tourism expanded (a lodge owner in Patagonia told me recently he now gets clients who come precisely because they know they can work remotely), and precision agriculture became viable by simply mounting a satellite dish on farm machinery. What had been presented as a technical or safety issue turned out to be, in practice, the defense of a regulatory rent.

Argentina is a case study of how special interests produce regulation and can do so in the extreme. The Milei administration understands this and has so far reduced the bureaucracy by more than 65,000 people and eliminated or modified more than 2,500 regulations in a process of ongoing liberalization that promises to increasingly benefit Argentines.

This week, The Independent Review published my latest peer-reviewed research article, titled “Peronism: The Rise and Persistence of Fascism in Argentina.” The paper argues that Peronism is best understood as Argentina’s variant of fascism and that its rise and persistence are the primary explanation for the country’s long economic decline.

The argument unfolds in four parts. First, I outline how prosperous Argentina was by the early 20th century, when it consistently ranked among the top 10 world economies and how this was a function of its classical liberal policies, which included limited government intervention, open trade, and free immigration, among others. That began to change with a series of coups and the rise of fascist sentiment, which Colonel Juan Domingo Perón would ultimately embody in his Partido Justicialista and more broadly in the Peronist movement.

Second, I use Stanley Payne’s typology—which identifies fascism across three dimensions (its negations, ideology/​goals, and style/organization)—and show how Peronism systematically checks all these boxes: It is anti-liberal, anti-communist, and anti-conservative; it defends a corporatist economic organization and a nationalist creed; and it promotes mass mobilization, a cult of personality, and the use of violence, among other policies. Perón’s own admiration for Mussolini is documented through his letters from Italy in the late 1930s.

Third, I argue that what makes Argentina’s case unique is that, unlike Italian or Spanish fascism, Peronism survived its founder. Even after Perón was ousted in 1955, the structural changes he imposed—such as monopoly trade unions, corporatist labor legislation, nationalizations, protection of crony industries, and high public spending—were never dismantled. Through various policies and constitutional changes, non-Peronist governments, including military ones, actually reinforced the Peronist system.

Fourth, I present the economic consequences of the persistence of Peronism in Argentina, which continues to retain the same ideology, symbols, and style as it did in the 1940s. The paper traces the country’s steep economic decline directly to a Peronist system of consistent protection of unproductive economic sectors, uncontrollable deficits, and recurring debt and hyperinflationary crises. The Peronist cycle of concentrated benefits for unions and protected industries—that diffuse costs to everyone else—is explained using Mancur Olson’s collective action logic and Paul Pierson’s politics of retrenchment. Alternative explanations (dependency theory, anomie, colonial legacy, and distributive conflict) are considered and rejected on the grounds that none can account for Argentina’s uniqueness relative to comparable countries.

The conclusion is that Argentina’s decline is unique precisely because it is the only country in the world where a genuinely fascist party has continued to win elections for nearly eight decades. I conclude with this paragraph:

The original Peronist ideology, negations, and symbols … are still present. Almost eighty years after its foundation, the Partido Justicialista still … has the same goals that it did in 1945. That is a unique phenomenon; in no other country does a fascist party still win elections. Italy and Spain are home to fascist nostalgics, but these have nowhere near the influence that they have in Argentina.… That unique phenomenon offers the best explanation for the unique outcome: Argentina’s economic downfall, which is unparalleled in the world.

The full paper can be found here.