Okay, the title of this post is a huge overstatement. I’ve already noted here that Argentina is not a good role model and warned here how that Obama is repeating many of the mistakes that undermined Argentinian prosperity.
But I’m nonetheless impressed that Argentina actually 
allows people at the Lujan Zoo to freely choose whether to enter cages with potentially deadly animals.
Here at the Lujan Zoo near Buenos Aires visitors can ride lions, cuddle bears, stroke tigers and feed cheetahs. Cages are accessible to everyone who paid $50 and signed the paper saying that if you are eaten, the Zoo is not responsible. Lujan Zoo is about 50 miles from from Buenos Aires, has an entrance fee of just £5. Visitors can even pick up the smaller animals and manhandle them at risk to themselves and the creatures. Shockingly there doesn’t appear to be much in the way of safety regulations.
I would probably be a wimp if I went to this zoo, so I would limit myself to the lion cubs or something like that. But I support the right of other people to engage in risky behavior
(h/t: Marginal Revolution)
[…] I did once write about the “libertarian paradise of Argentina,” but that was mostly in […]
Argentina has a big government, is full of regulations, and is a tiranny. This country is not libertarian, its the opposite: Its “peronista”. In Argentina, politicians dont know what the word freedom is.
Dan, I live both in the USA and Argentina and have for 15 years. Argentina is soooo much more wealthy than the US that it isn’t funny. Did you know that 97% of ALL homes in Argentina are owned outright? No mortgages! In the USA, “owners” of 24% of all the homes in the country owe MORE than they are currently worth (or can be sold for) or are foreclosed or in foreclosure! Read: the banks own the homes, not the “home-owners”! Hmmmm? Two first world countries but one is the greatest debtor nation on earth with high unemployment, obscene trade deficits, and a rapidly fading economy. And as Mr. Gerke says (and knows from experience) is the most litigious society on earth with bazillions of laws. The other country has a bursting economy (the envy of the world), is truly libertarian (you do your thing and I do mine and we don’t mess with one another); has TRUE wealth (not a facade like the US), and on and on and on. Another statistic that should scare the hell out of you is this: 25% of all the prisoners in the entire world are incarcerated in the USA. Yet the USA represents only 4.3 of the world’s population. Hmmmmm? Who is free and who are the slaves?
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Fascinating! Things have gotten so bad in the USA that I think here in Latin America we are freer -and happier- than in the USA in many aspects. But we are much less free in the crucial matter of doing business (which IMHO is the key to prosperity). There is a famous example where setting a business in Peru took 11 months and 2 -impossible to avoid- bribes while the same business was setup in a morning in Tampa, Florida.
People here often understand that if all the legislations and regulations imposed by the political classes were obeyed tens millions people would die of hunger: The rule -with many remarkable exceptions- is the poorer the country the higher the tax rates and the bigger the informal sector: In some countries 2/3 of the worked hours are worked in the informal sector. In these “third world” countries the less productive simply cannot pay the cost of the exorbitant taxes and regulations imposed by the political classes.
These “underdeveloped” countries are much better off than what your mainstream media and academia tells you: We are not a bunch of retards or thieves, we essentially work with much less capital than you Americans and therefore we are much less productive and earn lower wages. That is so IMHO because it is so costly here to run -and to start- a formal business and to find legal advice to legally lower taxes and regulations. People must hide from the formal authorities and enforcing contracts can be a nightmare for people in the informal sector.
So there is massive not compliance with taxes and regulations in these parts of the world, it is a matter of survival. But in the founding father’s USA you use to have TRUE law -common law-, a law that, if respected, made people better off. But today your political class imposes one new tyrannical legislation after another and those oppressive regulations are actually obeyed, because high compliance to law still remains in the USA. One wonders how all this will end up
In Argentina people do not bring frivolous lawsuits to the courts. This is the reason insurance is so cheap here!
Perhaps this goes without saying, but: In America, if a zoo required you to sign a waiver before entering a lion cage, and you were then injured in the lion cage, there is not a court in the country that would say that the fact that you signed a form waiving away your right to sue somehow means that you have no right to sue. The zoo would still be liable.
So you have a right to sue, which you cannot give up even if you want to. In the end this does not mean that you have more protection against risk, but that you have lost the right to decide for yourself what risks are worth taking.
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Great find! I’m heading to Argentina right now. We need this in America, we’re supposed to be the toughest.
I am an American ex-pat living a free and better life in Argentina. Although the government is socialistic, they leave the people alone without all the regulations and laws that are taking the American peoples rights away.