We preached our gospel of property rights and markets in Buenos Aires on Friday. Our audience was young, mostly law students or young lawyers, and reasonably divided between the sexes – probably a third women.

They listened intently, and asked good questions. There was little of the anti-IP cant that one might get from a comparable U.S. audience.

This was all good, because such an audience is the future of Argentina, and it does not have a clear or easy path to follow.

Buenos Aires is a wonderful city, built low – 10 stories or so – with spacious avenues and thousands of vine-covered balconies stretching across the widths of the apartment buildings and overlooking the streets. Architecture is eclectic, a mix of baroque, 19th century public building grandure, almost-Mediterranean, Art Deco, and a little 1990s glass and steel, mostly confined to banks and software firms. It is also both littered and graffiti-ed. On Saturday, police were numerous, especially around the Plaza de Mayo, which is one of the many sites

The impact of the electronic revolution is minimal. There are cell phones, but not nearly as many as in Europe, the U.S., or Japan., and some camera stores. I saw no iPods or their ilk, no laptops except ours on the desks at the conference. I walked many blocks without seeing any tech stores, except for a few storefronts promising telephone and Internet access.

Another lack was striking – there were few motorbikes and no bicycles, which was very odd, because Buenos Aires is flat, and would be ideal for cycling. Especially, given the economic distress, one would expect young people to seize this cheap form of mobility, even in a place with good public transport. There must be a story here.

The people are friendly and helpful, the shops stylish and interesting, the hotels accommodating and comfortable, and wired, and the prices low. A meal in a good restaurant that costs $60 in Washington, and $100 in Tokyo, costs about $20. If you need something in the hotel, call and it arrives in your room within a minute, delivered by staff who seem to expect no tip.

Dinner starts at 9:30 and goes until midnight, and the club scene lasts until dawn. The latitude is about 33 degrees, so even though it is now the equivalent of early October, the weather is balmy and much of life is lived outdoors.

It is carnivore heaven – variety on a menu is seven different cuts of beefsteak, and the leather products are handsome.

The prices are good for the tourists; bad for the inhabitants. In the 1990s, Argentina was a model of rational economic policy and stable development, but something went awry and it plunged into crisis, savings confiscation, debt default, and currency devaluation in 2001, from which it has not completely recovered. The guidebook says that 50% of the people are in poverty, including many of the formerly middle class. The institutional structure supporting responsible democracy and economic rationality is weak. Recently, the government, to keep the price index down, summarily banned the export of beef, one of Argentina’s principal products, and long run effects be damned.

Such recent actions continue a long history of relative decline. In the early part of the 20th century, Argentina was a developmental peer of Europe and America, and it was assumed that this happy trajectory would continue. But alternating dictatorships and demagogic populism sapped the institutional energies. The 1990s, it seemed, had finally broken the cycle and put the nation on an upward path, so the crisis of 2001 and its aftermath has had an extra bite of frustrated hopes, and despite the partial recovery there is a sense of rueful pessimism, of doubt that the nation is on the verge of anything good.

Ray asked some of our hosts how people reacted to the rising Asian economies, and to the knowledge that these nations, which were far poorer than Latin American half a century ago, have overtaken them and appear to be accelerating the gap. The response was that thee is a fatalistic attitude – the Argentines say they make up for it with a more gracious life style.

I can’t really sympathize. Too much of one person’s gracious life style depends on another’s low-paid poverty. The fact that a call to the desk at the hotel asking for a new Internet access card results in the appearance of a bellboy within a minute is gracious for me, but it also means that labor is so cheap that the hotel has lots of staff. Next time I come, it would be nice if all the bellboys were off writing software code and servicing computers, and I had to go down to the desk to get my own card.

posted by James DeLong @ 6:56 AM | Digital Americas

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