The scorpion dies of success

The threat to veto the budget approved by both houses of Congress if it does not contain Article 75, repealing the laws providing funding for universities and for the disabled, is based on all kinds of initial errors.

Legally, because if its repeal had been carried out, the legalization would assume that the budget law is valid for one year and that the two laws that it intends to repeal do not expire every year.

In fact, because half of the deputies and two-thirds of the senators who continued after the renewal of the committees on December 10th and who have already voted four times for these laws, each first sanctioning them and then by two-thirds rejecting the presidential veto, including some of the allies of La Libertad Avanza in Congress, could hardly vote against their four previous votes so recently without suffering, in addition to personal ridicule, high political costs.

Symbolic, because together with the agreement with the PJ to appoint auditors to the exclusion of its allies, it provokes and humiliates the dialogueists essential for the approval of the work modernization and transfers the deputies’ conflict to the Senate, leading to a postponement of its consideration until the beginning of February, forty days that could be crucial for the change of mood in society. The second week of February marks the hundred days in which any government enjoys complete impunity after winning an election, in this case October 26th.

In fact, the strategy of the CGT and the union leaders is to casually postpone dealing with labor modernization, knowing full well that each day that passes uses up a small part of the symbolic capital that the LLA generated in the elections.

So why is the government ruining their second honeymoon by consuming it entirely without achieving any reform? Some analysts speculate on the rational strategy of going crazy (Richard Nixon) to create fear among adversaries who rationalize with mutual deterrence to stave off the mortal damage that could be inflicted even on the victor of the war, in this case the governors, who in their case would also be harmed economically if the budget were not approved.

But the rational strategy of acting irrationally, even to the point of self-immolation, through messianic dogmatism or operational maximalism requires that it is an achievement and that the actor is always prepared to stop inches from the abyss. And yet it brings with it the problem of being a short-lived strategy based on the addition of unfulfilled threats that make the following ones less credible.

The case of the omnibus bill: Bases 1, which was withdrawn in February 2024 with 667 articles, later returned with 238 articles and thus received approval six months after the first presentation, was it a triumph or a defeat of this type of negotiation, which shows that one is willing to endure more pain if it is inflicted on the opponent? Will this be the path the Work Modernization Act will take between the bill introduced in the Senate this week with the intent of explicit sanction and the bill that will eventually be debated in early February?

The same applies to the threat of vetoing the budget even if it were not implemented. Does it serve the role of showing an executive willing to do whatever it takes to intimidate governors on more important issues like work modernization?

Let’s assume that Milei believes that the fact that he managed to pass a Bases law with a third of the original articles, but also the Incentive Regime for Large Investments (RIGI), and that the famous Decree 70/2023 with 366 articles repealing entire laws prevailed because the deputies never vetoed them, are all triumphs because he behaved as if someone was ready to do anything because he is just crazy or behaves crazy It could be achieved that a government with a large legislative minority can count on passed laws or DNU that are not repealed by Congress.

In this case, the title of this column would be valid: “The scorpion dies of success”, because it is very common for organizations and individuals that, faced with the success of a technique, they constantly repeat it, without taking into account that it is no longer used or that its competitive advantage has disappeared, and in the end they die of success, because the very thing that leads to failure is the repetition of what led to success. And the scorpion, due to the well-known fable of the scorpion and the frog, in which instinct is superior to calculation and maximalism is characterological and not operational (billiards player, as the president mentions).

In yesterday’s morning program column profile In the film, which we audiovisually called “Milei and the Chicken Game”, two further arguments from game theory were developed: that of the chicken, in which success depends on convincing the opponent that one is irrational enough never to give in, and that rationality can be a weakness in contexts of extreme confrontation; and the Principle of Revelation, which states: “Any outcome that is achievable in a system in which participants hide information or act cunningly can be reproduced through a mechanism in which telling the truth is the most intelligent strategy.” In this case, Milei shows the negotiations of the governors in comparison to their conceptual “consistency”, with the danger that here the principle of revelation plays against itself, showing that a president is not only incapable of conducting a democratic debate, but also of achieving the things that are conducive to achieving his goals.

The coin is in the air, one day it will fall against the president.