The Real Cost of Politics: Lessons from El Eternauta

Win-win deals make us richer and better off. But win-lose deals (in which you win by making the other fellow lose) never go away. And occasionally, the win-losers take over.

Source: Getty Images

Thursday, June 5^th, 2025

Bill Bonner, from Youghal, Ireland

What’s worse than losing money?

We shake our head in sympathy with Elon Musk. The naïve immigrant is likely to find out just how nasty politics can be. Musk is now going head-to-head with Trump. The latter claims to have the Big, Beautiful Budget Bill that will MAGA the country. The former says it’s an abomination.

MailOnline:

'I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, doesn't decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,' Musk told CBS Sunday Morning.

Despite its ambitions, reshaping tax law, overhauling immigration policy, and slashing Medicaid benefits in the future, Musk believes the bill is fundamentally at odds with the hard choices DOGE made to streamline government.

Musk is surely right. But he doesn’t control the IRS, NASA, SEC, FTC, FBI, NSA and Pentagon. A win-lose guy does.

Yes, the primary trend in politics is MORE. And politics is win-lose. Politicians create no wealth. They just take it from the people who do. And Musk has a lot of it.

But taking Musk’s money may not be the worst of it. The rise of politics makes people poorer. But it brings an increase in nastiness too.

Many of the things that are worse than losing money are illustrated in a very popular Argentine Netflix drama called El Eternauta. It is a post-apocalyptic story based on a comic strip whose author was Hector German Oesterheld.

In the story, the world has been invaded by extraterrestrials. First, they kill most of the population with a toxic snowfall. The rest they aim to remove by unleashing giant bugs and brainwashing some humans into killing the others.

What is interesting about this apocalyptic genre is that it explores what life might be like if civilization were to break down. Desperate, afraid, hungry people can be rude, larcenous and murderous. Some may revert to savagery. Others attempt to maintain more benevolent qualities.

Typically, in the movies, we are led to believe that our ‘human’ nature — wherein we show courage, kindness and generosity — triumphs.

But it doesn’t always work out that way. And you don’t need an invasion from space to see it. Win-win deals, otherwise known as ‘gentle commerce,’ make us richer and better off. But win-lose deals (in which you win by making the other fellow lose) never go away. And occasionally, the win-losers take over.

Oesterheld, 1919-1976, imagined a grim situation. Those who didn’t survive the snowfall were eaten by the giant bugs. Or, they became prey to armed thugs, and makeshift gangs.

In the 1950s, Argentina was still a rich society — with a GDP/capita twice that of Spain and thrice that of Japan. But the government began a policy of ‘import substitution,’ (based on tariffs and other trade barriers) to encourage local manufacturing over foreign made products. The idea was to make Argentina not just a great agricultural producer, but an industrial power too.

The policy resulted in inefficient industries and a decline in real wealth, with low-quality, made-in-Argentina products that couldn’t compete on world markets. There were automobiles, for example, designed and produced in Argentina; you still see them occasionally — usually abandoned — on the streets of Buenos Aires.

The government later gave up on its ‘import substitution’ policy, but prices rose, with lower real wages and more labor troubles. The inflation rate jumped to over 30% in 1965. The government then imposed controls on prices and money movements. And the Argentine currency was devalued by 30% in 1970.

It was at this time, (perhaps not a coincidence) that hard-left groups — such as the Montoneros — grew in popularity, such that Oesterheld and his four daughters joined up. This was in the mid-70s, when the generals began plotting their coup...the forces of law and order began planning to murder thousands of people...and Argentines’ troubles were soon not just financial.

Twenty years after Oesterheld’s comics first appeared, Argentina had its own post-apocalyptic moment. Military leaders pulled off a coup d’etat in March 1976. Henry Kissinger reportedly urged them to get rid of their opponents as fast as possible... before public outrage could express itself.

And so began the ‘disappearances.’ An estimated 30,000 people were picked up by the police, the military, or civilian death squads. Many were tortured and killed, including Oesterheld and his four daughters, two of whom were pregnant when they were kidnapped.

Only one of the bodies was ever recovered. It is not known what happened to the unborn children. The army often let pregnant women give birth before killing them; the babies were given to childless military couples.

This was worse than a 10% loss in the stock market. It was the dismal, post-apocalyptic society that Oesterheld had foreseen in his Eternauta comic. People were killed, not by bugs, but by predatory humans.

Regards,

Bill Bonner