Renato Moicano: Why a Brazilian UFC star is championing a dead Austrian economist
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/28/americas/analysis-mises-ufc-moicano-economy-intl-latam/index.html
{David Shortell | 28 April 2024}
Brazilian UFC fighter Renato Moicano had just rallied back from an early-round beating to win a lightweight bout this month when he grabbed a mic to shout out his favorite economist.
“I love private property and let me tell you something, if you care about your country, read Ludwig von Mises and the six lessons of the Austrian economic school,” Moicano, his cheekbone bloodied, roared, along with a pair of profanities.
Footage of the mixed martial artist’s tribute soon went viral on social media, where many in the United States were quick to comment on the seemingly bizarre incongruity of the scene.
But for those with their fingers on the pulse of Latin American politics, it likely appeared far less surprising. Because in South and Central America, the Austrian-American laissez-faire champion Mises, who died in 1973, is having something of a moment.
In recent years, the free-market economist and the contrarian Austrian school he led midcentury have been turned into a hashtag deployed by tax-wary workers. A rash of think tanks and media influencers who champion his ideas have consolidated his influence. And in El Salvador and Argentina, Mises’ ideas have made their way into the speeches and policies of presidents.
“Ludwig von Mises is Latin America’s leading economist,” declared the headline of a Bloomberg opinion piece earlier this month by economist Tyler Cowen.
The one-time principal economic adviser to the Austrian government, Mises fled his homeland in 1934 to escape the growing Nazi reach, eventually settling in the US, where he became a professor at New York University. His free-market policy prescriptions, framed by an economic thinking centered on human behavior and individual choice, were widely considered out of fashion at the time.
But his strident rejection of socialism has found a foothold in places like Brazil, where a “Less Marx, More Mises” movement has swelled over the past 15 years in a backlash to the ruling center left party, propelled by the growth of social media and a series of corruption scandals, according to Camila Rocha, a political scientist and researcher at the Brazilian Center of Analysis and Planning.
The movement is especially popular among young male students and low-income workers such as Uber drivers and street vendors “who started feeling and thinking like entrepreneurs” and “don’t want to pay taxes anymore,” she said. Moicano has said he began studying economics after facing taxes on his first UFC winnings.
In 2015, the “Less Marx, More Mises” slogan made its way onto the posters brandished by protesters in Brazil’s massive right-wing demonstrations, which foreshadowed the rise of former President Jair Bolsonaro, who would later embrace the libertarian flank.
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