The issue of the “free market” is rather secondary in the failure of Argentina. A better way to understand it would be observe that there was a peon-ization of farmers and labor in general. The US was, in many ways, saved by the New Deal, WW2, and the period after the war when there was no competition.
The U.S. is already quite far down the road of creating its own class of de facto oligarchy and peonization of its working class via the skewed concentration of wealth.
The notion of something like a system that operates a “free market” is a relative given. The key to success of an economy is really, however, about a free and fair economy.
When you compare the USA and, for instance, post-war Germany (the most unionized country on earth), most of all starting from the 1970’s onward, you see a society that relies on relatively little luck (lots of farmland, natural resources, size, political security, etc.) and one that emphatically operates an economy with “free” and “fair” properly balanced. Comparing all the features and advantages and disadvantages, the USA punches way below its weight. Germany’s success in and importance to the world economy is based more on what it lacks in political and geographic advantages and natural resources — its luck. Instead, what it produces from its education system and its deliberate policies are what provides its success: high tech and manufacturing. Its ability to generate value fairly for its citizens is at the heart of this success. And this is true of most northern European countries, almost none of which enjoy the political, geographic and natural resource advantages that the USA has the luck to have. But they all deliver way better lives for their citizens than the USA has done, with the exceptional years after WW2.
Learning the the lesson of Argentina is one that would have helped the USA in the 1970s. Now, it has to look at the models of either Germany/Northern Europe or China to find a way forward. China is not a choice, but more an object lesson. The USA can really only continue down the road of Argentina or take the example of northern Europe.
