So here is my objective take from someone that has been living, working and loving Argentina since 2002. I love this country. Although I'm American, I probably equally love this country as much as the USA. There are things I love about this country and there are things I hate about this country. Things here don't work as well as other developed countries. It's generally not a good idea to compare countries but it's human nature to do so.
The economy has been horrible here for decades. There are some small relative periods of reasonable calm between horrible economic diversity. The thing is that nothing works too well here. Things are inefficient, or laws don't make sense. Or just outright corruption.
One time in a therapy session with my therapist (also from Buenos Aires) I was telling her how I wasn't looking forward to moving back to Buenos Aires due to all the hardships, inefficiency, red tape and a million other reasons. I told her that even living here for 10 years before and having 2 out of my 3 kids born here that I could never got accustomed to all of these things. I joked that Porteños are all used to this as they grew up with it and it's normal to them.
That's when she stopped me right away and told me this is NOT normal to them or anyone. I had my aha moment. You see, I've owned several big companies and provided great healthcare coverage for them all. So almost all of my employees were seeing shrinks and therapists each week. That was unheard of at the time for an American. This was first in 2002.
I told my therapist, that everyone is used to all of this inefficiency and red tape from birth. But she said the reason why everyone needs to go to a therapist here is because of what I mentioned. That everything is chaotic, doesn't work, loud, illogical, red-tape plagued. And even if you grew up with it, you don't get accustomed to it. That environment is an endless loop that ultimately drives people crazy.
That was brilliant what she said and she was totally right. She said that's the reason why people are on edge, loud with one another and fighting. So
@Blockchain it's not just you that notices it. My local friends will admit it's like that here for the reasons I mentioned.