So is arresting people who charitably disclose vulnerabilities gonna be a thing now? I find it hard to believe any society fifty years from now is going to effectively function by shooting itself in the foot to prove how much blood it doesn't need.
This is not a unique thing for that country and current government. It's illegal to challenge the validity of government-provided statistics and even the "Big Mac Index" is manipulated by forcing McD to sell something called "Big Mac" at a lower price. Basically, the IMF and other institutions were using unofficial data to make their estimates since the official data was so obviously bogus. The government responded by cracking down on those reporting the unofficial data. (As an aside, Argentina is also selling inflation-adjusted bonds, so it kind of makes sense to promote large underestimations of that number).
So when the government put forward a voting machine, it became illegal to question the validity of its workings.
1. It's not illegal to "challenge" goverment statistics, everybody does it: private agencies do it, provincial goverments challenge the federeal goverment's stats, etc. Some official said some time ago they'd prosecute some agencies that provided statistics but nothing happend.
2. Goverment kind of "forced" (and not really directly) many companies to leave the price of some products fixed amidst inflation and devaluation, so Big Mc were pretty cheap for a while (that's been over since like 1.5 years).
3. The goverment didn't really crack private agencies from reporting data, they kind of tried and the courts didn't follow. There are lots of agencies reporting inflantion, just check it up.
4. Yes, they fixed the inflation data to fix the inflation-tied bonds (look for "cupon pbi"). But argentina isn't "selling those bonds". Those bonds where issued to funds after the 2002 default, it's a little messy but most funds like these have been nationalized by now, the only people who trade those bonds now are high risk gamblers.
"This is not a unique thing for that country and current government". The city's government and the Nation's government are from opposing parties. This shows that they are both just as corrupt. "This is not a unique thing for that country" (alone) would have been more accurate.
