Latest / Financial Survival Network / Over the Abyss with Doug Casey #5871

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Over the Abyss with Doug Casey #5871 · Financial Survival Network

0:00
What's the biggest danger that we confront now? And I think the clearest immediate
0:06
danger is probably this phony war, this proxy war the Ukraine. But then
0:13
after that, it's the potential collapse of the financial markets followed by a collapse
0:20
of the economy, followed by social upheaval here in the US, and this
0:26
can go on all over the world. You're listening to Carrie Let's Financial Survival
0:31
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0:48
Financial Survival Network now more than ever. And welcome you are listening to
0:58
watching the Financial Survival Network. I'm your host, Carry Lutz. Well,
1:02
a lot going on in the world, to put it mildly, to put
1:04
it charitably, but let's try to get a perspective on what exactly is going
1:10
on? Is this the end of Western civilization as we know it? Our
1:15
good friend Doug Casey is with us from the International Man. Doug, it's
1:21
always great to have you on the show. So what's going on here?
1:25
Are we're going to survive this, or we're just useless eaters that they want
1:29
to get rid of so they can implement their a grand plan. Well,
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you know, George Carlin was always my favorite comedian and mine too. I
1:40
don't think we have to worry. The Earth is going to survive and it's
1:42
just going to shake off these problems like a like a dog after it has
1:47
a bath. But I always like to look at the I always like to
1:51
look at the bright side. If we take a gloomier view, it's entirely
1:59
possible we could be moving towards World War three. And that is really really
2:04
a scary prospect. I mean, it could destroy civilization as we know it,
2:09
and the fault would lie about one hundred percent, in my opinion,
2:15
with Washington DC. Yeah, no, I totally agree with you these policies
2:21
that we've followed post World War two. I mean, even look, you
2:25
could go back to the Civil War. We all know that. But just
2:30
in the so called modern era from World War One on, basically everything that's
2:36
gone on, the gone wrong in the world is to some extent, Washington
2:40
DC's fault, don't you think. I do think that actually, and it's
2:46
it's really a pity because America used to stand for something. America used to
2:53
be an exceptional country. And it was exceptional because it was the only country
2:58
in the world's history that was actually founding on the principles of individual freedom.
3:02
And well, the values that were put across in the constitution, freedom of
3:09
speech, freedom of thought, free markets, that's all that's all being washed
3:17
away at this point. Yeah, well, it looks like basically every institution.
3:23
And it's not just the United States here. I think it's says a
3:27
global phenomena. You look what's happening in China with everything there, and you
3:35
know, just I watched these videos of stuff falling apart in China, the
3:39
so called Tofu drag projects, where they're just like cutting corners, even though
3:46
they know that the highway is going to collapse and thousands of people will be
3:50
killed, they just cut corners. I mean it's corruption. I mean,
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America certainly doesn't have a monopoly on corruption and does it. No, it
4:01
doesn't. And China is interesting because I lived in Hong Kong. For goodness,
4:08
how long did I lived there? For? About fifteen years on and
4:12
off. And when I first went to mainland China to Beijing, when we
4:17
landed in Beijing airport. It was just somewhat bigger than the little airport in
4:26
Aspen, Colorado. When we took a car into a downtown Beijing, it
4:33
was on a two lane road and there were still farmers with oxes following the
4:39
fields next to it. Yeah. I mean, the progress that China has
4:43
made is unbelievable. It's incredible. That's on the bright side. But at
4:48
the same time, since a lot of it, a lot of it,
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not all of it has been state directed, They've made some huge miss allocations
4:57
of capital, stupid miss allocations a capital for political reasons. So I'm not
5:03
terribly optimistic about China over the next ten years, certainly, but I'm not
5:09
optimistic about any place in the world for the next ten years. Is an
5:14
island decade? Is there an island we can all escape to the land of,
5:19
you know, fantasy island paradise where we get away from all the foibles
5:24
and the insanity of government. I mean, we're living in a kafka esque
5:29
world right now, Doug, Well, you know, talking about islands,
5:32
one guy that you might want to have on your show is a Jelika who
5:39
founded Liberland. Have you explored that at all. No, not yet,
5:44
but I heard some mention of it. Yeah, it's an island in the
5:48
Danube River between Croatia and Serbia. And because of just the way these things
5:55
work, neither Croatia nor Serbia claims it for reasons of their own. So
6:02
the stake a flag there about goodness how long ago? Ten years ago,
6:08
and he's trying to get it recognized as a country, get people to live
6:13
there, and uh so, who knows anything can happen from that point of
6:16
view. But what other islands might be interesting to uh to uh to go
6:23
to and stake out Well, certainly not Haiti. I mean that's uh,
6:31
that's going to become the fifty first state of the Union over the next few
6:36
years if they don't watch out. Uh. Eighties an issue that another one
6:43
of the United States screw ups going back to the eighteen hundreds. In fact,
6:48
most of Latin America, much of it in Central America, and everything
6:54
that's going wrong there now is directly traceable to American imperialism. Invasions that took
7:00
place, many many invasions, you know, during a. Smedley Butler's time,
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and the inability of the US to lake ever really look for a meaningful
7:15
solution. They're always looking for the next strong man who would just basically let
7:20
us pick our fruit trees, you know, banana republics. Yeah. Yeah,
7:26
the people in Washington just can't leave things alone. And I don't think
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that's ever going to change. And the reason I say that is because you've
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got two kinds of people in the world. People that like to create things
7:41
and move atoms around and make things and manipulate physical reality, and people that
7:46
like to move people around and manipulate people. And those are the kind that
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always go to Washington because you can get control of the of the instrument of
7:59
the state where they can force people to do that. So it's gotten worse.
8:03
I mean it really has, Washington, and I used to live there
8:07
for goodness twenty years. I'm sorry to hear that. Yeah, it's it
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really is a cesspool that draws that kind of person the way Las Vegas draws
8:18
gamblers and the way Hollywood draws want to be stars, Washington draws just not
8:24
the best in the brightest, but the scum of the earth. Sociopath It's
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a magnet. It's a sociopathic magnet because hey, you're a sociopath. What's
8:35
better than getting to screw with people's heads and make them do things they don't
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want to do, or, better yet, get them to do things that
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you want them to do that they don't even know why they're doing them.
8:46
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, it's a dream, Yeah, it really is.
8:52
And you know, I'm trying to think, what's the biggest danger that
8:58
we confront now? And I think the clearest immediate danger is probably this phony
9:05
war, this proxy war the Ukraine. But then after that, it's the
9:11
potential collapse of the financial markets followed by a collapse of the economy, followed
9:18
by social upheaval here in the US, and this could go on all over
9:22
the world. It's a worrisome thought. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you
9:28
know, the Founding fathers, particularly Hamilton, their major fear was a societal
9:35
breakdown and chaos. And I guess back then the perception was that the social
9:41
order, you know, was quite fragile, and that that government needed to
9:48
like reinforce the social order, largely by staying out of things that didn't know
9:54
what it was doing and didn't know how to do. And really, I
10:01
think the perception now, mistakenly among many of you out there, is that
10:05
the social order, civilization is firmly ensconced. But you only have to go
10:11
to our rapidly declining urban centers to see that that they're going rogue. They're
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going native in these places like Chicago, Baltimore, and you know, you
10:24
know the list as well as I do. It's it's shocking that like things
10:30
like shoplifting has been normalized and and you know, the criminals, the truly
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the inmates are running the asylum. Well, I did an article now as
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you mentioned that at internationalman dot com just yesterday on the state of US cities.
10:52
And the thing is is that ever since the dawn of history, cities
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have been the central of civilization. It's where you can have comfort and safety
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and trade. U cities make civilization possible. And the way that American cities
11:13
are collapsing, they really are. They're not centers of production of new wealth
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anymore. But there are cesspools where you put inventories of people and those people
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aren't don't seem to be capable of anything but consuming stuff that's given to them
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and voting. So the nature of cities has has changed, and it's it's
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very disturbing for the prospects of civilization itself. I sometimes wonder if we couldn't
11:48
have a new dark age with you know, supply chains as as tenuous and
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as complicated as they are. You break a few of them, and the
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others break, and then others break, and it's hard to put these things
12:07
back together again because a lot of people in the West, well everywhere,
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frankly, at this point, I don't know how to make stuff anymore.
12:16
Well, then I know how to do is sit in front of their computers
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all day and manipulate digits, which is nice. That's great. Love love
12:24
computers or love hate them anyway, you know, it could it could,
12:30
It could get scary. I think I was thinking about this. Like,
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you know, we grew up. We learned how to change a tire,
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alright. Cars were a lot less complicated. You could kind of screw around
12:41
with a carburetor with the uh, you know, if the car wouldn't start,
12:46
you could actually maybe get it to start with a set of chopper cake.
12:50
You can figure it out looking if the distributor was working and so forth.
12:56
You can't do that anymore. I can't do it. Well. I
12:58
have an ev but that's neither here nor there. The fact is you know,
13:01
the modern vehicle, it's basically a brick when it stops working, you
13:09
know. And and then the number of people who can actually get these cars
13:13
to work is declining because that's a dirty job, and nobody wants to do
13:18
these dirty jobs. I mean, you know, I was like taking something
13:22
apart in my house to get my air conditioner to work, and because I
13:28
just didn't feel like calling somebody, so I messed around with some wires.
13:33
Air Conditioners are still pretty simple, at least the ones I have, and
13:37
I actually got it working. But you know, the number of things that
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you can actually fix in your house nowadays is a very finite number of things.
13:46
You know, you could maybe screw in a couple of lightbulbs, and
13:50
if their WiFi lightbulbs, you know, you could spend an hour trying to
13:54
get them to work on the network. But outside of that, there's really
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not much you're capable of of producing or fixing in your own home. Yeah,
14:03
you're right, and if something breaks, uh, generally you don't even
14:09
try to fix it. You're supposed to replace it. But the fact of
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the matter is is that most of those replacement parts come from China, not
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here in the us. Yeah, it's it's it's becoming an untenable form of
14:24
existence here on so many levels. And then yet you know, we got
14:30
you do have your elon musks of the world. Whatever people might think about
14:35
him, Hey, the guy owns space now basically he dominates space. And
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you know, the things like the Internet being able to go all over the
14:46
world now regardless of infrastructure and wires. You know, so we are moving
14:52
ahead on certain fronts here as well, but complexity and the ability of the
14:58
human mind to keep up with it, to manage it. I think we're
15:03
like in a losing battle. Doug. Yeah, we'll just have to see
15:07
what happens. My solution to the problems of the world is more freedom and
15:15
a free market. You talked about useless miles earlier. Most of those useless
15:20
miles work work for the state. They're very well paid over their president there,
15:30
they're fellow citizens. And it seems to me that I don't know what
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the percentage would be ninety percent at least of the US government certainly, and
15:41
local governments that are no better could be abolished. The argument that I make
15:48
is that since government is forced, since the government is coercion, that's the
15:52
nature of it. It's not we the people getting together, it's we should
16:00
really have nothing but a police force to protect you domestically, military to protect
16:08
you from foreign threats, and a court system to adjudicate disputes without resorting to
16:15
force. And the rest of the rest of the government I think is redundant
16:21
and useless and counterproductive and extremely costly to the average guy. I mean,
16:26
all of our biggest expenses are taxes defeed the beast. Yeah, to feed
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the beast that refuses to be tamed. And yeah, like I saw a
16:41
funny meme it said, without government, who would water the roads because like
16:48
in Florida here they're watering the medians, but they can't seem to aim the
16:53
sprinklers properly and the streak gets watered. You know, So without government,
16:59
But if it was private and you look at, hey, we're wasting hundreds
17:03
of thousands of dollars a year watering asphalt, you'd figure out a way to
17:07
fix it. But there's no incentive for the government to stop watering the streets.
17:14
Yeah, no, there's not. And it's true everywhere. Frankly,
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it's you know, before the Soviet Union collapsed, which was a wonderful thing
17:23
that it just collapsed peaceably. It's that, you know, Russians used to
17:29
ask, well, if we didn't have our government, who would make our
17:33
would make our shoes? Like playing got you would make our cars? Haven't
17:37
haven't thought of that? And that's pretty much the way the Americans think when
17:42
it comes to the various things that governments do today. So this is not
17:49
I think Russia gets a very bad rap because that country has totally reformed since
17:57
the collapse of so At Union. There are more Communists in American universities and
18:07
there probably aren't all of Russia today. Uh, the average Russian has kind
18:11
of learned his lesson at this point. Well, the old people, you
18:15
know, well whatever you grew up if you like. But the young people
18:18
are not that way at all. And people don't realize that. The uh,
18:22
the top tax rate in Russia is only twelve percent, So that's true.
18:30
It's it's it's funny that, you know, I've talked to a number
18:34
of people. I've I've been to the Soviet Union in Russia over the years,
18:40
at least half a dozen times, and I've been all over the place,
18:45
starting when it was the Soviet Union and US. It transformed into Russia,
18:52
and it's it's a very uh, it's interesting, still a dysfunctional country.
18:59
Once you get on rout in Moscow or I should say Saint Petersburg and
19:03
Moscow, it's still pretty backward, pretty pretty primitive. Yea, not a
19:10
lot of comforts. But you know, friends I have that live there now
19:14
on Westerners tell me that from day to day it's pleasant, it's free,
19:22
nobody bothers you. So this is not in the average American has been convinced
19:29
that it's still more door still the Soviet Union. It's not. Yeah,
19:34
this is very true. You know, it is different. But he Putin's
19:40
not my favorite dictator. But but I guess if the trains run on time,
19:47
then people are happy and and they move on. So a energy,
19:52
we have this insane energy policy emanating from the capitals of the world. It
20:00
looks like it's aimed at shutting down sustainable energy to me, sustainable energies,
20:06
hydrocarbons. It's been sustaining a modern civilization for over a hundred years and we're
20:12
trading it for which I think. I don't I'm not against wind and solar
20:19
and all that, but they just don't seem ready for prime time in a
20:25
lot of cases, and we're crowding out the energy system that works for the
20:30
energy system of the future that very well might not work. I mean,
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isn't that the definition of insanity? We can't have modern life without without energy,
20:44
it just can exist. No, you're you're absolutely right. I mean,
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I too have nothing against wind and solar. They're fine for special applications
20:56
and special places, but as mass power for an industrial civilization, it's actually
21:03
crazy to try to do that, and to spend hundreds of billions. It's
21:07
going to be trillions of dollars to build these things which lose money, which
21:14
is to say, destroy capital, and the more you do it, the
21:19
less reliable the grid becomes. It's actually crazy. So once again, this
21:29
is the kind of people to get into the state that do these do these,
21:34
do these crazy things that the answer from a technological point of view is
21:41
nuclear power, which is by far the safest, the cleanest, and the
21:49
cheapest form of mass power generation. And the hysteria that we've had against nuclear
21:56
power for many years, I guess it's started with the hippies evolved into the
22:02
greenies. We shouldn't be there are about fifty new technologies for small self contained
22:15
variable nuclear plants. Uh, safe, cheap. There could be hundreds of
22:22
them, thousands of them around the US that could actually fulfill the promise of
22:27
nuclear power. It will be almost too cheap to monitor. Yeah, but
22:33
that's what they told us in the sixties. Nuclear power is going to be
22:37
so cheap that you won't have to you know, you won't have meters.
22:42
It's going to be so cheap. But they managed to screw that one up,
22:45
didn't they Well they did. It should be that cheap, and it
22:48
would be that cheap if it had if nuclear power had not been regulated and
22:56
to the level that it is that it is today. What are you doing
22:59
dry having an electric car? What kind do you have? It's not like
23:02
I got a Tesla. It's it's a lot of fun, you know.
23:06
It's basically a supercar for under a hundred grand. So yes, they're lightning
23:12
fast. I mean they're they're they're quite and they handle like slot cars because
23:18
it is very low to the ground and the tech you know, like I
23:22
put that thing on FSD. It just drove me home, you know,
23:26
fifteen minutes before this interview. Basically I had to intercede once because it wanted
23:33
to go in the wrong lane. And just the oh, the brilliance of
23:41
it. You know, it's really incredible. I'm all, I'm all all
23:45
for it. I like, uh, I've been a car guy in my
23:49
whole life. I'm all all for is electric vehicles. But you're taking you're
23:56
taking some risks. If the grid goes that Tessa will turn into a brick.
24:03
Yeah, yeah, I have a generator, but you know that it
24:07
is super super expensive. So yeah, I mean the you know there's a
24:14
risk, but but it's been a lot of fun. I have to say,
24:18
the most fun car I ever had in so many ways, like the
24:22
greatest car ever made, as long as you don't have issues, right,
24:26
Yes, yeah, no, I mean a lot of advantages, not many
24:32
moving parts, and it's quiet and no, they really are they really are
24:37
nice. It's just I understand. I can't confirm this, but there's legislation
24:44
to prohibit Americans from buying small generators. Have you heard that or is that?
24:52
Yeah, well they got to kill all the fun. Yeah, they're
24:56
contemplating it. You know the amount of pollution that a generator puts out,
25:00
especially if it runs on propein is nil. Natural gas is of all the
25:07
hydrocarbons, by far the safest, cleanest burning, most efficient, energy efficient.
25:12
But you know, leave it to these sociopaths to get on the bandwagon,
25:18
right, Yeah, it is. And incidentally, right now natural gas
25:23
is in real terms, at about the lowest level in history. Contracts are
25:30
trading it around two dollars and fifty cents for a thousand MCS and very very
25:40
cheap relative to everything, including US past. So I've been buying natural gas
25:49
producers and some of them, especially in Canada and Alberta, are yielding those
25:56
to ten percent dividends, and I think those dividends will only go up with
26:02
natural gas prices in the future. So that's kind of an interesting area and
26:07
otherwise overpriced stock market I think. Yeah, a lot of that, a
26:11
lot of that. All right, Well, hey, Doug, really appreciate
26:14
you coming on get sharing your insights on today's malaise with us, and the
26:21
best place to find you is Internationalman dot com and also on YouTube. I
26:26
guess that's where we are right now, isn't it. Yes, we will
26:30
be shortly. Yeah, okay, So I'm also on Doug Casey's take on
26:34
on YouTube, and I'd always like to plug my three novels. I've written
26:40
a lot of books, but I like to mention the novels Speculator, Drug
26:45
Lord and Assassin, which is another story. And they're all good reads,
26:48
so absolutely I've read a couple of them. All right, Thanks so much,
26:52
Doug. Hey, you've got a question for Doug myself, shoot me
26:56
an email k l at kryltz dot com and the link to doug site and
27:02
his YouTube channel is on the show notes to this interview on Financial Survival Network
27:07
dot com. Make sure you sign up for your free newsletter. Doug always
27:11
a pleasure. Keep up the great work. We'll talk to you again soon.
27:14
Thanks Kerry, thanks for listening to carry Lets's Financial Survival Network, your
27:19
solution to today's trying times. For the latest, go to Financial Survival Network
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dot com. Financial Survival Network now more than ever.