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Doug Casey is an American writer, financier, and the founder and chairman of Casey Research. He describes himself as an anarcho-capitalist influenced by the works of novelist Ayn Rand. Casey is known as a real estate investor as well as an advisor on how to profit from market distortions and periods of economic turmoil. He’s lately turned his talents to fiction and his new book Assassins, is the third installment in the Charles Knight series of International thrillers. He has lived abroad for many years — visiting over 100 other countries for sheer sport — and currently hangs his hat on a ranch in Uruguay. I caught up with him on a brief stopover in Aspen, Colorado, as he prepared to drive the back roads of America to Washington, DC. He blogs at Doug Casey’s International Man
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Really good podcast. One takeaway is the idea that Western Civilization is ending. I can’t say if it will or won’t. To quote the late, great Yogi Berra “it’s tough making predictions, especially about the future”.
My one contention with Doug Casey is that he targets Western Civilization as if Asia is somehow removed from the equation. All these so called financial experts and investors forget the world we live in today is different from any other time in world history.
Our world now consists of everyone tied together economically, financially. It’s now all interlocked. My biggest beef is that these experts give China, Russia and other parts of the East a pass as if they are immune to any disaster taking place in the future.
They go so far as to suggest that China will win and become the new #1 leader of the world supplanting the US, financially, economically as well as militarily.
As Gail Tverberg likes to say, it all revolves around one resource that built our modern day civilization from the US to Russia to China and all parts in between,……..OIL!
We are at a point where we no longer have access to enormous amounts of CHEAP and EASY to EXTRACT fossil fuels. Without such there will be no Silk Road for China and others because Govt’s by and large run their economies from the sale of fossil fuels by exporting it.
If demand or the price drops their economies suffer. As Gail Tverberg goes on to say that there is NO going back to the Little House on The Prairie days. That horse has left the barn and isn’t coming back.
So my beef with the likes of Doug Casey and others is that “MANKIND” has a serious problem approaching in the next 30-40 yrs because of “resource depletion, rare earth depletion, fossil fuel depletion and an absolute destruction of the planets biosphere” in the pursuit of continuous global growth.
We live on a finite planet where eventually you run out of resources. That’s what the US, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia and everyone else is facing. There won’t be any winners when the music stops.
I think that Gail is dead right! – there is no going back (for most of the population anyway) to the”simpler life”. Unfortunately most of the quoted “experts” – economic ones anyway, are city born and bred – and that is the only perceptual lens that they can use. This bizarre “wokeness” which seems to be spreading like a miasma in some countries – I suspect is a reaction to a growing sense of helplessness – and generates a inchoate (for want of a better word) need in some to react and appear to have some control over destiny – a sort of “kick the baby/dog” response. Unfortunately, it seems to be generating a counter reaction which is equally inchoate – and counter-productive, with this “anyone but the Democrats” cry – despite the fact that continuing this Republican administration will definitely put the seal on the planet’s deterioration – but as primarily urban people – they can’t see that – and I’m afraid out esteemed JHK seems to have joined that crew. Here’s a commentary – https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2020/10/27/yes-wokeness-drove-people-to-trump-but-will-it-decrease-under-biden
Bravo! Outstanding episode. Have you ever considered going full-Rogan? 3 hours and a few fingers of bourbon to get your guest to really open up? Really enjoyed this conversation.
“Soft snow, hard drugs, casual sex.”
Hard drugs these days lands you a lobotomy or a trip to the morgue.
And please, please, seriously consider making that journey together in a documentary film format. That would be incredibly entertaining.
I envision something like this, but less dour 😉
https://youtu.be/A8x73UW8Hjk
Thanks for sharing this fun and thoughtful conversation.
I’m a bit envious ’70s Aspen was before my time.
The, “village of 7500 Ian Fleming villains,” quip was one of your best!
There are far more interesting reasons to move to Uruguay, especially from the Long Emergency perspective – low density living, food self-sufficiency, renewable energy, waterways, a culture that manages to be both conservative and progressive.
But you seem to be more interested in nihilist capitalists and precious metal hucksters these days.
JHK–please do a podcast with CJ Hopkins while it is still possible
https://consentfactory.org/
When I hear Doug Casey talk about how he’s visited 160 countries, many numerous times, how he “has business” in Aspen so he’s there for a few days, I’m reminded that he’s of the generation that benefits maximally from our petroleum exploitation, with disregard for its effects on climate. The guy has the carbon footprint of a hydrogen bomb, like many of his peers, no doubt. Flying all over the world seems normal to him, when its really a terminal condition, every flight an oily luxury that’s incompatible with a living world.
He grew up in the era of fantastic endless possibilities, and has lived a long life full of the spoils of America’s imperial reach. Now he’s witnessed the decadence and disinvestment since the Reagan era, so of course he’s disillusioned. Who wouldn’t be.
We’re all trapped in the amber of our particular time and position in the modern world. Many older American, baby boomers and up, got to live in some pretty rich times, and it’s gotta be brutal to think through just how extraordinarily lucky they were.
There are young kids now who know skies full of noisy jet airplanes instead of birds, who know streets full of threatening cars instead of the neighbors that form their community, who know food full of processed compounds instead of wholesome nutrition.
I’m glad I was able to revisit your website. We’ll surely follow your blog!
Regards | http://manifestingmydestiny.com/
This expanded use of the word gender is a product of academic feminism’s linguistic revolution, mainly since the 1990s, a form of mind control by people who want to deny the existence of an objective reality and reduce everything to a “cultural construct.” The organic meaning of gender that was not politically engineered is unique to languages that classify nouns by gender. Objects and concepts are masculine, feminine or neuter, or in some languages just masculine or feminine. That is not the same thing as male and female. Male and female refer not to gender but to biological sex, which some people now want to deny exists.
The violent unrest, more severe than in the last presidential election cycle, has been overwhelming by the woke left, and very generously financed, largely by oligarchs who run or sit on the boards of giant corporations. Once the oligarchs are done with them, they will withdraw the funding and the violence will dwindle. The US armed forces are loyal to the national government and still powerful enough to put down any serious sedition. Besides, aging populations are not very inclined to violent revolutions. In America, revolutions are more likely to come from the top down than the bottom up.
Yes, I Know that Doug Casey is an American writer, financier, and the founder and chairman of Casey Research.