Jason Hartman welcomes Doug Casey of Casey Research to talk about the election. He gives his thoughts on Trump and Biden and answers whether the US is facing a veritable cultural revolution. Jason and Doug also discuss privatized prisons and the differences between civil war, coup, and a secession movement.
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Jason Hartman 0:59
It’s my pleasure to welcome back Doug Casey, a returning guest. He’s been on the show many times. And he’s the founder of Casey Research, the International man, the author of many books, and a man with a lot of insight. And we want to talk about what to expect after the election. Doug, welcome back. How you doing?
Doug Casey 1:18
Good. Jason, nice to talk to you. I’m talking to you right now from Charlottesville, Virginia, which experienced That’s right. It’s a couple years ago.
Jason Hartman 1:27
Sure this you have homes in Aspen, Colorado and in Argentina as well, right.
Doug Casey 1:32
Andorra why as well, which is actually quite different from Argentina, even though it’s right next door to one small country with three and a half million people, mostly soybeans, cattle and timber, but a nice beach front, which is a jets that hang out during the southern summer. But I just came from Aspen drove across country listening to NPR
Jason Hartman 1:57
shocked brainwashed.
Doug Casey 2:00
Well, you know, you hear something enough times by a reasonable sounding person. And after a while it starts, it happens. It’s time to have the United States or country. This is the media is totally dominated by leftists. In fact, everything in the US is dominated by leftist
Jason Hartman 2:18
seems that way big tech is dominated by leftist Hollywood book publishing media. It is like you’d think the whole country is left. But it’s not clearly it’s not. But the left have the voice, don’t they?
Doug Casey 2:32
Yes, they do. And certainly the little white bread mountain town of Aspen, Colorado, I call it the People’s Republic ambassador in Colorado where I just drove in from
Jason Hartman 2:44
and you’ve lived there for a long time. When did you buy your ranch in Aspen?
Doug Casey 2:47
Well, I bought this ranch 20 years ago. But I’m planning on selling it now because Aspen is being inundated by Rich people from New York and LA and San Francisco.
Jason Hartman 3:01
People so what’s wrong cat? Most people would say dog What’s wrong with that?
Doug Casey 3:06
Well, nothing wrong with it. From my point of view, as a landowner, the ducks are quacking. I’m going to feed them because these are wealthy people that are moving to ask them fine. The wealthy people in the People’s Republic of Aspen hold all these BLM friendly deals. Apparently they’re running away from BLM and then later cities,
Jason Hartman 3:26
that’s exactly what they’re doing. It’s like Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, massive hypocrite that he is. When they open that Apple meeting right after the Jordan Floyd. George Floyd incident, he decided he had to give us all a lecture on racism, yet he doesn’t live anywhere near those type of environments and has probably never come in contact with him in his entire life. He’s a complete typical white hypocrite elitist. It’s unbelievable. I mean, I grew up in those neighborhoods, okay, where there was violence and mugging and broken windows and crappy neighborhoods of Los Angeles. That’s that’s my upbringing. I went to integrated schools, I actually lived in those environments, right. But these people who have never experienced anything like it, have no concept, somehow feel the need to do all this virtue signaling that are so self righteous and hypocritical. It’s, it’s absolutely perfect.
Doug Casey 4:18
You’re right. And when you’re growing up, there might have still been a smattering of the values of the Beach Boys and surfer culture and culture from the 60s. But that’s all been washed away. Now. I was being very politically incorrect. So
Jason Hartman 4:35
no mortgage, it
Doug Casey 4:38
was a little bit of luck, California, or at least the coastal counties in California, and Oregon and Washington will separate from the US, but sessions and tried before in the US and wandered up badly. The so called Civil War, which I’ve got to point out that unpleasantness of 1861 1865, which we might see a reduction of was not a civil war, it was a war of succession. It shouldn’t be called a civil war because the Civil War is a war where two or more groups in a nation state attempt to take over the government.
Jason Hartman 5:18
Civil War is more like a coup than
Doug Casey 5:21
Well, no civil war is where two or more groups decide to fight for control the central power in Washington DC, what we had in the last set in the 19th century, was a war of succession, where the South simply water park company from the north, there was no need for any violence. And it wasn’t about slavery. Incidentally, that’s another thing, which is a factoid. A factoid incident is not a little fact. It’s a false fact, like an Android is a false human or asteroids, false SAR one of many words that have been misused.
Jason Hartman 6:00
Right, right. That’s, that’s great. I liked the definition. So but tell us more about the distinction, Civil War coup and secession movement.
Doug Casey 6:08
Okay, well, if you have a secession movement, to groups, disagree with each other seriously, political aspects, economic aspects, cultural aspects. It’s best Sunday part company, because when you have one government that’s making all kinds of laws and regulations and taxes, one group or the other gets control of it and punishes a weaker group. So they actually couldn’t be in one country. And that’s where we are right now. That’s where we were in 1861. And it could have just been a simple succession, where the South pardon went its own ways was different in all those ways. We can talk about that.
Jason Hartman 6:50
And really, you know, when one group gets in control of the Treasury, and the House Ways and Means Committee and decides it can tax and spend the other groups money, isn’t that called taxation without representation?
Doug Casey 7:05
Yes, it is. And of course, this whole idea of democracy is very problematical. Look, to start with the idea of democracy is it boils down to two wolves and a sheep deciding to vote on what to have for dinner. Right? Then people say, well, as Churchill said, democracy is the worst system of government except for all the others. That’s incorrect. Actually, we can talk about that. But because Churchill centered and it was a bone, most people believe it. But Churchill said something else, which is more appropriate. And that is, the best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter. And there he was being candid and correct. So no, I actually don’t believe in democracy. It’s not the best way to organize people politically.
Jason Hartman 7:57
So is representative Republic The best thing?
Doug Casey 8:02
No, I don’t think so. Actually, this may shock some of our listeners, because I have a bad impression of a misimpression. Because I’ve been an anarchist for most of my life.
Jason Hartman 8:18
And explain in Norco capitalism, then because then, to a lot of people, including myself seems pretty radical.
Doug Casey 8:28
It’s scary. When you turn on the media. They’ll say BLM and Tifa and anarchists are running around the streets, trying something. The fact of the matter is, though anarchism as a political philosophy has absolutely zero to do with little round bombs and people in black cape throwing them. anarchism recognizes that government is congealed for us, as multi song said, the power of the state comes out of the barrel of a gun. So we believe that in a civil society, peaceful society, coercion, force should be limited. And in anarchism, we believe the fate should be limited to the smallest amount possible. Now, what does that mean? Okay, taking this kind of our gradient, since the state is pure force, it just taxes and regulates, of course, all kinds of ways, volunteerism or barter. The state should perhaps have an army to protect you from foreign predators have a police force to protect you from domestic predators and have a court system so you can adjudicate disputes without resorting to violence?
Jason Hartman 9:43
Yeah, that sounds very iron randian.
Doug Casey 9:46
Right. Yes, exactly. And if the state does nothing, but that that would be fine. I could live with that. But the fact is, is that those three functions of government are way too important to be left to the kind of people People that inevitably go into government, the kind of people that go into government or people that like to control other people. And then nationally, it’s like the kind of people that go into the mafia are criminals, the kind of people who live in Las Vegas are gamblers kind of people that live in New York, or upwardly mobile. There’s all kinds of things, kind of people that go into government aren’t the best and the brightest and the poorest and the worse. So anarchists, ideally, want to do without government at all, which is possible. It’s a whole different conversation we can have. But in the meantime, that’s currently such as pare government down, let’s chop it away with me, DAX, because about 90%, what the government does today in the United States, either shouldn’t be done at all, or can be done much better by profit seeking entrepreneurs.
Jason Hartman 10:51
So I want to get into the election stuff in you know, and not totally stick too much on this philosophical stuff. But it is interesting, because I love talking about this macro philosophical, the ideology of what government should be and so forth. But I do want to ask you one thing about that. And I generally agree with you, although it doesn’t always go right in one area where I think it has gone sadly wrong, letting the sort of the free market and it’s not free. It’s all crony capitalism, so that would be a misnomer. So I apologize in advance, but privatized prisons. bad deal, I don’t think there should be a profit motive for incarcerating people that has not worked out. Well. Thoughts on just that one.
Doug Casey 11:34
Okay, to start with the criminal justice system doesn’t change just because the management of the presidents are for profit. The reason
Jason Hartman 11:46
it does when the judges get bribed, though,
Doug Casey 11:49
of course, which is another argument to deep politicize the court system and make it an adjudication system where adjudications of courts would compete with each other on the intelligence, the speed, the fairness and low costs of their decisions. Very, very different from the court system today where it’s impossible to get in and once you get in, you can’t get out and you’re bankrupted. If you are, okay, prisons, purpose of a prison in a free market society would be to number one, well, several things are equal. But one of the most important things would be to ensure that the miscreant makes reparations to the person that he damaged. So if there’s any profit to be made, from keeping these people in prison, it should go to the person who was harmed.
Jason Hartman 12:42
It’s called restitution, of course, exactly.
Doug Casey 12:46
The restitution to speak on today’s system, in a in a free market system, if somebody had to be incarcerated, which is another question because I’m not interested in punishing somebody, I’m interested in making the victim Hall, that’s number one. And there are a lot of people that are in prison, that could be productive, if they realized that their sentence was not a matter of how many years, but a matter of how many dollars, they have to somehow create or earn that back. So the whole basis of private prisons are horrible, and they have a unjustly deserved bad reputation. Because what they have to do and they have to incarcerate people are a certain number of years and try to make as much money as they can.
Jason Hartman 13:35
Hey, listen, you know, we’re both real estate investors, Doug, and I would love it, if I could force people to rent my properties and have zero vacancy have triple occupancy, you know, over it’s called overcrowding. Right? You know, as a capitalist, that would be that sounds great. But you know, the system just gets maligned and perverted. So, I agree with you, you know, it’s the it should be about restitution, rather than, you know, time for sure. But hey, let’s talk about the election. Doug, there’s so much going on. We got to get to that. You know, what, what can we expect? You know, it, the whole system, I think we’ve all can agree that it’s it’s corrupted was corrupt without, you know, voter fraud, miscounting balancing now, all of that, because we have a two party system that makes it corrupt on its face, but we are where we are, what can we expect?
Doug Casey 14:24
I think we can expect the worst in this election. Because the country is really divided. Philosophically, it’s like a marriage, where you and your wife have learned to hate each other. Because you just disagree on what’s right and wrong. We disagree on what’s good and bad, what should and shouldn’t be done. And that’s the way things are right now, between the red counties and the blue companies. I don’t see how it can get better people can change their whole psyche. So the the optimal solution to what we’re confronting now a veritable cultural revolution in the US. And I use that word, I’m trying to use that word accurately. What we’re on the edge of is something that’s similar to what China went through, from 1966 to 1976. This is really serious and really ugly, where people really differ on the most basic levels of things. So, but I don’t see how the US can break up so that people are in different political entities, easily, it can happen, it shouldn’t happen. Instead, they’re going to be contesting for who controls Washington and who gets to boss the other way around. This is not a happy situation.
Jason Hartman 15:46
No, it’s definitely not a happy situation. But what can we expect? What are the markets going to do? What about commodities prices? What about housing? I mean, the housing market is booming. It is. I’ve never, I’ve been doing this an awful long time, Doug. And I’ve just never seen a market with inventory this low. And this much might I mean, that migration is a big part of it. Thankfully, our investors are buying suburban properties. So that’s where all the action is. Right. But yeah, I mean, if you’re in New York City, or San Francisco, I think you’re you’re in bad shape, or downtown LA, or, you know, Seattle, or any of these high density areas where you’ve got BLM, and you’ve got COVID. And, you know, all of these, all of the civil unrest, but what’s the market gonna do real estate stocks, commodities, interest rates, whatever you want to say about that? I mean, you’re a financial guy.
Doug Casey 16:38
Well, I agree. First of all, as far as property in the big cities is concerned, they’re essentially dead ducks, and for a good long time, because the governments of these municipalities are bankrupt, and their main source of income is real estate taxes,
Jason Hartman 16:55
and then that is under attack, that’s going to suffer greatly, and they’re going to go even more bankrupt than they already are. So if you’re investing in municipal bonds, in these kinds of places, watch out because you’re likely to see some defaults, that’s going to get pretty ugly in the pension crisis.
Doug Casey 17:13
And if you own property in these big cities, their real estate taxes are going to go up. Furthermore, your occupancy is likely to go way down in the future. At the same time, as I found an SM, the rich are moving in, because it’s safe and quiet. And people generally share values. With you mostly liberal values, I’ve got to say, or I shouldn’t even use the word liberal or I should say status and collectivist values are very different from what liberal values historically have been, because it comes from the word
Jason Hartman 17:50
hypocrite values in those places.
Doug Casey 17:53
Yes, right. So what are you going to do right now with at the same time, Real Estate’s being driven upwards, because it floats on a sea of debt. And right now, with interest rates, real interest rates being a negative, and actual interest rates to 3%, something like that in the real world, eventually, interest rates, first of all, the dollar is going to turn into toilet paper, because they’re creating trillions, as we see already created trillions are crazy. More, they have no alternative. Mine makes no difference. Yeah.
Jason Hartman 18:31
In both vendors, they’re both going to dole out the goodies, the stimulus, whatever they’re going to print for, and they’re already printing. I mean, it’s just a foregone conclusion. But Doug, just, you know, I mean, I know the inflation rate is a lot higher than the government would lead us to believe, than the official stats say, but even, you know, that statement not withstanding, and we both agree with that statement. I’m sure you agree with me, without even answering, you know, there still hasn’t been anywhere near as much inflation as we might expect, given the amount of money creation coming out of the Great Recession, this time around with COVID. The inflation is there some inflation there, for sure, a lot higher than we’re being told. But it’s not dramatic, yet.
Doug Casey 19:18
You’re quite correct. This is in many ways a mirror image of the 70s when the amount of money being created, it wasn’t remotely comparable to what we have today. But retail prices were running away in the 70s people forget that Nixon put on wage and price controls,
Jason Hartman 19:35
right. I remember that. Yeah.
Doug Casey 19:36
Okay. So it’s not nearly as bad as that. But the financial markets were devastated. They were in real terms as cheap as they had been during the 1930s. So now, all that money is flowing into the financial markets, stocks, bonds, and real estate, but it’s going to float down to a retail level too. So look out and Eventually, while the dollar is really inflated out of existence, this is very, very serious interest rates will eventually go back to the levels, I think, and beyond what they were in the early 80s, which you might recall, we’re talking 12 and 15%. For government borrowings. We’re looking at very tough time. So what do you do? What do you do can buy most stocks, they’re grossly over price. Bonds are at our triple threat Tier capital. You’ve got interest rates, you’ve got default risk, you’ve
Jason Hartman 20:35
got the current huge inflation risk.
Doug Casey 20:37
Forget about her bonds. I see a lot of problems with a lot of kinds of real estate, some, okay, much better than others. So where do you go? Well, all I can see at this point is commodities in general, but in particular, the precious metals, gold and silver, I hate to tell people to buy gold, when it’s all time highs, but I think it’s going much higher, much higher. And more than that, I think what you have to do is reorient your psychology. You can’t really be an investor tonight, you can’t really be a saver today. On stable, you’re forced to be a speculator,
Jason Hartman 21:21
which is not fair, because older people who’ve saved money who’ve been conservative who delayed gratification, are forced into these speculative investments that can ruin their retirement. I mean, yes, it’s it’s so unfair. What’s happened now this isn’t new. This isn’t news. This has been going on for decades. But it’s it’s even more acute. Now. I’d say right,
Doug Casey 21:43
you’re quite correct. The only place I think you should go right now is gold stocks, which gold is going higher, Silver’s going higher. And these stocks are very, very cheap. Right now they’re under owned every gold producing sock in the world right now. Their market cap is not quite what the cat or just slightly greater, I should say, than the amount of cash that Apple alone has bank accounts. That’s how cheap they are. And most fund managers have been, they don’t believe in gold. They think it’s a pet rock.
Jason Hartman 22:24
What do you think it’s a barbarous relic to quote Alan Greenspan.
Doug Casey 22:29
So they don’t own gold, it’s very under all gold stocks are very, very cheap. looked at from many points of view, price earnings ratio, all kinds of things. Okay.
Jason Hartman 22:39
All right. So would you say commodities in general? And what about rare earth metals? You know, and the thing you know, the thing, that’s the wild card, Doug, it’s a little further away, but I don’t know if it’s that far away is the asteroid mining, I mean, that could just tank for market for all of these, what we consider precious here on Earth, because it’s so abundant in space, right. And, you know, Japan has already achieved that they have sent a probe to an asteroid collected material brought it back to Earth. We can do it today. You know, and there are companies that are, you know, raising money to do just this, you know, as we speak. You’re quite correct. And
Doug Casey 23:17
Ilan Musk is hoping to land on Mars by 2024. Not long thereafter, make it a colony. Tomorrow’s self sustaining.
Jason Hartman 23:29
So in that whole Mars project, needs to include asteroid mining, just for the water, if nothing else, but yeah,
Doug Casey 23:37
yeah, things are advancing at the rate of Moore’s Law, not just in computers and a number of robotics. Yep, and nanotechnology and biotech. So it’s a wonderful time that we’re moving into from one point of view, but I’m afraid from politically and economically in our personal freedom point of view, it’s going to be very, very scary. That’s why it’s that way. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve written with my co author, john hunt, a series of novels exploring what’s gonna happen in the future. And what’s happening now. We just came out with this commercial Chase. I
Jason Hartman 24:17
know you go for it. Yeah, assassin.
Doug Casey 24:21
Copy with me. And basically, it’s talking about what’s happening today. And the question is, Charles Knight, our hero is trying to reform the unjustly besmirched occupation of political assassination. And the question we ask is, is political assassination moral or immoral? Right or wrong? Is it effective doesn’t really change anything or doesn’t make
Jason Hartman 24:52
the CIA does it. So
Doug Casey 24:57
if you believe the bill clinton actually permitted dozens of Arkansas sides, which should be turned assassinations are concise.
Jason Hartman 25:06
I’ve never heard that. That’s from Arkansas folks. So yeah.
Doug Casey 25:14
snitcher politics, people kill each other, mostly in the form of wars where hundreds of 1000s of people are involved, but on a personal one to one level. What about assassination? And I’m interested in the moral questions as much as the technical questions of
Jason Hartman 25:31
hoppy. So the non the novel explores it. And can people get that international man? Or do they have to go to leftist Amazon or elsewhere?
Doug Casey 25:41
Well, we can go to international man.com. And hardback novels will be available there shortly. But at the moment, yes, Amazon does do a service by the largest publisher in the world today until
Jason Hartman 25:57
they censor you and shut you down. Yes. No, I haven’t had problems. They’ve shut a lot of other people down.
Doug Casey 26:03
Well, yeah, I’m sure that’s in the cards. So get this book before because it’s highly politically incorrect. And I’ve got to say that I’ve been reading the book myself, having written and edited it. But now I’m reading it in the form of a paper like an ordinary reader. And it is one hell of a good book. I’m very proud of it. Everybody should read it, because that is what people think it’s about Trump and killing Trump for the way. We do a lot of things that are very, very different. But no, by this book, I promise you,
Jason Hartman 26:39
it will be about that. Because I would guess that out of the two terrible choices, we always get you would have been a Trump voter more than a Biden voter, right?
Doug Casey 26:49
Well, first was skill and corrupt us, you got to choose? That’s correct. Yeah. Because at least Trump is
Jason Hartman 26:59
Much better than the alternative for sure.
Doug Casey 27:00
Yes, he is. He’s a cultural conservative. He’s at least like to see the US return to the days of Ozzie and Harriet and Father Knows Best, as opposed to cop Kamala Harris, who actually would like to foment a Marxist revolution with her buddies in the Ganga for AOC. And the rest of them.
Jason Hartman 27:20
If Biden is determined to be the winner, she may well become president because Biden is needs to retire.
Doug Casey 27:28
I mean, you know, you’ve got to lose respect for the average voter, assuming that the election results reflect the average voter, which is another question. How much cheating is there? Quite a bit, I’d say. Yeah, probably on both sides, but much more on the democrat side. Now, this is this election is a major turning point in the US, it’s going to be as serious as the election of 1860. And I hope we don’t go into a civil war. I hope it’s it just turns into a mellow succession of different groups in the US, but unlikely. Nobody wants to see the US for and I don’t say America, America is a concept and a wonderful one. But it’s a dead duck. It’s been washed away and saw the United States. And nobody, no president wants to see the US break up on his watch, which is pretty much the thinking that like,
Jason Hartman 28:25
well, we shall see. Let’s all hope for the best and we are on the edge right now. Everybody wants to know what’s going to happen with the selection. And it’s just crazy time. So gotta pray for the country. And let’s hope for the best. Doug, thanks for joining us. The website is international man. Calm, right. Yes. All right. Thanks again. Good to have you.
Doug Casey 28:46
Thank you, Jason.
Jason Hartman 28:52
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