Doug Casey on international law

Here’s an analogy. Look at the world of international law as a sleazy nightclub with 200 customers. Some are going to be raucous, some will be quiet; some are friendly, some are aggressive; some smart, some stupid. 

There will always be a few gangbangers who don’t like each other, some townies who hate the preppies, some junkies, a couple of ex-cons, and a few psychos. And there’s no cop to keep order. The world is just like that bar. No written rules, just some vague understandings. And lots of misunderstandings. Like in any bar, customers size each other up, deciding who to drink with, who’s looking for trouble, or, if you’re a bad actor, who you can beat up and roll.

The US used to be the toughest customer in the saloon of international law, buying friends with free drinks. But he’s turned into a mean drunk who’s overdrawn his tab. The other customers who used to tolerate his eccentricities have started to dislike, disrespect, and resent him. It will probably end up like an altercation in Deadwood’s Gem Saloon.

~ Doug Casey, "Cost of the Iran War—and Why It Will Fuel Inflation," International Man, March 13, 2026

 

Doug Casey on hate speech

Hate speech is unpleasant. I don't like it any more than anybody else does.  But it's important that there be no regulation of what people say.  Not just because the First Amendment guarantees free speech, but because if you do regulate speech, who decides what's hateful?  It's not an objective standard.  It's an opinion.  And in a highly politicized environment like today's, that's asking for trouble. 

I'm all for people being allowed to say things that are hateful, simply because how else can you know who they are and what they believe?  Trying to preclude hate speech is about as stupid as trying to enforce loving speech.

I like to know what's going on in people's minds, as opposed to trying to guess.  Forewarned is forearmed.  Suppressing so-called hate speech is like putting a lid on a pressure cooker.  At some point, it will blow.  The best solution to so-called hate speech is open discussion.

~ Doug Casey, "Doug Casey on Whether Charlie Kirk's Death Could Be America's Franz Ferdinand Moment," International Man, September 24, 2025

 

Doug Casey on the closing of USAID

While Trump is adding new distortions with his tariffs, he’s unwinding old distortions by deregulating.  For example, the abolition of USAID.  It was a veritable criminal organization spending $50 or $60 billion a year of taxpayer’s money on destructive grifts.  Many entities and individuals who were expecting funding from USAID will default on their obligations, and have to liquidate.  The same thing will happen when the Department of Education bites the dust.  And FEMA.  And hopefully hundreds more agencies, offices, departments, bureaus, and NGOs.  With any luck, thousands of grifters will be jailed or wind up living under bridges. 

~ Doug Casey, "Trump’s Tariff and Income Tax Plans: A Major Shift for Gold and Your Portfolio," International Man, February 15, 2025

Doug Casey on Trump's tariffs

Trump seems to think that tariffs will fuel a boom.  That’s ridiculous.  They’ll only result in a huge reduction in our standard of living.  Tariffs amount to placing your own country under embargo.  It’s like shooting yourself in the foot.

~ Doug Casey, "Trump’s Tariff and Income Tax Plans: A Major Shift for Gold and Your Portfolio," International Man, February 15, 2015

Doug Casey on meme stock madness and Weimar hyperinflation

Q: Many meme stock gamblers are younger people who are heavily in debt and have poor job prospects.  They feel that getting lucky in the stock market casino is the only way to get ahead. 

What’s your take? 

Doug Casey: Perhaps we’re approaching the stage of what happened in Germany in the early ’20s when the average German couldn’t get ahead by working.  Since the currency was losing value so rapidly, it made no sense to save.  It barely made sense to work.  To stay ahead of the collapse of the currency, everyone tried to get lucky with scams and schemes they didn’t really understand.  This led to instability in society and the degeneration of norms and morals.  Many looked for radical political solutions, with the Communists or the National Socialists.

That seems similar to what’s happening today in the US. Its financial aspect is facilitated by the fact that anyone can open an account with Robinhood, and everybody has an iPhone.  Therefore, everybody can buy and sell stocks and options.  But only a tiny, tiny portion of these people have any real understanding of the stock market, securities analysis, money, or economics.

I’d say it’s an indication that the economy and the markets are on the edge of a precipice when the modern-day equivalent of shoeshine boys think that they actually know what they’re doing.

~ Doug Casey, "Meme Stock Mania and Impending Financial Disaster," LewRockwell.com, May 30, 2024

Doug Casey on the cryptocurrency bubble

Q: Some people made fortunes with Dogecoin, a dog-themed cryptocurrency. 

Dogecoin was created as a joke, with no practical use case. Still, its market cap peaked at over $88 billion, which is roughly the recent market cap of multinational computer maker Dell Technologies. 

What is really going on here? 

Doug Casey: I understand that there are about 40,000 cryptocurrencies out there. The crypto market has turned into a mania spawned by the success of Bitcoin, which has a very real use. 

But as Nick Giambruno has pointed out, most of these things serve absolutely no useful purpose. People think they’re investing in them. They’re not even speculating in them. They’re gambling with them but don’t know it. Most cryptos have less value than Chuck E. Cheese tokens or airline frequent flyer miles. They have absolutely no value or use. To reference the old joke, they’re “trading sardines,” not “eating sardines.” They amount to play money, like that in a game of Monopoly. 

But because Dogecoin (I like to call it “doggy coin”) was mentioned and mildly promoted by a couple of celebrities, it somehow captured the imagination of gamblers and wannabe masters of the universe and got traction. People started buying and selling it for no reason other than the fact everyone else was doing it. Dogecoin became a financial meme.

Let me make a prediction. I don’t know if it’s going to be a week from now or a year from now, but the $88 billion in Dogecoin will disappear. It’s going to zero because that’s what it’s worth. The same will happen to 99.9% of other cryptos. Let me hasten to add that Bitcoin has real value as a money, however.

Stories will be told about Dogecoin, much like those about the tulip mania of the 1630s in Holland. 

~ Doug Casey, "Meme Stock Mania and Impending Financial Disaster," International Man, May 30, 2024

Doug Casey on the green energy scam

Before the Industrial Revolution, the overwhelmingly major fuel source was wood.  After that, we went to coal, which was a big improvement in density of energy and economics.  Then, we went to oil, another huge improvement in energy density and economics.

These things happened not because of any government mandates but simply because they made both economic and technological sense.  If the market had been left alone, the world would undoubtedly be running on nuclear.  Nuclear is unquestionably the safest, cheapest, and cleanest type of mass power generation.  This isn’t the time to go into the numerous reasons that’s true.  But if nuclear had been left unregulated, we’d already be using small, self-contained, fifth-generation thorium reactors, generating power almost too cheap to meter.  The world would already be running on truly clean green electricity.

Instead, time, capital, and brainpower have been massively diverted to so-called “ecological” power sources—mainly wind and solar—strictly for ideological reasons.  The powers that be want to transition the whole world to phony green energy, like it or not.

I’m all for green energy in principle.  There’s no question that solar and wind are worthwhile and effective for select applications—generally small, isolated, special locations where conventional fuel is inconvenient or too costly.  The efficiency of solar has been tremendously improved over the last few decades, as has wind efficiency.  But neither make any sense for mass base-load power in industrial economies.

With further technological advances, they may become more economic someday.  Perhaps people will eventually put large collectors in high Earth orbit and microwave the power down to the surface.  There are all kinds of sci-fi possibilities.  But right now, “green” is just a nice word for “stupid,” “ideological,” or “government-sponsored.”

Doing things the green way takes power away from the markets, which is where people vote with their dollars. It instead places power in the hands of ideologues and bureaucrats.

In brief, wind and solar are being promoted at the very time, nuclear and fossil fuels are being damned.  It’s the opposite of what should be happening and a very bad trend from every point of view.

Put me down as liking the birds and the bunnies as much as anyone else, but I’m anti-green.  Anyway, ecofreaks don’t really care about the birds and the bunnies so much.  That’s just a veneer.  They actually just hate people and really want them to disappear.  At a minimum, they want to control them.  And the great global warming/anti-fossil-fuel hysteria is a great way to do it.

~ Doug Casey, "Why the Carbon Hysteria is a Huge Threat to Your Personal Freedom and Financial Wellbeing," International Man, February 15, 2024

Doug Casey on college

The fact is that college today is not just a gigantic misallocation of four of the most valuable years of your life and a huge amount of money.  It’s much worse.  In the time he’s not partying at what amounts to a five-star resort, drinking and chasing girls, a student is being actively corrupted and indoctrinated.  He’ll emerge with a near-valueless degree, a bunch of bad attitudes, destructive ideas, and a mountain of debt.

~ Doug Casey, "Raising Free-Thinking Children Amid Societal Madness," International Man, February 29, 2024

Doug Casey on the nation-state

My view is that the institution of the state itself is a bad thing.  It’s not a question of getting the right people into the government; the institution itself is hopelessly flawed and necessarily corrupts the people that compose it, as well as the people it rules.  This statement invariably shocks people, who believe that government is both a necessary and permanent part of the cosmic firmament. 

The problem is that government is based on coercion, and it is, at a minimum, suboptimal to base a social structure on institutionalized coercion.

~ Doug Casey, "End of the Nation-State," International Man, December 7, 2023

Doug Casey on monarchy

From around 12,000 B.C. to roughly the mid-1600s, the world’s cultures were organized under strong men, ranging from petty lords to kings, pharaohs, or emperors. 

It’s odd, to me at least, how much the human animal seems to like the idea of monarchy.  It’s mythologized, especially in a medieval context, as a system with noble kings, fair princesses, and brave knights riding out of castles on a hill to right injustices.  As my friend Rick Maybury likes to point out, quite accurately, the reality differs quite a bit from the myth.  The king is rarely more than a successful thug, a Tony Soprano at best, or perhaps a little Stalin.  The princess was an unbathed hag in a chastity belt, the knight a hired killer, and the shining castle on the hill the headquarters of a concentration camp, with plenty of dungeons for the politically incorrect.

~ Doug Casey, "End of the Nation-State," International Man, December 7, 2023

Doug Casey on terrorism

The fact is, believe it or not, there are over 100 distinct definitions of terrorism out there, mostly put out by various US government agencies. Perhaps they can’t agree on a definition because it’s useful to leave the concept as a floating abstraction to be used when convenient. 

I would define terrorism as a tactic of warfare intended to have mainly psychological effects on a civilian population. 

But, remember, terrorism is a tactic of warfare—like artillery barrages, cavalry charges, frontal assaults, and a hundred other tactics.  They’re all nasty.  But properly applied, terrorism can often achieve an objective with vastly fewer casualties than the alternatives. 

Napoleon said, quite correctly, that in warfare, the psychological is to the physical as three is to one.  That’s why there’s an emphasis on winning—or at least changing—the hearts and minds of both the enemy’s troops and his people. Terror is one way to do that.  And it’s typically the lowest-cost alternative.  The US, currently still a rich country, rails against “terror” because it’s mainly a poor man’s tactic.  But we use it when it suits us. 

In the last century or so, the US has fought a lot of guerrilla conflicts.  But it typically forgets that when you’re an outside third party fighting a guerrilla war in someone else’s homeland, you’re almost certainly on the wrong side because guerrilla wars are people’s wars.  And it’s a thin line between a guerrilla war and terrorism.  I’m a freedom fighter; you’re a rebel; he’s a terrorist. 

Governments have always used terror.  The Assyrians—proto–Middle Easterners, if you will—liked to scare enemies by skinning alive those who resisted.  Genghis Khan and Tamerlane purposefully used terror by piling up skulls into pyramids.  The Romans purposefully committed genocide as a method of warfare on occasion and reserved crucifixion as a terror punishment. 

Let’s not be too sanctimonious about terrorism.  Bombing cities, which are by definition full of civilians, is just state terrorism, tarted up, justified, and rationalized with legalities and rhetoric.  The real enemy here isn’t terrorism, writ small or large, it’s politics.  The real enemies are the institutions of politics and governments themselves.

~ Doug Casey, "Middle East Conflict and What Comes Next," International Man, October 26, 2023

Doug Casey: "U.S. founders modeled the country on Rome"

U.S. founders modeled the country on Rome, all the way down to the architecture of government buildings, the use of the eagle as the national bird, the use of Latin mottos, and the unfortunate use of the fasces—the axe surrounded by rods—as a symbol of state power.  Publius, the pseudonymous author of The Federalist Papers, took his name from one of Rome’s first consuls.  As it was in Rome, military prowess is at the center of the national identity of the U.S.  When you adopt a model in earnest, you grow to resemble it.

~ Doug Casey, "The Decline and Fall of the American Empire," International Man, August 31, 2022

Doug Casey: "the entire country has been greatly over-financialized

The entire country has been greatly over-financialized.  It's all about credit and manipulating interest rates and propping up the bond market and floating government debt and so forth.  In a stable, capitalist, free market society, people produce and they consume and they save, but it's not a question of, "Hello, New York, buy.  Hello, Chicago, buy.  Hello, Los Angeles, sell."  Watching the screen all day...  People aren't producing as opposed to gambling.  And as inflation gets out of control, which it will, they're going to be forced to try to speculate to stay ahead of the destruction of their money.  And after a while it becomes no point in saving because your savings vanish before your very eyes.  And that destroys the actual structure of society.  This is much more serious than the talking heads mention on TV.

~ Doug Casey, interview with Dan Ferris, Stansberry Investor Hour, 35:15 mark, July 11, 2022

Doug Casey on trends and inflection points

Trends in motion tend to stay in motion until they reach a climax.  At which point, anything can happen.

But unfortunately, at great revolutionary turning points in civilization—which we’re involved in now—things usually get worse even after the old trend stops.  This happened in Russia in 1917 and in France in 1789.  Just because the old trend finally runs into a brick wall doesn’t mean that things get better right away.  There’s a period of chaos after that.

~ Doug Casey, "Doug Casey on Why Woke Corporations Will Go Broke," International Man, June 14, 2022

Doug Casey on the impact of DIE and ESG on corporate cultures

The concepts of DIE (diversity, inclusion, and equity) and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) have inundated corporate culture like a tidal wave of sewage.  They’re viewed as being good, positive, and something that everybody should observe when they should be thrown out with the garbage.  They’re purely destructive. 

One of the causes for this, other than our corrupt education system, is that corporations today are usually not run by entrepreneurs.  Entrepreneurs, the founders, generally have one way of thinking.  Later, managers take over.  The company is then run by suits, heavy with lawyers and accountants. They’re what the French call “petit fonctionnaires.”  These are people with bureaucratic mindsets, better at backslapping and backstabbing than creating value, who come to consider themselves as masters of the universe.  It’s not good.

~ Doug Casey, "Doug Casey on Why Woke Corporations Will Go Broke," International Man, June 14, 2022

Doug Casey on green energy

Wind and solar make no sense for mass power generation. They’re completely unsuitable for a complex industrial civilization. The Greens aren’t trying to solve a technological problem but make an ideological statement. Which is fine, except they’re doing it at the public’s expense. Meanwhile, the public has been so propagandized that they now feel it’s morally righteous to be hornswoggled. 

No problem if someone feels that covering his rooftop with solar panels can cut his electricity bill and pay back the cost in 7 or 10 years—which is roughly the case today. It’s something else entirely if a government puts a society’s electrical grid at risk in order to virtue signal.

~ Doug Casey, "Doug Casey Debunks the So-called 'Green Economy'," International Man, March 11, 2022

Doug Casey on why governments need external enemies

Over thousands of years of history, governments have always threatened each other with war.  It’s a good part of what they do to justify their existence, and it’s been said, correctly, that war is the health of the state.  Nothing has changed in that regard. 

The main reason that the US government is beating the war drums is that war [Russia-Ukraine] has always been a distraction from domestic problems.  Create a foreign enemy on whom to blame domestic problems, and it will reliably divert the news cycle from things you don’t want the hoi polloi to hear or talk about.  A real or fabricated foreign enemy unites the public.  The further the economy and the society deteriorate, the more war-mongering we’ll hear from Washington.

~ Doug Casey, "Doug Casey on the Likelihood of a Military Conflict Over Ukraine…," International Man, February 4, 2022

Doug Casey on the Russia threat

Russia itself isn’t a threat to anybody.  It’s really nothing but a gas station with an attached gun store in the middle of a wheat field. 

~ Doug Casey, "Doug Casey on the Likelihood of a Military Conflict Over Ukraine…," International Man, February 4, 2022

Doug Casey on the 12 principles that created Western civilization

I think there are at least 12 characteristics that are underpinned the West.  They are free thought, free speech, free markets, property rights, limited government, individualism, rationality, personal liberty, the concept of progress, privacy, the rule of law, and entrepreneurialism. 

Humans everywhere understand their value and adhere to them sporadically, of course; without them civilization is impossible.  But only the West made them integral to itself, as principles.  They’re what made us unique.

~ Doug Casey, "Doug Casey on the Rise of China… And What it Means for the World," International Man, January 21, 2022

Doug Casey on economics, mathematics and philosophy

Economics is taught in colleges as if it were a subdivision of mathematics.  It’s not.  It has only a limited amount to do with mathematics.  Rather, it’s a division of philosophy.  It’s a moral study that looks at how people relate to one another in the material world.

~ Doug Casey, "How Economic Witch Doctors Convince Everyone They're Neurosurgeons," International Man, December 8, 2021