Cryptocurrency: Opt Out Of The Insanity

[grarpamp]

Three Ways You Can Opt-Out Of The Rising Insanity

https://internationalman.com/articles/doug-casey-reveals-3-ways-you-can-opt-out-of-the-rising-insanity/
https://liveandletlive.org/

International Man: Ever since the outbreak of the Covid hysteria,
government control over everyday life has reached unprecedented
levels. Petty bureaucrats now exercise control over who can open their
businesses, whether you can go to a restaurant, and even whether
children can go to school.

Where is this all going?

Doug Casey: There are basically two types of people in the
world—people that like to manipulate the physical universe and create
things and people who like to manipulate other people and control
them. The people who go into government, whether they’re Democrats or
Republicans, are the latter. They’re dangerous.

The problem is that the average citizen in every country around the
world has come to think that the government is the most important
entity in society. It’s not; it’s a coercive fiction, a parasite that
produces nothing. The wrong kinds of people are being given even more
control.

Once people with a certain psychological mindset—that second type of
person I just mentioned—take control, things inevitably get worse.

In Washington, DC, as well as in many state and local governments, we
now have genuine Bolsheviks and Jacobins in control. That’s not to say
that they’re necessarily believers in those philosophies, but they’re
exactly the same psychological types. In other words, they’re exactly
the kind of people who once destroyed France and Russia, reincarnated
in today’s America.

Once these types get control of the machinery of the State, they won’t
give it up. Power—the ability to coerce and control others—is central
to their very beings. They’ll try to cement themselves in place now
that they feel they can get away with it.

They’ll use their power aggressively, installing counterproductive and
destructive policies. The worse things get, the more the public will
look to the government to save them. It’s a self-reinforcing feedback
loop.

The chances of getting a genuine lunatic as the president are very
high. I’m very pessimistic because trends in motion tend to stay in
motion—and this trend is accelerating rapidly.

International Man: As a result of this trend, more parents than ever
have opted for homeschooling.

What’s your take on this?

Doug Casey: It’s cause for optimism.

First of all, education is something that you provide for yourself.
It’s not something that somebody—certainly not the State—gives you.

The value—and the original purpose—of public schooling was basically
to teach the three Rs: reading, writing, and arithmetic. With those
essentials and the ability to use a library or the Internet, which
places all of the world’s knowledge at your fingertips—you don’t need
anything else beyond that.

The basics can be picked up in the first six or seven years of grade
school—for anybody, even slow learners. Beyond that, school just bores
most kids and is actually counterproductive. It not only wastes their
time and money but actually makes them dislike learning. Homeschooling
allows them to make the world their oyster while teaching individual
responsibility.

Secondly, most schooling today—certainly once you get into high school
and absolutely once you get into college—is little more than
indoctrination. Schools are places where your kids pick up bad ideas
from the educators and bad habits from other young yahoos they’re
surrounded by.

Schools do not teach critical thinking—if indeed they ever did—at
least since Plato’s Academy and Aristotle’s Lyceum. Critical thinking
is the habit of questioning all assertions and examining everything
that we think we know in the light of knowledge, logic, the scientific
method, and your own research. That doesn’t exist anymore in schools.
In fact, the government and the establishment don’t want schools to
turn out critical thinkers and free thinkers. To the contrary, they
want obedient, indoctrinated serfs who will do as they’re told and act
as cogs in the wheel.

I think it’s irresponsible on the part of parents not to properly
educate their kids. And that doesn’t mean just sending them off eight
hours a day where they sit behind a desk and listen to government
employees lecture them.

It costs an average of about $12,000 per pupil per year—we’re talking
a nine-month year with long vacations—to babysit and corrupt kids.
That’s an outrageous amount. College, often over $50,000, can only be
described as a scam.

Nobody has more of an interest in making education available to kids
than their parents do; certainly not members of the teachers union. If
the public schools vanished, it would be a good thing. That $12,000
per pupil could stay in society so that people that wanted to educate
their kids properly wouldn’t have to pay the toll twice.

A couple families could easily get together and hire full-time,
first-rate tutors to teach their kids one-on-one, as opposed to
sending them off to a government factory to be indoctrinated.

The school system has become very corrupt from what it once was.
Schools and universities are grossly overweight with grossly overpaid
administrators. Ninety percent of these phony “educators” should be
fired. Furthermore, most teachers now are overtly Marxist, and the
rest are dim, but sympathetic to Marxist ideas. Schoolhouses at all
levels should be intellectually cleaned, then fumigated, if they can’t
be abolished.

I’m glad many people are dissatisfied with schools and some are doing
something about it. It’s one of the few good things to come out of the
Covid hysteria.

International Man: What other ways can people opt out and regain more
control over their lives?

Doug Casey: The ideal solution is to become a PT—a permanent traveler
or prior taxpayer—but that’s not easy for most people. As I mentioned
last week, even if you don’t want to internationalize, the next best
thing is to quit your job and become self-employed.

But beyond that, in order to have control of your life, you need
capital, which gives you flexibility and room to run.

So how do you get that capital?

If you’re not in a position to quit your job and become self-employed,
then take a second job— part-time. The advantage of that is your
income will go up and your expenses, in the way of consuming, will go
down. Put that money aside.

The key is to cut your spending to the bone and save. That means don’t
buy that new car or trade up to a larger house. Don’t go out and get a
new wardrobe.

Build capital while the economy and the currency are still held
together. Capital will allow you to take advantage of opportunities in
the future, as opposed to getting deeper in debt like a serf.

International Man: All the governments around the world are inflating
away their currencies and taxing their citizens at ever-increasing
levels.

How can the average person opt out or at least limit the government’s
theft of their savings?

Doug Casey: You want to save, but saving in fiat puts you on a treadmill.

If you leave your money in US dollars or other currencies, you’re
going to lose everything or almost everything. You really have to
learn to invest and speculate.

Unfortunately, investing in the kind of chaotic, government-controlled
economy we’re moving into is hard and becoming harder. On the bright
side, the distortions the government is creating offer lots of avenues
for speculation. I’ve discussed the differences between saving,
investing, speculating, and gambling in the past. But unless you study
economics and the markets, if you try to speculate, you’ll probably
wind up gambling—which is very different.

The key is to educate yourself on the ins and outs of the
markets—including crypto, currency, and commodity markets, not just
the stock, bond, and real estate markets.

Right now, commodity markets are particularly interesting. For
example, I’m of the opinion that natural gas, which is traded on the
futures market, is currently around $5.00 per Mcf. I believe it could
go much higher.

I’ve personally sold naked puts to capture the premiums, and I’ve
bought long-term bull call spreads. If you’re not familiar with these
things, then don’t take my advice. But try to become familiar with
these things.

One of the reasons I’m bullish on commodities is that with the
Bolsheviks in office in Washington, DC, and actual communists in
control of a lot of countries around the world, commodity production
of all kinds is being made harder. At the same time, all the money
they’re printing is creating artificial demand, and all the
regulations they’re passing are artificially restricting supply.

Commodities are about the only cheap things left; their prices are
going a lot higher. You can capitalize on this as a speculator if you
know what you’re doing. But be careful because you can easily wipe
yourself out.

Any savings that you have should be in small gold and silver coins,
not in fiat currencies. I don’t see gold as a good speculation at
$1800. It is, however, ideal for saving. In addition to providing
long-term upside, gold and silver coins are far more private than
keeping US dollars in a bank account, which the government can
monitor.

Lastly, if you’re going to keep your house and stay in the same place,
you might want to save by buying things like cigarettes, whiskey,
instant coffee, ammunition, and the like. If times get tough, all of
those things are going to be hard to come by. They’ll be in high
demand—and they’re an alternative to fiat.

International Man: Today, what we buy, who we interact with, and what
we say are more easily tracked.

Everyone’s private information is under assault by a private-public
partnership of governments and big corporations.

Where is this all going, and what do you suggest people do about it?

Doug Casey: As much as possible, keep a low electronic profile.

Get off Facebook and other social media platforms. I have a Facebook
account, but I never use it or access it in any way for anything
personal. It’s strictly a business tool—the same for LinkedIn and the
rest of them.

Everybody should realize that social media is the primary way that
they track you, learn what you think, and discover who you are. It’s
just not good for that information to be in the hands of the bad guys.

Of course, everybody has a cell phone today; they’re tracking devices.
Entirely apart from that, the things are a nuisance, and most people
are addicted to them. I have one, but I never use it except when I’m
traveling or at a conference.

I understand the value of apps for navigating and such. It might be
good, however, to have two cell phones. The one you use for talking
should be a flip phone. The other can be used selectively for whatever
apps you need.

On a personal level, speak up about these things whenever possible.
Even though it’s pretty hard to turn back the tidal wave of statism
and collectivism that’s washing over society, everyone should do what
they can. You might want to start by going to LiveandLetLive.org, run
by my friend Marc Victor, for practical thoughts on what you can do.
We just taped a videocast that’s pretty good, in my opinion. It will
be released shortly.

I’m afraid the US and most advanced countries in the world are well on
their way to combining the worst traits of George Orwell’s 1984 with
those of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.