Doug Casey on What the Elites at Davos Are Really Up To

Via International Man

International Man: It’s that time of the year when a bunch of out-of-touch, self-anointed elites gather at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

It’s where they discuss the big issues of the day. The most influential world leaders attend, as do the CEOs of the largest companies, leaders in the mainstream media, and top academics. Central bankers attend too, along with a wide assortment of celebrities.

What do you make of Davos and the people who attend it?

Doug Casey: Davos is an “invitation only” event for the “elite.” The usual suspects, and almost uniformly horrible people. These people form a subculture. They’re all members, or hangers-on, of various Deep States. They prefer to associate with other people they consider to be peers. If it turns out you don’t share their worldview, you won’t get invited back.

It’s basically a love fest for the international ruling class. They like to get together, hang out, and schmooze, because they all know about each other, even if they don’t know each other personally. Talking about “important” issues with other “important” people gives meaning to their lives. That’s the essence of what goes on at Davos and similar conclaves.

Now, I know the conspiracy types say, “These people have gotten together to conspire against all of us little people.” And some of that undoubtedly happens. That’s nothing new. In The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith pointed out that whenever people in the same business get together, they always conspire against the public. Of course. That’s human nature. It’s normal. What do you expect?

But it’s not a conspiracy. The fact is that people with the same education, worldview, and economic status tend to think alike. And tend to help one another. It’s not some kind of conspiracy, any more than is a meeting of a local Lion’s Club.

A couple of years ago, I was mistakenly invited to attend a similar very elitist and globalist conference event in New York. It was made up of exactly the same people who show up at Davos and conferences like it.

I found that I didn’t like them. And I strongly suspect they didn’t like me, even though I was on my best behavior. But that’s nothing new. I occasionally get invited to dinner parties in Aspen, with the same kind of people. But usually not more than once. Why might that be? Well, as you know, I say what I think. And that’s usually at odds with what the Masters of the Universe think.

International Man: In previous years, we’ve seen the people at Davos promote various themes that later became policy.

For example, negative interest rates, the abolition of cash, and promoting mass migration were all hot topics at Davos before governments around the world started implementing them.

What is going on here?

Doug Casey: These people are the self-righteous epitome of the Establishment. They’re absolutely opposed to free minds and free markets. They are, however, in a position to influence the policies of the governments that control much of the world’s economy. And they do. It doesn’t matter how much money and power they have; humans are genetically wired to want more. Now that, in itself, is not a bad thing. In fact, it’s a good thing. It’s responsible for taking humanity from beating on earth with sticks to sending rockets to the other planets.

The problem is that these people are not just willing, but anxious, to use coercion—the State—to get what they want. They camouflage their intentions with massive virtue signaling. For some time, they’ve directed their attention to fixing the planet.

In fact, the bigshots at Davos aren’t going to fix anything, except maybe a few elections. They don’t even understand the problems. But it’s not hard to understand their motives. Everybody, including the African goatherder with flies buzzing around his face, wants to be a bigshot. That’s true even if you only hang out at the local bar or the local Rotary Club. If you’re running with the big dogs, however, you probably want to be a bigshot at Davos.

In years past, mass migration was a major subject for them. Not the migration of Europeans to the Americas in the 19^th century, however. Those were mobile, aggressive, opportunity-seeking people who wanted to leave stagnant and repressive cultures for personal freedom. They had zero in the way of state support.

Very unlike the migrants coming to Europe today, who aren’t being attracted by opportunity so much as welfare benefits and the soft life. They know Western Europe is a massive welfare state that provides free food, housing, medical care, schooling, and living expenses to all comers.

Today’s migrants are mostly unskilled, poorly educated, and many have a bad attitude. They—justifiably—hold their new host countries in contempt. The question arises why—since they’re almost all Muslims—they aren’t being welcomed by places like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, or Brunei, which are wealthy Muslim countries.

There was a massive surge of migrants to Europe in 2015. But that was, I believe, just an overture to what’s coming. What we’re talking about here is the migration of millions of people of different languages, different races, different religions, different cultures, and different modes of living. If you’re an alien and you’re 1 out of 100, or 1,000, or even 10,000, you’re a curiosity, an interesting outsider. And you’d have to integrate into the new society. But an influx of millions of migrants can only destroy the old culture. And guarantee antagonism—especially when the locals are forced to pay for it.

It’s comparable to what happened 1,600 years ago with the migration of the Germanic barbarians into the Roman Empire. But potentially much more serious. The migration policies popular with the Davos crowd are creating minor chaos now, but world-class chaos is in the wings over the next decade. The population of Africa is growing by tens of millions per year while the population of Europe is collapsing. It will be interesting to watch London transform into Lagos North, as Paris starts looking like Kinshasa.

Another item that’s always on their agenda is central bank monetary policies. I’ll make a bet that Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) is very much in the cards. MMT amounts to the basically unlimited creation of currency units to finance whatever governments want. It’s essentially Keynesianism on steroids. It seems inevitable because all the major governments are actually bankrupt. And the Deep State—Davos types—would far prefer to see things financed with inflation than taxes, because that could take stock markets much higher. And make corporate bailouts much easier.

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