Collectivists, Dictators, & Technocrats vs Personal Liberty

"Control oil & you control nations. Control food & you control people." - Kissinger

Russia & Ukraine generate 10% of all global calories

Powell raises rates - How much more will he go before reversing again?

Collectivists, Dictators, & Technocrats vs. Personal Liberty

March 22, 2022

“It’s a perfect world of simple inputs, and there’s so much confidence packed into this because there’s powerful means put at the disposal of the central bank community. It’s no longer a question of what might go wrong. Nobody cares. ‘Well, what could go wrong here?’ What a silly question to ask. There are tools for every possible outcome, probably tools for market stability, even the case of nuclear war. At least there’s the posturing and the rhetoric to support that.” — David McAlvany

Kevin: Welcome to the McAlvany Weekly Commentary. I’m Kevin Orrick along with David McAlvany. 

Dave, it’s interesting as we go through preparation for war, whatever that looks like, the polarization is really happening. You and I were talking about just the excluded middle where what we’re seeing with comments from our clients, comments from our listeners, just listening to various news sources, there’s very little middle ground that’s being approached at this point. Most people are taking sides, and it’s difficult to find agreement. Are you finding that as you travel?

David: Well, very much so. I think people like certainty when there is more uncertainty, and lean more heavily on definitive statements and strong conclusions. Even though it might not match the reality, it certainly feels better.

Kevin: Something that I’m finding is people are sending me must-see YouTubes so that we can understand what’s going on overseas, understand what’s going on with China, understand what’s going on with Russia and the World Economic Forum. What’s interesting is these must-sees, they don’t necessarily agree with each other. So obviously, these must-sees, there’s got to be something different that I’m not seeing.

David: For about the last 15 years, the Economist has put together a study which is pretty helpful just to see the shifts in numeric terms in what they consider a measure of democracy. The Economist Intelligence Unit publishes their Democracy Index, and it shows the direction of individual countries and particular geographies, an entire continent, if you will, or parts of the world. That came out this week. Not to anyone’s surprise, China and Russia still rank near the bottom. They’re in the authoritarian category. Russia is number 124. China is 148. That’s out of 167 countries on the index. China was once again laid low on its score in the electoral process and pluralism categories and their nearly nonexistent civil liberties. So you’ve got this 85-pager which starts out by saying that the pandemic has accelerated a creeping authoritarianism on a global basis, and you only have 21 countries that remain in the full democracy category. It’s a really fascinating thing.

Kevin: And I’ll bet the US is not on that list.

David: That’s right. It’s in the flawed democracy category, which is a separate category, and so it does not even make the full democracy list. That didn’t prevent the US from holding two summits for democracy at the end of 2021, which according to the report elicited cynicism in many parts of the world. So again, the report goes back over the last 15 years, and at least 108 of these 167 countries have recorded the decline in their index scores through that timeframe, or have just stagnated. This is a trend worth watching. The study describes how the last two years, again, going back to Covid, has impacted the way people experience freedom and the way they engage with government, so the Covid strictures, the shutdowns, the mandates. Now post-Covid, it remains to be seen what citizens will expect and what they’ll acquiesce to.