Is the original idea of a Plan B dead? Or is it just the execution getting more expensive, bureaucratized, and surveilled?"

Doug Casey: It's not dead. In fact, it's more important than ever. But it's definitely getting harder to effectuate.

I'm not a fan of Teddy Roosevelt's very progressive and Statist political views, but he had some wise thoughts. He said, "Do the best you can where you are with what you have." And that's true in considering your Plan B.

There's a very negative trend in motion, worldwide. Everywhere, the size of government is growing. Before WW1, almost no country had income tax, estate tax, sales tax, or anything but excise taxes and duties. Everywhere, including the US, the State took less than 5%, or at most 10%, of GDP.

But now—certainly when you include state and local taxes—governments take 40%, 50%, or even 60% of GDP. This is a worldwide problem. The trend has been in motion for over 100 years, and it's accelerating. Not only that, but governments are now working together to corral their subjects, making an effective Plan B much harder. The answer is not to act like an immobile houseplant, hoping for the best. Acting like a houseplant is not a good survival strategy for a human.

International Man: Across the world, we're seeing tighter immigration rules, longer processing times, and more 'soft barriers.' Do you see this as a temporary political cycle—or the start of a long-term shift where governments deliberately make the global movement of people and capital harder?

Doug Casey: One reason it's getting harder is because for the last few decades, there's been mass migration from poor countries to rich countries. The poor countries, not just coincidentally, are usually politically repressive. It's natural that people want to get out, but that doesn't mean that richer and freer countries should let them in. If too many migrants with alien habits, language, race, religion, and culture settle in some places, the result will be civil war.

Canada has a very welcoming immigration policy, taking in about 500,000 new permanent residents per year, plus hundreds of thousands of "temporary" residents. Most of them are from the Indian subcontinent, and it's already changed the nature of Canada. About 25% of its 41 million people were born abroad. I've long joked that there's nothing wrong with Canada that importing 40 million Nigerians wouldn't cure. It's not much of a joke, though, because although 40 million is only 20% of Nigeria's population. It would totally, radically, and permanently change the nature of Canada. And not for the better, if you value Western Civilization.

Of course, it's considered politically incorrect to make laws discriminating against migrants. That accounts for the soft barriers. But it's clear something must change, unless you don't mind Minneapolis resembling Mogadishu, or Toronto becoming Calcutta. Once aliens enter a country, as Trump is finding, and Europeans already know, it's almost impossible to get rid of them. At the same time, everywhere in so-called democracies, there are forces encouraging these people to migrate because they generally vote for leftist governments, which give them lots of freebies. Many in the West have a self-destructive psychology.