Advice from Anthony Deden: Surviving in the Nadir of Democracy & the West

It’s a strange time right now in the West. The feeling of malaise and decay. I travel everywhere, Europe, Asia, Middle East and Central Asia. There is a marked difference in energy. Lots of construction, newness and stuff in general works. But boy does it feel different showing up in America or Europe, especially the airports. Aging, crappy and just plain old and dirty. 

Anthony Deden is one of the quiet giants of investing. He has written many articles from his extensive experience and observations. 

“If democratic disintegration appears less a modern accident than part of a recurring historical pattern, then the task is not to wait for rescue through politics alone. Plato did not expect regimes to perfect themselves. He expected prudent individuals to adapt: to preserve independence where possible, to defend property as a condition of freedom, and to maintain long horizons under short-term rule. Collapse, in this sense, is not an end but a narrowing of illusions, guarantees, and collective promises. What remains is judgment, restraint, and the quiet work of endurance within imperfect orders.

History offers no assurance that democratic societies will rediscover their limits in time. But it offers something more durable: the knowledge that freedom has never depended primarily on political salvation, but on the capacity of individuals and communities to preserve capital—material, moral, and institutional—when the political institutions forget how.

History is clear about what follows when democratic custodianship collapses. In Athens, the erosion of restraint gave way not to renewal but to imperial overreach, factionalism, and eventual subjugation, first to the Spartan oligarchy of the Thirty Tyrants and ultimately to the Macedonians. In the Roman Republic, the hollowing of republican institutions did not restore balance; it ended in personal rule, permanent emergency, and empire. In both cases, democratic forms lingered long after their substance had decayed—until they were replaced with rule justified not by consent, but by necessity.

The lesson is not that democracy inevitably ends in tyranny, but that when restraint is exhausted, freedom is not repaired—it is displaced. What follows is rule by administrators, generals, or crises; legitimacy shifts from law to order, from consent to survival. The real question for our Western world is not whether democracy will survive unchanged, but what will take its place once its capital is spent.”

Source: https://forumgeopolitica.com/article/democracy-and-the-consumption-of-its-foundations

As always, Radigan Carter, who is one of the most independent thinkers around, wrote about the lessons he took from Deden’s writing.

“First, retirement is dead. A man should put this completely out of his mind. He can transition careers, but he must always be working in some form from now on. For what individuals are up against, with politicians and electorates in every jurisdiction continuing to want to get more of a person's capital in order to offset the ever increasing deficits governments will run as this continues, a man must never stop trying to improve his position for his family and whoever comes next as a steward of the assets he leaves behind. 

Second, if at all possible a man should not count on justice or fair treatment from his own country or government, and should not count on finding it in any other country that is a democracy, running deficits, or dependent on the dollar system, which is practically the entire world since most countries and peoples will do whatever they must and count themselves justified to avoid pain. 

This means that a man has the responsibility to diversify his life to maximize his chances at remaining as free as he possibly can. Citizenship in one country, permanent residency in another, house in another jurisdiction. A pied-à-terre perhaps and citizenship in non-western aligned or neutral country if possible for additional optionality. Bearer assets like gold and in my case, bitcoin are assets I would never be without for this world. In fact, when looking at gold outperforming the S&P500 and Nasdaq since 2000 to 2025, this piece is the diagnosis for why that is happening.”

Your job is to become hard to kill. Part of that is managing your wealth and diversifying your assets as per the Five Flag strategy to be able to weather all the massive ups and downs that come with massive changes that happen in the world. Wars, economic recessions, pandemic, deglobalization. I’ve said many times before, surviving is thriving during times of chaos. Those who do are able to seize the massive opportunities that arise and create dynasties.