Brian T. emails as a follow up to my post, It is Really Getting Close to the Time to Leave the United States:
Can you recommend a place to relocate to?RW response:
This is a tough question.
There is just nowhere that freedom appears guaranteed.
It may come soon that the best thing we can do is develop a Three Flags life.
The investment newsletter writer Harry D. Schultz (now 97) long ago promoted what he called the Three Flags Theory.
That is, you have citizenship in one country, have your business in a second country and live in a third.
As for the country where you actually live, he said it should be a "floating country." In other words, it is not a country where you necessarily put down roots forever but rather a country where you are a "perpetual traveler," or PT.
Schultz feels that tourists in a country were generally better treated than citizens. So when you come across authorities, you are a citizen of a different country and you don't operate any businesses where you are "traveling."
Schultz also believes that having a PT mentality gave you the freedom to leave a country that was getting to oppressive.
According to his bio, Schultz has lived for extended periods in 18 nations, and shorter periods in many others. Now, this doesn't mean you need to keep jumping around. It is just that you have that option with maybe two or three locations so you don't bump up against residency laws or one place where you live, say 180 days, and you travel the rest of the year.
Given the way Sweden has acted during the COVID-19 panic, it might be a good place as a first stop for a PT life.
Moscow also seems interesting. If you stay out of politics, it appears you are left alone.
I am also attracted to poorer second-tier countries in South America (and maybe some in Africa) that don't have the funds to set up elaborate surveillance systems and appear to leave tourists and their citizens generally alone.
I once asked a friend from a smaller South American country what the police enforcement was like in his country. He responded this way, "We have regulations in our country that you can not drive a car unless it has license plates. About half the cars on the road don't have license plates."
My kind of place.
-RW
As you probably remember, I have been a PT aboard my boat in the Caribbean and Bahamas for twenty years. Well, that all came to an end on Sept.1, 2019 when Dorian turned my world upside down (literally).
ReplyDeleteI've bought another boat, and was headed over to the Abacos to salvage what I could, when this Corona Virus nonsense hit. So I'm stuck here in Florida waiting for the "re-opening" of the Bahamas.
But, nonetheless, the 3 country plan is definitely sound and I recommend it highly.
The Bahamas (out islands only) seemed right because the ONE cop only showed up twice a week and drove a golf cart. Plus he was a good guy and liked my beer. Also, I lifted a few with the P.M. who would visit my dock now and then.
Anyhoo, with the completely over the top response to Covid, I'm considering other options once a I get my stuff together. (Anybody wanna buy a slightly busted catamaran (cheap))??
I hear Costa Rica doesn't have an army...
I like the South American type model of governments that just don’t have the resources to care what everyone is doing.
ReplyDeleteUnlike the US, where the government not only knows what everyone is doing, but they actually care about what we are doing.
Im sort of disappointed by this kind of talk... I think if everyone who understand econ focused more en clever ways to reach people of influence and teach this stuff in clever viral ways we could save civilization quickly. We need more Misesians... There are hardly any.
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If we want to avoid the destruction of Western civilization and the relapse into primitive wretchedness, we must change the mentality of our fellow citizens. We must make them realize what they owe to the much vilified "economic freedom," the system of free enterprise and capitalism. The intellectuals and those who call themselves educated must use their superior cognitive faculties and power of reasoning for the refutation of erroneous ideas about social, political and economic problems and for the dissemination of a correct grasp of the operation of the market economy. They must start by familiarizing themselves with all the issues involved in order to teach those who are blinded by ignorance and emotions. They must learn in order to acquire the ability to enlighten the misguided many.
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Liberalism is rationalistic. It maintains that it is possible to convince the immense majority that peaceful cooperation within the framework of society better serves their rightly understood interests than mutual battling and social disintegration. It has full confidence in man's reason. It may be that this optimism is unfounded and that the liberals have erred. But then there is no hope left for mankind's future.