Latest / IMI Podcasts / #27: The World Isn't Free, But You Can Be - Christian Nesheim on the My Latin Life Podcast

Transcript

#27: The World Isn't Free, But You Can Be - Christian Nesheim on the My Latin Life Podcast · IMI Podcasts

0:03
SPEAKER_02: Ladies and gentlemen, it's 7 p.m.
0:05
SPEAKER_02: in Dubai, 3 p.m.
0:06
SPEAKER_03: in Lisbon, 11am in St.
0:08
SPEAKER_03: Kitts.
0:09
SPEAKER_03: Welcome to a new episode of the Mobility Standard, the podcast where we dissect current events, trends, and crucial questions related to investment migration.
0:19
SPEAKER_03: I'm your host, Christian Nessim, editor of IMI.
0:22
SPEAKER_03: And in this episode, I am the guest on the My Latin Life podcast, where the host Vance and I went into great detail about the history and future of investment migration and how it all fits into our Beltan Shawung.
0:38
SPEAKER_03: We spoke about the philosophical underpinnings of IMI and its motto, the world isn't free, but you can be.
0:45
SPEAKER_03: We spoke about how the investment migration sector developed from the early days to become a major industry today.
0:51
SPEAKER_03: We spoke about why Latin American investment migration programs are becoming popular, especially with North Americans and Europeans, how the profile of investor migrants has changed in recent years, and how the proliferation of sovereign, ungovernable individuals will make the world a far safer and more prosperous place for everyone.
1:11
SPEAKER_03: We also touched on what the world will look like when we have competition among states for talent and capital, a competition that's already kind of started.
1:19
SPEAKER_03: All of that and a great deal more in today's episode of the Mobility Standard.
1:24
SPEAKER_03: But before we start, I'd like to tell you that if you haven't already signed up for our pro membership, you really should consider it simply because it'll help you make more money as an investment migration professional.
1:36
SPEAKER_03: What's included in an IMI Pro membership?
1:39
SPEAKER_03: Well, for one, you can get your very own profile page in IMI where interested clients can contact you directly about your services.
1:48
SPEAKER_03: You'll be listed as an expert in any article covering the programs you offer help with.
1:53
SPEAKER_03: And beyond that, you'll also have unfettered access to the IMI data center as well as our juicy private briefings.
2:00
SPEAKER_03: You'll also get access to all our reports and databases, as well as, of course, unlimited IMI articles.
2:08
SPEAKER_03: So to sign up, you simply go to Google and you type in Become an IMI Pro and you click that link and follow the steps.
2:15
SPEAKER_03: With the preambles out of the way, let's get this show on the road.
2:41
SPEAKER_00: Christian, how's it going?
2:43
SPEAKER_03: I'd like to specify that we are the leading publication on investment migration.
2:48
SPEAKER_03: But yeah, thank you.
2:49
SPEAKER_03: Uh thanks for having me.
2:50
SPEAKER_03: I love your Twitter account.
2:52
SPEAKER_03: Uh loved seeing you at IMI Connect in in Malta.
2:56
SPEAKER_03: Uh it was great to get to know you there personally.
2:58
SPEAKER_03: I know you're you're shy about sharing your face, so I felt privileged to get to see it.
3:05
SPEAKER_03: Just uh for your readers out there, a wonderfully handsome man, uh just in case you didn't know.
3:11
SPEAKER_00: You know, the audience won't be able to appreciate this at home, but I do have you on video here, uh recording uh only audio, but but looking on video, which I don't normally do.
3:21
SPEAKER_00: So maybe this will have a bit of an extra oomph to it this episode.
3:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's hope so.
3:26
SPEAKER_00: I find that it helps just reading facial expressions and so on.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: So, Christian, uh obviously in this episode we're gonna talk a lot about global mobility, investment migration, and everything.
3:38
SPEAKER_00: I just wanted to know one story about your background because even though we met in person, I don't, you know, sometimes I need the podcast to finally uh like learn, truly learn about people.
3:48
SPEAKER_00: But uh, so you you're from Europe, obviously.
3:52
SPEAKER_00: You did your MBA in China, which is pretty cool, and I never had a chance to talk to you about.
3:56
SPEAKER_00: And it seems like just straight after the MBA, that led you directly into the investment migration industry.
4:02
SPEAKER_00: And would love to get the the backstory from you a little bit.
4:06
SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah, sure.
4:07
SPEAKER_02: I'm uh born and raised in Norway, and then after high school, I lived in a few different countries doing sort of odd work.
4:18
SPEAKER_03: Uh I was in Spain for a while, France for a while, I was spent a little bit of time in Kenya, and then I went to college in California for three and a half years, and then then I moved to China, uh, where I spent six years, mostly in a city called Chongqing, which is a huge city in the center of China that most people don't know about.
4:42
SPEAKER_03: I'm sure some of your readers will, though.
4:43
SPEAKER_03: It's a gigantic place.
4:45
SPEAKER_03: Um, and then I ended up taking my MBA there, and I always was fascinated by, I mean, I get I have a libertarian bent, I guess you could say.
4:59
SPEAKER_03: Um, always fascinated by ways of, as it's called, finding freedom in an unfree world, uh, in a way.
5:07
SPEAKER_03: So I I looked at, okay, what are the industries that uh, you know, how can I how can I work somehow in my daily life to promote or advance the cause of individual liberty?
5:21
SPEAKER_03: Um, and I saw that in investment migration, that was kind of the cutting edge of that um, where you could, you know, buy citizenships and residencies and uh find sort of international diversification for you as a person through those programs.
5:41
SPEAKER_03: So I got really interested in that, and I got a job with uh one of the biggest uh companies.
5:47
SPEAKER_03: So right straight out of my MBA, I got a job with one of the companies, a leading company that does that.
5:54
SPEAKER_03: And uh I worked for them for like a year and a half, a year and eight months, something like that, and then I started IMI.
6:04
SPEAKER_03: So that's kind of the the quick story of how I got into investment migration.
6:11
SPEAKER_00: Is there a specific story or moment where you found out about this industry that investment migration exists?
6:19
SPEAKER_03: Was there uh uh It wasn't it wasn't one moment, I guess you know I was always reading I was always reading uh Doug Casey's International Man back when I was a teenager and when I was in college.
6:32
SPEAKER_03: Uh then later on uh I should give a shout out to uh Simon Black of uh of uh Sovereign Man and of course Andrew Henderson, my good friend uh of Nomad Capitalist, uh all of all of whom were great inspirations to me and kind of over time uh led to my drifting in that direction.
6:53
SPEAKER_03: But no, I couldn't pin it down to a specific moment.
6:56
SPEAKER_03: There wasn't a particular experience.
6:59
SPEAKER_03: You know, I have a good passport, I have a great deal of mobility and travel and settlement rights with my Norwegian citizenship.
7:06
SPEAKER_03: So for me, it wasn't a I I mean, many people get interested in investment migration because they have a crappy passport with poor mobility rights, uh poor settlement rights.
7:17
SPEAKER_03: And so for them it's a by virtue of necessity, they have to kind of acquire something better to improve their mobility.
7:25
SPEAKER_03: That was not really the case for me.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: I came more of it from a pull people up to have the same benefits that you do.
7:34
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's part of it.
7:35
SPEAKER_03: So I, you know, I I I come from more of a philosophical angle, I guess, than than from a practical angle.
7:42
SPEAKER_03: But now I'm, you know, I'm uh out there with everybody else collecting residencies and citizenships.
7:48
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's hard not to.
7:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh once you get started, it's kind of like it's addicting.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, that's right.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: So you started IMI.
7:59
SPEAKER_00: I I didn't realize originally how long it had been around.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: Um, now you're running in-person conferences and you're bringing together all of the heavy hitters in the investment migration industry in the same building, competitors, friends, and you have conferences and you talk about different issues that are facing the investment migration industry.
8:20
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean, I think people don't realize how much, I mean, how many people actually have a full-time job uh just helping people with investment migration.
8:29
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's one thing in Latin America, you know, uh there's a there's a lot of stuff you could do yourself when you want to get like a rentista visa or something like that.
8:40
SPEAKER_03: But for the major programs, you typically need the or you would want the help of a professional.
8:48
SPEAKER_03: And there are tens and tens of thousands of people working on this full-time globally, and there's probably millions tangentially involved, you know, if we're talking about wealth managers and private banks and family offices and so on.
9:03
SPEAKER_03: And they all need kind of a place where they can get uh unbiased information um about what's going on in the industry, new policies, data, trends, insights, this type of thing.
9:15
SPEAKER_03: Uh every every industry of every industry worth its salt has a kind of uh trade journal.
9:24
SPEAKER_03: Like I'm sure there's a Plumber's Weekly and a uh whatever golfers, golf coach digest or something like this, right?
9:32
SPEAKER_03: And so there wasn't really anything for investment migration, um, and there needed to be, and so there's clearly a demand for that.
9:40
SPEAKER_03: So primarily our readers we write for the people who work in this industry, but inevitably um a large number of what I call sophisticated end users also read IMI because they want to understand the industry's own view of itself.
9:58
SPEAKER_03: Um but yeah, we write primarily with the professionals in mind.
10:02
SPEAKER_03: But that isn't to say that the content on IMI isn't also super valuable for the end user.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: So and it's that like 50-50 at this point?
10:12
SPEAKER_03: Uh it's kind of hard to tell, but just like roughly uh gauging by the domain names in the emails on our newsletter list, I would say yeah, it's probably around 50-50.
10:25
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
10:26
SPEAKER_00: Cool.
10:27
SPEAKER_03: Shout out all the advanced users.
10:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: Of course, of course.
10:32
SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of sophisticated casual visitors.
10:35
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, sophisticated audience that we have.
10:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: Cool.
10:39
SPEAKER_00: And so um I imagine that when you start a trade publication for this industry, investment migration, I'm sure people had mixed feelings about it.
10:53
SPEAKER_00: I'm sure a lot of people have either told you to take down articles or you shouldn't talk about this or that topic, or or millions of different things.
11:02
SPEAKER_03: All the time.
11:03
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
11:03
SPEAKER_03: So what you're talking about, I guess, fundamentally, is the competing and equally valid interests of privacy and transparency, which are kind of contradictory things.
11:22
SPEAKER_03: You can't it's hard to satisfy one and uh and also the other at the same time.
11:27
SPEAKER_03: But what I can say is yes, you're right.
11:30
SPEAKER_03: For absolutely, there are companies and individuals that try to influence uh us to write about or not write about different things in the industry.
11:41
SPEAKER_03: But ultimately, everybody benefits from the transparency.
11:46
SPEAKER_03: We publish good news and bad news, and people appreciate that transparency and the honesty until it's about something they care about, right?
11:56
SPEAKER_03: Until it goes, uh, you know, there might be, for example, one company is really promoting this one program, and then we write a piece of bad news about that one program, and then that company will come to me and like, hey, why are you writing it this way?
12:11
SPEAKER_03: Shouldn't you be writing it that way?
12:13
SPEAKER_03: Uh you know, this kind of thing.
12:16
SPEAKER_03: So they are unhappy with me in the moment because it happens on that day, the negative news is about the thing they care about, and they don't want me to write about that.
12:26
SPEAKER_03: But all the other days of the year, when I'm writing about something else, and someone else is the subject of that negative news story, then they're happy about it.
12:35
SPEAKER_03: So it's really a situation where on any given day, if we write a negative but necessary story, we are, you know, one party is disgruntled and everybody else sees the benefit of it.
12:50
SPEAKER_03: And then the next day there's some other individual party that's disgruntled and everybody else is happy.
12:56
SPEAKER_03: So that's that's kind of the mandate of a news publication.
13:01
SPEAKER_03: It's to highlight, let's say, undesirable circumstances uh in the world.
13:08
SPEAKER_00: A range of emotions.
13:10
SPEAKER_03: The full rate, the whole gamut.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: You referenced a number, 10,000 plus professionals working full-time in this industry.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: And I'd love to hear um maybe a little context from you about how this industry came about in terms of professionalizing itself.
13:28
SPEAKER_00: And actually, you've probably played a role in that as well.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: Maybe you could explain it better.
13:33
SPEAKER_03: Sure.
13:33
SPEAKER_03: Um, so it's not 10,000 plus, it's tens of thousands, and probably in excess of 60,000, 70,000, just back of the napkin calculation, 60, 70,000 people work full-time on pure play investment migration.
13:48
SPEAKER_03: And then you have all the others you mentioned, like family offices and wealth managers who who need to know about investment migration, but who also do other things primarily, but but they have clients that could use these types of services.
14:04
SPEAKER_03: Um, so it's a lot of people.
14:06
SPEAKER_03: Now, as to your question about the industry, you know, the when it was a nascent industry, uh, if you go back let's say 20 years, you only had like four or five um investment migration, like pure play investment migration programs worldwide.
14:26
SPEAKER_03: You had very few um investment migration programs.
14:29
SPEAKER_03: And so that I I would say, you know, one of the we we should highlight the early, the early ones, you know, in the mid 80s, they started up in Canada with a federal investor program, which for many years was you know the only major investor visa of its kind.
14:48
SPEAKER_03: Uh later on, the Americans started with it.
14:51
SPEAKER_03: Uh in Europe, it was brought about by essentially the first wave I would say was after the sovereign debt crisis in southern Europe, uh, in the wake of the 08 financial crisis.
15:05
SPEAKER_03: So in like 2009, 2010, 2011, when the um ignominiously known pigs countries, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, were uh running out of money essentially because uh they had well, we don't need to get into the story of why they were running out of money, but suffice it to say that they had a sovereign debt crisis and they needed to raise unencumbered capital quickly.
15:31
SPEAKER_03: And one very quick way they found of doing that was to open investor migration programs.
15:37
SPEAKER_03: And so uh in the early 2010s, we saw a bunch of them open up in uh southern Europe, and then you had another wave in 2011-2012 because of the Arab Spring.
15:48
SPEAKER_03: Uh, there's huge demand for these types of programs then.
15:51
SPEAKER_03: And then separately, or in parallel, I should say, to this, you had uh a wave of citizenship by investment programs opening up in the Caribbean.
16:00
SPEAKER_03: I uh here I think we have to give credit where credit is due.
16:04
SPEAKER_03: Um I would highlight uh Chris Kalen, who's the chairman of uh Handle and Partners, who was instrumental in pioneering uh the Caribbean citizenship by investment market, because although you had had citizenship by investment as a legal provision on the books uh in the Caribbean for many years already, these were poorly defined.
16:33
SPEAKER_03: Uh you know, it was more like what we think of as citizenship by discretion nowadays, right?
16:38
SPEAKER_00: Citizenship by you get the honors, uh you get like special honor citizenship.
16:43
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
16:44
SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like that.
16:45
SPEAKER_03: Like merit-based.
16:46
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, yeah, merit-based citizenship, like Stephen Segal or something.
16:50
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
16:50
SPEAKER_03: So but then what what happened after that is that that uh I know I know this um Chris Kalen, he went to the Caribbean, uh, him and some other guys, I'm sorry if I'm forgetting their names, but they uh essentially found a way to streamline and standardize that whole citizenship by investment process and put a specific price tag and specific boxes that you needed to tick to make the process formulaic and predictable.
17:19
SPEAKER_03: So I've said in my articles before that that he's kind of like like Chris Kalen was kind of like the Henry Ford of citizenship by investment in the sense that he didn't invent citizenship by investment, but he did standardize and popularize it.
17:37
SPEAKER_03: And then they kind of other people took that same model and copied it to many other countries.
17:43
SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's good background.
17:45
SPEAKER_00: So how did it work prior to that?
17:47
SPEAKER_00: Because there was rich people moving around prior to the 1980s.
17:51
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
17:52
SPEAKER_03: Sure.
17:52
SPEAKER_03: I I mean, how did it work prior to the 1980s?
17:57
SPEAKER_03: Uh you know, I'm I'm born in 1988 and I and I have uh I have a relatively um limp grasp on on history if you go that far back.
18:10
SPEAKER_03: But um I mean I'm sure it was happening in the past, but also in the past, as true as you say, a lot of this was done in-house by the people who had the clients.
18:20
SPEAKER_03: So HSBC, for example, was huge in in Canada in doing uh the Canada Federal Investor Program.
18:27
SPEAKER_03: But they only did the Canada Federal Investor Program.
18:30
SPEAKER_03: They didn't do like Yeah, that's interesting.
18:32
SPEAKER_00: Can we talk about that?
18:33
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, like banks used to be directly involved in these programs and they've sort of gotten out of it, would you say?
18:39
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I think that uh and this probably has to do, I I don't know, but uh it probably has to do with the uh the increasing regulatory burden and the the AML KYC issues involved in all of this, that they they kind of said, look, um we'll we'll we'll start sending our private clients to these uh citizenship by investment companies instead of keeping it in-house.
19:07
SPEAKER_03: We'll let them do it.
19:08
SPEAKER_03: And you know, uh a lot of the people who a lot today run some of the biggest uh, for example, Eric Major, who runs Latitude, or um Hakan Kordelek, who runs beyond immigration, uh guys like those, they started out in the banking industry in Canada and they were helping people with uh the Canadian Federal Immigrant Investor Visa.
19:31
SPEAKER_03: Um and later on, you know, they went on to just focus on that, but outside of the confines of the bank.
19:38
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it makes sense.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: So regulation probably led this industry to kind of um branch off on its own.
19:46
SPEAKER_03: I uh yeah, I also think that it kind of needed to do that because um it's hard to soar as an industry if you're tied down by that regulation.
19:57
SPEAKER_03: Because if you're in banking, I mean banking is subject to some of the strictest regulation in the world, right?
20:05
SPEAKER_03: Um whereas investment migration is largely unregulated, uh, which is what's allowed it to be nimble and quick to adapt, and uh you know there are no very low barriers to entry in the investment migration market.
20:20
SPEAKER_03: Anybody with a laptop can start an investment migration company.
20:23
SPEAKER_03: Uh, but that wouldn't be the case if if they had to live by the same rules that banks have to live by.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: Makes sense.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: Do you think that we've passed some sort of heyday in this industry, or do you think that we're kind of at the zenith now and it's gonna keep growing in terms of uh participants, programs, etc.?
20:44
SPEAKER_03: I I think we've only seen the tip of the iceberg.
20:47
SPEAKER_03: Really, I really do.
20:48
SPEAKER_03: Because I think it it used to be that well, who in the past, who in the past could do these programs?
20:58
SPEAKER_03: Well, it was people who had uh a lot of money and people who could be kinda location independent, but now so many people can be location independent, like huge swaths of the global population are working remotely, and they it means their income is not tied to any particular location, right?
21:22
SPEAKER_03: Which means that they can move around more easily, and so um in uh in parallel to that, what's happening is that investment migration, not in all cases, but in many cases, is becoming cheaper because there's competition now in the citizenship and residence by investment market.
21:39
SPEAKER_03: There are many, many programs and they're competing with each other.
21:42
SPEAKER_03: Uh they're competing on being more streamlined, but they're also competing on price.
21:47
SPEAKER_03: So, you know, one European golden visa can't suddenly triple its price without seeing uh uh demand crater, right?
21:56
SPEAKER_03: And so this is keeping a lid on.
22:00
SPEAKER_03: Prices, which means it becomes available to increasingly large amounts of people.
22:06
SPEAKER_03: And I think that that's I mean, it's just going to proliferate, just gonna get we're gonna have more and more people participating in residence by investment, citizenship by investment, independent means visas, which are I have to highlight independent means visas because uh Latin America is like world champions at this.
22:25
SPEAKER_03: These are like the rentista, pensionado, uh those types of programs where you you know it's still capital-based in the sense that you have to demonstrate a certain minimum income or savings.
22:39
SPEAKER_03: Um but those are now super interesting because everybody's working remotely.
22:46
SPEAKER_03: And the thing about golden visas is that they gave you the immigration status without you having to be there.
22:52
SPEAKER_03: And so that's why they were expensive.
22:54
SPEAKER_03: But if you can be there, you don't need to invest.
22:57
SPEAKER_03: Then you can just do an independent means visa.
23:00
SPEAKER_03: And and an enormous amount of people are doing that now.
23:03
SPEAKER_03: And uh I really don't see that slowing down.
23:06
SPEAKER_03: It's just gonna become it's just going to increase.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: And by the way, if anyone noticed Christian's excellent R role there, uh fun fact, Christian speaks very good Spanish, like fluent Spanish.
23:21
SPEAKER_03: Thanks a lot.
23:21
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I have uh a Venezuelan wife.
23:24
SPEAKER_03: Um, we've been together for five years, so people tell me I have a bit of a Venezuelan twist to my accent.
23:32
SPEAKER_00: So, switching gears here, I would love to get you going and give us the background on your motto.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: So the motto of IMI is the world isn't free, but you can be.
23:44
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
23:45
SPEAKER_03: Okay, so thanks for asking, by the way.
23:49
SPEAKER_03: Uh, this motto, uh, how do I explain it?
23:53
SPEAKER_03: So it's when when I was in my late teens, early 20s, I wasted an inordinate amount of time trying to win people over to my way of thinking, uh, to loving liberty, to believing liberty is better, uh, to seeking freedom in the world, etc.
24:13
SPEAKER_03: But I I came up against this brick wall all the time where people were either not listening or they're pretending to listening or they're just wasting my time.
24:23
SPEAKER_03: And really, I realized a lot of people actually don't want to be free.
24:28
SPEAKER_03: Um, to a lot of people, I think it's terrifying to them to think that you might have to take responsibility for your own life, make your own decisions, they'd rather, you know, take responsibility for your own health, your own security.
24:44
SPEAKER_03: They would rather uh you know outsource that in a way to the government, etc.
24:49
SPEAKER_03: But I wanted to be free.
24:51
SPEAKER_03: Uh and I realized that if like you're you're not gonna get anywhere trying to win people over to your way of thinking at scale, or trying to join politics and quote unquote change the system from the inside.
25:10
SPEAKER_03: Um because people don't want to be free.
25:12
SPEAKER_03: And it and if they don't want to be free, you know, you also shouldn't force them to be free.
25:18
SPEAKER_03: That would be a contradiction of terms, right?
25:20
SPEAKER_03: Uh in a sense, they should be free to not be free if that's what they want, so to speak.
25:26
SPEAKER_03: But at the same time, we can't permit those people to dictate whether you or I are free.
25:34
SPEAKER_03: And so I think the only option that's left to us, and it's a viable option, is for us to seek freedom personally and find freedom for ourselves and the people that we care about, and then lead by example.
25:51
SPEAKER_03: Uh and you know, if you're if you're trying to change things from the inside and you're continuously hitting your head um against the wall with these people, you'll you're gonna become frustrated, you're gonna become bitter, unsatisfied.
26:08
SPEAKER_03: Um but if you if you find, I mean, and if you're bitter and unsatisfied, then you're not a good ambassador for freedom and that way of thinking.
26:18
SPEAKER_03: People are gonna look at you and be like, oh, if that's what libertarian looks like, I don't want to be libertarian, right?
26:24
SPEAKER_03: So what you got to do instead, I think, is to focus on you finding freedom, leading by example, prospering, being happy.
26:33
SPEAKER_03: And once you do that and people see that, then those same people that years ago didn't want to listen to you, they come to you and ask how you did it.
26:43
SPEAKER_03: And I have personal experience in this regard.
26:45
SPEAKER_03: Like people who you tried to who I tried to talk to about this uh just weren't interested.
26:51
SPEAKER_03: But then then late years later they see you know that freedom works, and then they come to you.
26:58
SPEAKER_03: Anyway, and even if they don't come to you later on, at least you're free, right?
27:02
SPEAKER_03: So yeah, find freedom in an unfree world, like Harry Brown said.
27:07
SPEAKER_03: I say the world isn't free, but you can be, and I really mean that.
27:10
SPEAKER_03: You as an individual, you know, you don't have to try to change the world.
27:15
SPEAKER_03: Uh, just change the conditions, your personal conditions, the conditions of those people that you care about, and the world will follow.
27:24
SPEAKER_03: Or not, but at least you'll be free.
27:28
SPEAKER_00: And you said a name there, which is Harry Brown.
27:31
SPEAKER_00: Um, I should know this better, but off the top of my head, this is he's an American who wrote the book Freedom in an Unfree World, right?
27:40
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, he wrote he wrote How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World.
27:44
SPEAKER_03: He was an entrepreneur, he was also um uh libertarian candidate for president at one point, I think.
27:52
SPEAKER_03: Um it's a great book, everybody should read it.
27:55
SPEAKER_00: And he was like living in Switzerland or the Italian Riviera, something like that.
28:00
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I don't I don't remember.
28:03
SPEAKER_03: Could be, could be, I don't remember.
28:06
SPEAKER_00: And that that book's hard to get your hands on these days, I think.
28:09
SPEAKER_03: That's right, that's right.
28:10
SPEAKER_03: I I had a physical copy of it that I got uh via eBay back when that was still a thing.
28:17
SPEAKER_00: Whatever happened to that guy?
28:18
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever tried to is he alive still?
28:20
SPEAKER_00: Like have you tried to reach out to him?
28:22
SPEAKER_03: No, he died years ago.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay.
28:24
SPEAKER_00: Didn't make his way to the I and My newsletter.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: No, he didn't.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but if you if you dig up those old writings, like it's pretty sweet.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: It's one of those books kind of like the sovereign individual.
28:36
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
28:37
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's a Twitter account right there, man.
28:39
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
28:40
SPEAKER_03: You can you can just you can just quote that book, and that's your Twitter account.
28:45
SPEAKER_03: Here you go, free business idea.
28:47
SPEAKER_00: Because there is one that's like sovereign individual quotes, and all it does is quote that book, but I haven't seen one for finding freedom in an unfree world yet.
28:56
SPEAKER_03: No, but uh someone's gonna start that Twitter account after this uh podcast.
29:01
SPEAKER_00: Ah, well, there's another book recommendation for it for you guys.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: So on the topic of freedom, like what is is there something that really pushed you in this direction or makes you feel so strongly about this?
29:15
SPEAKER_00: Because you you grew up in Norway, you somehow got to San Francisco uh for university, so things were things were pretty good, you know what I mean?
29:25
SPEAKER_03: Like what yeah, um that's true.
29:30
SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, it's it's one thing arguing against socialism if you're in Venezuela, right?
29:38
SPEAKER_03: Which is it's a pretty it's pretty easy to make a persuasive argument, but when you're in Norway, people look around and say, hey, but this socialism thing works, right?
29:49
SPEAKER_03: So um that was also always kind of an uphill battle.
29:53
SPEAKER_03: Um it's not that I personally suffered a lot of injustices except for egregious tax rates.
30:01
SPEAKER_03: Uh but but apart from that, I was always generally free to do as I I pleased.
30:08
SPEAKER_03: But um but yeah, no, I was just philosophically inclined uh toward liberty.
30:14
SPEAKER_03: It just it it lights a fire in my belly, so to speak.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I think everyone gets hyped up.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: I got really hyped up after um watching the Milton Friedman documentary.
30:25
SPEAKER_00: Oh, free to choose from the 80s.
30:27
SPEAKER_03: Oh my god, man, that changed my life.
30:29
SPEAKER_03: I'm telling you, when I was like 18, 19, I watched that whole thing.
30:33
SPEAKER_03: Huge Milton Friedman fan.
30:35
SPEAKER_03: Everybody should watch the Free to Choose series.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: Dude, hit us with any random stories because it's a unique set of people that I imagine you're meeting just based on your industry with doing investment migration.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: You definitely meet a pretty wide range of people across the spectrum of like rich asset managers to authors to you know, anarchists or like all these different things, right?
30:58
SPEAKER_03: You know, actually, uh in the early days of IMI, uh most of the people I've been coming across have been kind of straight-laced people, um, like you say, wealth managers, investment migration firms, people who wear ties to work.
31:15
SPEAKER_03: Uh, I haven't been that involved in the, let's say, the younger, wilder demographic, demographic segment of investment migration, which is, I mean, uh getting to know Andrew Henderson kind of brought me into that fold.
31:31
SPEAKER_03: You're part of that.
31:32
SPEAKER_03: You know, there's a bunch of Twitter accounts that I follow that I think uh are a bit salty for my my audience, my general audience, you know.
31:41
SPEAKER_03: Um, but but I yeah, I have I have met a lot of very interesting people, and I continue to meet uh a lot of people who really inspire me, a lot of people who live freedom, a lot of people who who really lead by example and who are brave, right?
32:00
SPEAKER_03: Like think think of Andrew, for example, how brave you have to be to believe so much in your principles that you actually give up your American citizenship, right?
32:09
SPEAKER_03: That's courage, man.
32:10
SPEAKER_03: That guy single-handedly built uh what is it?
32:15
SPEAKER_03: It's uh nine-figure, no, eight-figure business, high eight-figure business by now on his own, starting like just bootstrapping Twitter account, YouTube.
32:25
SPEAKER_03: You know, uh, I have to highlight Andrew is a major, major inspiration for me.
32:29
SPEAKER_03: Um, but there are other people too uh in the industry.
32:32
SPEAKER_03: I believe I've mentioned some.
32:34
SPEAKER_03: Um so yeah, lots of lots of interesting people.
32:39
SPEAKER_00: And I I think that that's what we're trying to do is to go more into the the professional realm and and start merging the two worlds together.
32:48
SPEAKER_00: Um because it's interesting.
32:51
SPEAKER_00: It's like there's um there's different target markets.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: There's the younger digital nomads that are very tech savvy and remote, and a lot of them are big in crypto.
33:01
SPEAKER_00: There's expats that are maybe middle-aged, that have a family overseas, and they have like a different set of requirements, and then there's retirees that maybe can't afford to retire in uh Canada, the United States, or or some expensive place, and so they're looking at uh cheaper locales to retire on uh you know a modest pension.
33:24
SPEAKER_00: So you have all these different uh client avatars or customer avatars in this industry.
33:30
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and some of those avatars have more money than other avatars, right?
33:34
SPEAKER_03: Uh so they're they're different target audiences.
33:37
SPEAKER_03: I mean, they have the same general interests, but they have different means uh and different ways of getting to that goal.
33:44
SPEAKER_03: But I think uh I totally agree that we, you know, I am I and and my Latin Life uh and Nomad Capitalist and a bunch of others are kind of merging those two worlds because you know, 10 years from now, our generation, we're gonna be the ones running the world, right?
34:04
SPEAKER_03: And we're gonna have money.
34:06
SPEAKER_03: And so I wanna be, you know, I don't want to just write for the 55-year-old uh executives in in TIES.
34:14
SPEAKER_03: I also want to uh lead a conversation with the people who are, you know, right now maybe just exploring their first uh independent means visa in Southeast Asia or or Latin America, but who 10 years from now are gonna have you know some serious shekels to invest, right?
34:35
SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm building a relationship with those people too.
34:38
SPEAKER_03: Uh because okay, even though they might not have you know tremendous purchasing power right now, we are kindred spirits.
34:46
SPEAKER_03: And uh I want them, I want them in in my boat.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: You know, I I come from a business of like a business finance background, but then went into like kind of Silicon Valley Tech in order to find my freedom the way, same way you found your freedom, in a way that you know worked best for your situation.
35:05
SPEAKER_00: And now it's kind of coming back full circle where I'm starting to view things this again as like uh as from like the financial product perspective.
35:15
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and and it is to a great extent, because that's that's the world that a lot of the clients come from.
35:23
SPEAKER_03: Uh, not necessarily I mean, okay, most people who do investment migration, uh, where it where there's an investment component at least, most of those people are independent business owners.
35:36
SPEAKER_03: And they have advisors who help them with their portfolio allocations or whatever.
35:44
SPEAKER_03: And those advisors increasingly are getting questions from their clients about investment migration auctions.
35:53
SPEAKER_03: Um, and so there's a lot that investment migration companies need to know about wealth management and vice versa, but they're inextricably linked, and so there's a huge amount of cross-pollination going on between those two sectors.
36:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: So let's switch gears a bit.
36:11
SPEAKER_00: Maybe we could start uh venturing towards Latin America, talking about Latin America and how uh maybe what piece of the puzzle Latin America plays in the whole investment landscape as a whole, and how that seems to be changing in maybe Latin America is is growing in popularity.
36:30
SPEAKER_00: That seems to be your experience.
36:33
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, um and this is related to a couple different trends.
36:38
SPEAKER_03: First of all, um if you go back just a few years, everything was about Europe, United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia.
36:50
SPEAKER_03: This is where people wanted to get residence permits, this is where people wanted to get citizenship.
36:55
SPEAKER_03: The legacy brand.
36:56
SPEAKER_03: That's right, the legacy brand.
36:58
SPEAKER_03: That's right.
36:59
SPEAKER_03: Um and then a few things have happened recently.
37:04
SPEAKER_03: So number one, COVID, um with the lockdowns and all of that, and people kind of seeing well, which countries would you have wanted to be in during COVID, and also just a feeling of uh suffocation that came with lockdowns.
37:23
SPEAKER_03: Um, so people started looking around for alternatives, and they started working remotely.
37:28
SPEAKER_03: Um, and then in Europe and North America, but in Europe you had a war breakout, right, in Ukraine.
37:36
SPEAKER_03: Uh, so that kind of dented uh or that put it it put a dent in the image that Europe had as kind of this uh ancient amusement park.
37:50
SPEAKER_03: Uh I like that.
37:52
SPEAKER_00: I haven't heard it that way.
37:54
SPEAKER_00: I like that.
37:55
SPEAKER_03: Well, uh you heard it here first.
37:58
SPEAKER_03: So so um a lot of Europeans now started to question well, is this where I want to be?
38:04
SPEAKER_03: And so that coupled with uh increasing remote work uh really got people thinking about okay, where where might I want to live now if I if I'm location independent and you know the legacy brand countries aren't the end all be all anymore.
38:24
SPEAKER_03: They're not they're not the alpha omega that they once were.
38:27
SPEAKER_03: I can't actually like especially if you're from the legacy brand countries, you I mean you talk a lot about this on your Twitter account, how you know you can radically raise your standard of living overnight by relocating, right?
38:42
SPEAKER_03: Lower your costs and uh you know uh just just live it, live, have a higher quality of life.
38:48
SPEAKER_03: And and Latin America uh, you know, it has a lot of these programs, more so, I mean Asia has a lot of them too, but in Latin America, practically every country except I think Bolivia is like the only one that doesn't have any kind of investment migration program.
39:06
SPEAKER_03: Maybe it does, at least I haven't seen it.
39:08
SPEAKER_03: But these programs are super prevalent in Latin America.
39:13
SPEAKER_03: And when Europe is at war, then you know, historically, and I've written about this on IMI, you can check it out if you want.
39:21
SPEAKER_03: There's an article called Why Every Mobility Portfolio Needs a Western Hemisphere allocation.
39:30
SPEAKER_03: Um Latin America and especially the southern cone is kind of where you want to be if there is uh some kind of global, whether it be war or like a nuclear threat or whatever, because it's like on the way to nowhere.
39:44
SPEAKER_03: So like Argentina, Paraguay, uh Uruguay, Chile, right?
39:50
SPEAKER_03: They're these places are they're isolated, they are energy independent to a large extent.
39:59
SPEAKER_03: They grow their own food.
40:01
SPEAKER_03: Um they're not gonna get invaded by anyone.
40:04
SPEAKER_03: Right.
40:05
SPEAKER_00: You saw that map that was like the nuclear map, and it was the least likely place was Brazil or Argentina, yeah.
40:12
SPEAKER_03: Plus, you have the um uh the Monroe Doctrine uh from the uh 1800s, where where President Monroe basically told the European powers to stay the hell out of the Western Hemisphere that he would consider any incursion in the Western Hemisphere as a direct threat to the United States, and and that has since been formalized through the Rio Pact and other uh multilateral uh treaties.
40:38
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
40:39
SPEAKER_03: And so at least as the United States, at least as long as the United States is the global military hegemon, um you're you don't have to fear any military invasions in Latin America.
40:52
SPEAKER_03: Of course, you you still have to be careful about you know unorganized crime or even organized crime, but like at the local level in Latin America.
41:00
SPEAKER_00: But so let me stop you there.
41:02
SPEAKER_00: Um you mentioned something that was interesting that everyone was trying to move to the legacy brand countries before, and now people are increasingly considering Latin America, Southeast Asia, other options.
41:14
SPEAKER_00: Has the clientele and the makeup of the customer base also changed as well?
41:20
SPEAKER_00: Whereas before, and probably still it was primarily people from tier B and Tier C countries that were looking to upgrade their passport to get a better passport or move to the first world.
41:32
SPEAKER_00: Whereas and and traditionally Canadians, Americans, Europeans said, Oh, what's the point of a second passport?
41:38
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't do anything for me.
41:40
SPEAKER_00: That was kind of the vibe.
41:41
SPEAKER_00: But I'm sure post 2020 you've seen an increase in Americans, Europeans, Canadians open to the idea that, like, yeah, we need you know a second passport, we need another residency.
41:51
SPEAKER_00: So have you seen that that shift take place?
41:54
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, absolutely.
41:55
SPEAKER_03: Um the the biggest one, the most obvious one, which you also touched on, was that uh as soon as the pandemic started, we saw a huge uptick in interest from Americans.
42:07
SPEAKER_03: Huge, huge uptick.
42:09
SPEAKER_03: Um and they're now the Americans are now like uh among the top applicant nationalities in Portugal, Golden Visa, Spain, uh, Greece, uh, and a host of other programs.
42:24
SPEAKER_03: Uh and they just never used to be.
42:26
SPEAKER_03: But I guess uh that the pandemic um highlighted or for highlighted for them that okay, yeah, you have an American passport, so what?
42:35
SPEAKER_03: You still can't go anywhere, right?
42:37
SPEAKER_03: Um that was a that was a big thing.
42:39
SPEAKER_03: Because before it used to be all, like you said, tier B, Tier C countries, like uh you know, people from the Middle East, uh people from Indonesia and stuff, all that.
42:52
SPEAKER_03: Not that much, because they they were kind of like still getting into the middle income segment, so there weren't like that many Indonesian high net worth individuals yet, but like Russia CIS, um China was obviously a huge one.
43:09
SPEAKER_03: You know, if you're Chinese, you have a Chinese passport, you have but like 60-something visa-free countries you can travel to, and most of them are like diplomatic best buddies in Africa.
43:21
SPEAKER_03: Um so yeah, those people had a pressing need for it.
43:26
SPEAKER_03: But then back then it was all about I I need to stay in China and work on my business because the economy here is growing super fast, and I want to uh stay here to make money, but I'd like to have the option to uh travel more, or I'd like to have the option to resettle in Portugal, or I'd like to send my kid to Eton or Harrow School for Boys or whatever in in England and send my wife there.
43:58
SPEAKER_03: Uh, but I want to stay.
44:00
SPEAKER_03: Right.
44:00
SPEAKER_03: But then since the pandemic, what we're seeing a lot more of is people are actually physically relocating.
44:06
SPEAKER_03: And that's why also demand is shifting somewhat away from I mean, not in absolute terms, but in in relative terms.
44:16
SPEAKER_03: The balance is shifting a little bit away from investment-based migration toward uh independent means visas because people are actually physically relocating in a way that they uh or at a scale they weren't in the past.
44:30
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so many interesting subtopics there.
44:34
SPEAKER_00: Investment migration industry, the way I see it, seems super obsessed with golden visas.
44:40
SPEAKER_00: And I feel like they're not giving nearly enough uh emphasis to yeah, the independent means visas, of which there's many different types.
44:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's non-lucrative, there's rentista, there's pensionado, covers all these ones.
44:53
SPEAKER_03: And yeah, it's it's true, as you say, that that focuses on the golden visas on citizenship by investment.
45:00
SPEAKER_03: So I would say golden visas plus citizenship by investment.
45:02
SPEAKER_03: That's what everybody's marketing, that's what everybody's focused on.
45:05
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, but I mean there's a perfectly natural explanation for that, and it's well, that's where the margins are, right?
45:12
SPEAKER_03: Uh because that's where you know, those programs you have to invest uh a six-figure amount of money, sometimes seven figures, right?
45:23
SPEAKER_03: And uh so that's obviously what promoters are gonna promote.
45:28
SPEAKER_03: You know, they want to make money.
45:29
SPEAKER_03: There's you can still make money from doing independent means visas, you charge, but you can only charge a service fee.
45:36
SPEAKER_03: So you have to do huge volumes for it to be as interesting as selling, you know, some guy in China who sells uh uh who finds a client for EB5 in the United States, for example.
45:48
SPEAKER_03: I mean, they can easily make 50, 60 grand in commission, right?
45:53
SPEAKER_03: Uh there's there's no way he's making that on a rentista visa in Argentina, right?
45:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, that's that's a juicy number.
46:00
SPEAKER_00: Uh one more quick question related to this before we jump back to Latin America.
46:04
SPEAKER_00: So we we we've probably seen an increase in Americans getting into this space as clients, but I imagine that it's still not keeping up with the demand from Asia.
46:14
SPEAKER_00: Would you say the majority of this industry in terms of the residencies, the citizenships, etc., the majority of the demand is coming from Asia and Asia still eclipses the rest of it, or where's like the the balance of power, you know?
46:28
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
46:28
SPEAKER_03: Um so Asia's always going to win just because Asia has like half the world's population, right?
46:36
SPEAKER_03: That's that's number so any any like nationality distribution, uh, it's natural for them, all else being equal, they should dominate every nationality distribution.
46:47
SPEAKER_03: But that being said, I would let's I would split the market into you know, for independent means visas, I don't think that the Asians are necessarily uh the leaders there.
46:58
SPEAKER_03: I think North Americans uh at least are the leaders in Latin America for independent means visas.
47:04
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's good.
47:05
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
47:06
SPEAKER_03: But when it comes to golden visas in Europe, yeah, the big nationalities are still China, uh, Vietnam, uh Indonesia, Philippines a little bit.
47:19
SPEAKER_00: But should I start up on my Latin life Twitter in Chinese or something?
47:24
SPEAKER_03: Uh I mean they they don't have Twitter in China, so yeah, yeah, sure.
47:31
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
47:32
SPEAKER_03: In India, I'll do it in Hindi.
47:34
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, you can probably Google translate that now.
47:38
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
47:39
SPEAKER_03: No, no, but it's it's uh that's the case.
47:41
SPEAKER_03: It's um it's still, you know, Asia still dominates.
47:45
SPEAKER_03: Uh Middle East is also huge, especially for citizenship.
47:49
SPEAKER_03: Um Russia CIS, they have always been really interested in getting their money and their kids out of uh Russia CIS, but at the same time, now they have fewer options because they're excluded from so many programs, right?
48:04
SPEAKER_03: Uh, which only means that the programs that remain open to Russians are seeing record traffic.
48:10
SPEAKER_03: And that's the case, for example, with uh the Turkey citizenship program or Golden Visa in Dubai, and so on.
48:19
SPEAKER_00: And I think we were talking about this a bit, how everyone's focus used to be Europe, the ancient playground.
48:28
SPEAKER_00: How was it?
48:29
SPEAKER_03: Uh I think I said uh ancient uh uh what is it?
48:35
SPEAKER_03: Anyway, ancient theme park or uh Ancient theme park.
48:38
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, something like that.
48:39
SPEAKER_00: It was the ancient theme park, we got the ruins, we got the the the gelato.
48:43
SPEAKER_00: So Europe's good, and that's where everyone's focus was.
48:46
SPEAKER_00: Now we're seeing probably a couple reasons for Latin America growing in popularity.
48:51
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, one, maybe Europe is not as economically strong as it was before.
48:57
SPEAKER_00: Maybe um, you know, it's uh uh more tense than it was before, maybe it's more expensive than it was before, maybe it's less safe than it was before.
49:04
SPEAKER_00: All of that.
49:05
SPEAKER_03: I I think uh everybody should just get a couple residencies in Latin America, especially permanent residencies, which I like to think of as call options on citizenship, right?
49:19
SPEAKER_03: I mean, it's not that's an oversimplification, but and and Parvis Malakuti will arrest me on this when he hears your podcast.
49:27
SPEAKER_03: But but um essentially it's a call uh permanent residency is essentially a call option on citizenship in that it can sit there and if one day qualify and not claim it.
49:40
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
49:41
SPEAKER_03: Well, you could if you have PR and you've had it for a number of years, then typically you'll be eligible to apply for citizenship.
49:50
SPEAKER_03: So it's an option that you can exercise as and when you need it.
49:54
SPEAKER_03: And so many of the ones that they have in Latin America are just so easy to get right now.
50:00
SPEAKER_03: And as they become more popular, they probably won't be.
50:03
SPEAKER_03: I mean, some of the more popular ones will probably become uh less easy to get, right?
50:09
SPEAKER_03: If Asuncion starts crawling with Canadians, uh then the the government in Paraguay is probably going to say, hey, we're gonna raise the fees or we're gonna, you know, extend the timeline, or something like that.
50:24
SPEAKER_03: So I just think it's a good idea to have the Western Hemisphere allocation, especially in the southern cone.
50:30
SPEAKER_03: Um, then you can start, you know, you can you can invest in some property there, maybe, you can uh, you know, get your cellula, uh, eventually your citizenship, um, and you, you know, build your little circle there, bury some gold coins on your finca, and you know, you can have kind of off-grid, something off-grid down there, um that that you may or may not use in the future, but it's but it's there and it's practically free, so take it, man.
51:03
SPEAKER_00: And I think uh you've been secretly toying with the idea a little bit, right?
51:07
SPEAKER_00: Like get some farmland and Southern Cone and something like that.
51:11
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, uh it's a public forum.
51:14
SPEAKER_03: I don't I want to be careful about uh you know broadcasting my my intentions, but keep it secret, but you're down.
51:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
51:24
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
51:24
SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm I'm I'm totally down, man.
51:26
SPEAKER_03: I I have uh several processes uh already in motion there.
51:31
SPEAKER_03: Ooh, yeah.
51:33
SPEAKER_00: Processes in motion, yeah.
51:35
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
51:36
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
51:37
SPEAKER_00: Good stuff.
51:38
SPEAKER_00: And what do you think it is that's unique about Latin America?
51:40
SPEAKER_00: So we mentioned about how they have the Rentista visa, which is largely unique to Latin America.
51:46
SPEAKER_00: Do you think um, you know, how huge is that?
51:49
SPEAKER_00: And do you think that there are other characteristics of Latin America as a residence or second citizenship destination make it make Latin America distinct from uh Europe and the rest of the world?
52:02
SPEAKER_03: Uh so uh I think Latin America should be compared to Southeast Asia because they those two regions kind of they have a lot in common.
52:17
SPEAKER_03: They offer a lot of the same benefits, you know, low cost, excellent climate.
52:23
SPEAKER_03: Obviously, Southeast Asia is a great deal safer than Latin America in terms of uh you know, I like there are there are plenty of neighborhoods in Latin America where you don't want to walk alone at night.
52:38
SPEAKER_03: That's less much less the case in Southeast Asia.
52:42
SPEAKER_03: On the other hand, uh in Southeast Asia, you have the potential for you know regional military conflict in a way that you don't really have in Latin America.
52:56
SPEAKER_03: Latin America is in the same time zone, more or less, as the United States, so that's definitely uh a plus.
53:04
SPEAKER_03: It's is it's you know nearer to the United States, so that that makes it interesting for North Americans, Canadians too.
53:12
SPEAKER_03: Um and you know, both regions have roughly 650 million people, Latin America and and um Southeast Asia.
53:21
SPEAKER_03: But yeah, they offer a lot of similar things, they have some Rentista visas in in uh Southeast Asia too, but uh but yeah, again, it's farther away.
53:30
SPEAKER_03: And it's also, you know, it's very hard to get citizenship in Southeast Asia.
53:37
SPEAKER_03: That's probably the most important thing to mention.
53:39
SPEAKER_03: Yeah I shouldn't have waited till the end to mention that, but it just occurred to me.
53:43
SPEAKER_03: But in Southeast Asia, you'll always be uh phalang, you know, you'll always be a foreigner.
53:50
SPEAKER_03: Um you you'll never fit in.
53:53
SPEAKER_00: Right.
53:53
SPEAKER_00: It's hard to like psychologically build a home when you're just on like a residency visa as opposed to being a citizen or owning your home instead of leasing.
54:03
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, so okay, so in Southeast Asia you have a lot of restrictions on you know getting citizenship there, even getting PR can be super tricky.
54:12
SPEAKER_03: Uh owning property, right?
54:14
SPEAKER_03: There are lots of restrictions on foreigners owning property in Southeast Asia that you don't have.
54:18
SPEAKER_03: Um culturally, uh it's very, very different in a way that Latin America's not religious.
54:25
SPEAKER_00: I bet a lot of people know this stuff actually already, because our our listeners are our listeners are so sophisticated as we've admitted.
54:31
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
54:32
SPEAKER_00: What's your what's your call?
54:33
SPEAKER_00: What's your bet?
54:34
SPEAKER_00: Do you think China uh Asia is gonna open in the future in terms of allowing foreigners to get citizenship, in terms of residencies opening up more?
54:43
SPEAKER_00: You know, they have like like Cambodia opened a program, uh Malaysia always has like a couple of random programs.
54:50
SPEAKER_00: Do you think Asia is gonna open up more?
54:53
SPEAKER_03: So yeah, Cambodia uh has always kind of been at the forefront in terms of welcoming foreigners like all the way, going all the way by like giving them citizenship and PR and these things that which you don't you cannot get in Malaysia.
55:08
SPEAKER_03: Uh and it's hard to get it in most Asian countries.
55:11
SPEAKER_03: But I do think at the same time, uh especially in East Asia, that have these super top-heavy population pyramids that they might have to to get the young people they might be forced to, and I'm kind of I'm seeing signs of this in South Korea, for example.
55:29
SPEAKER_03: South Korea now will give straight up give you citizenship after five years of residency, right?
55:33
SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
55:34
SPEAKER_03: Uh, which is kind of unique in in East Asia.
55:37
SPEAKER_03: Japan is liberalizing on this.
55:40
SPEAKER_03: China.
55:42
SPEAKER_03: I'm I'm bearish on China in general.
55:47
SPEAKER_03: Uh I don't necessarily want to go into detail.
55:51
SPEAKER_03: I might end up on some kind of government list or something, but uh and I have to travel to China sometimes.
55:56
SPEAKER_03: But I'm I'm generally suffice it to say, I'm bearish on the future of China.
56:00
SPEAKER_03: Uh and that's coming for someone who spent six years there and speaks the language, and you know, I've earned the right to say that.
56:06
SPEAKER_00: But interesting.
56:07
SPEAKER_00: No, that's a good call in terms of the population pyramid.
56:10
SPEAKER_00: That definitely um makes sense.
56:12
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what we saw in in Italy and and Southern Europe, right?
56:16
SPEAKER_00: Is they're just like, yo, we need we need young people.
56:19
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, straight up, straight up.
56:21
SPEAKER_03: And and that's not the case in Latin America.
56:24
SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
56:25
SPEAKER_00: So you've been based in uh Spain and and now in Portugal, living the Latin life equivalent over in Europe.
56:32
SPEAKER_00: How you like in Portugal, by the way?
56:34
SPEAKER_03: Uh I like it a lot.
56:36
SPEAKER_03: It's uh you know, got the best climate that you can get in Europe, uh, I would say.
56:43
SPEAKER_03: Uh it's uh mild winters and summers that are not too hot.
56:49
SPEAKER_03: And uh it's obviously you know great weather and nice people.
56:57
SPEAKER_03: Uh yeah, I like it a lot here.
56:59
SPEAKER_03: I came, I I mean, full disclosure, I used to live in Madrid, but then I came to Portugal for the tax benefits.
57:07
SPEAKER_01: The NHR.
57:08
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's right.
57:09
SPEAKER_03: The NHR.
57:10
SPEAKER_03: So that's why I'm here primarily.
57:13
SPEAKER_03: But uh I don't want I don't want to detract from Portugal as a country.
57:18
SPEAKER_03: It's a wonderful place to live.
57:19
SPEAKER_03: I I really enjoy it.
57:20
SPEAKER_03: I also love Madrid, it's just I would pay triple the tax in Madrid.
57:25
SPEAKER_00: So good, good.
57:27
SPEAKER_00: So you eat your Portuguese sweets, you eat the pastel danata and all that?
57:32
SPEAKER_03: I'm not I'm not big on sweets.
57:34
SPEAKER_03: I'm more of the singularity is near stay alive as long as you can, kind of guy, you know.
57:41
SPEAKER_00: I like that.
57:42
SPEAKER_00: That's good logic.
57:43
SPEAKER_00: How how are you liking the the NHR program?
57:46
SPEAKER_00: Um, has it met your expectations?
57:49
SPEAKER_00: Have you been disappointed on a few things?
57:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh, do you still recommend it to people?
57:54
SPEAKER_03: Uh look, I I I don't recommend any uh tax regime to anybody in particular because I can't because I'm not a tax lawyer.
58:03
SPEAKER_03: So this is not financial advice.
58:05
SPEAKER_03: But uh I will say that uh under the right circumstances, uh you can get a great, great deal uh with NHR for 10 years straight.
58:14
SPEAKER_03: Now, there is fine print.
58:17
SPEAKER_03: There's a lot of fine print.
58:19
SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, what nature should your like what form should your income take?
58:25
SPEAKER_03: You know, is it is it salaried income?
58:28
SPEAKER_03: Is it dividends?
58:29
SPEAKER_03: Is it capital gains?
58:31
SPEAKER_03: Uh is it royalties?
58:32
SPEAKER_03: Like you have to think this through because uh the implications are are serious if you if you get it wrong.
58:41
SPEAKER_03: So uh you know, NHR isn't suitable for everybody, but most people, especially if they come from a high-tax country, should be able to get uh a better deal in in Portugal.
58:52
SPEAKER_03: Not necessarily a radically better deal, but you know, especially if you're getting dividends, uh, especially if you're not a majority owner in the company that's paying you the dividends, and even more especially if that if that company is in a jurisdiction with which Portugal has a dual tax agreement, uh, you can get some tremendous NHR deals uh in Portugal.
59:15
SPEAKER_03: So yeah, I recommend it, but obviously uh talk to a professional.
59:20
SPEAKER_00: Nice.
59:21
SPEAKER_00: I think um do you do you think that Portugal is uh has hit its peak and it's sort of declining, as a couple commentators have said.
59:30
SPEAKER_00: We saw Peter Levels, uh Gonzalo Hall.
59:34
SPEAKER_00: Uh a couple people say that maybe we reached peak Portugal in late uh late 2020 or 2022, sorry.
59:43
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I mean it's hard to say.
59:45
SPEAKER_03: I mean it depends on what uh metric we're measuring, right?
59:52
SPEAKER_03: Like population-wise, it's peaked.
59:55
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it's pretty clear.
59:57
SPEAKER_03: Has it peaked economically?
59:59
SPEAKER_03: I don't think so.
1:00:00
SPEAKER_03: There's a there's a lot of in terms of like government policy.
1:00:04
SPEAKER_03: If I were if I were to take over Portugal tomorrow, there's like a lot of low-hanging fruit.
1:00:09
SPEAKER_03: Uh there's a there's a lot of easy policy moving.
1:00:13
SPEAKER_00: I guess I mean as like a digital nomad and expat hub and the NH NHR and all that.
1:00:17
SPEAKER_03: Do you think uh I mean NHR is still here, uh the D7 visa is still here, uh the weather's still nice, uh the cost of living is you know the lowest in Western Europe.
1:00:31
SPEAKER_03: Um has it peaked?
1:00:33
SPEAKER_03: I mean, who knows?
1:00:35
SPEAKER_03: Maybe it's maybe it's peaked.
1:00:36
SPEAKER_03: I mean Portugal hasn't changed that much.
1:00:39
SPEAKER_03: I guess there are more foreigners here than there were a few years ago.
1:00:42
SPEAKER_03: I just just today I see that uh there are now 800,000 foreigners here, so that's like 8% of the population, up from 7% last year.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_00: Dude, the the D7 D8 visa is pretty crazy, actually.
1:00:55
SPEAKER_00: Like I feel I feel like it's unique in Europe.
1:01:00
SPEAKER_00: I haven't this is a new thought that I'm having, but the D8 the D7 D8 is like very unique in the world of um you know residency and investment migration, right?
1:01:12
SPEAKER_00: Because it's kind of like you know, independent means, spend nine months a year, work towards citizenship.
1:01:17
SPEAKER_00: There's not too many places that kind of have that and allow anyone to rock up.
1:01:22
SPEAKER_03: Well, D7 is kind of uh it's a pretty conventional independent means visa.
1:01:30
SPEAKER_03: D8, I guess, is the entrepreneur.
1:01:34
SPEAKER_03: No, uh it's a startup visa or it's a highly qualified activity visa, if I'm not uh mistaken.
1:01:42
SPEAKER_03: That requires some investment.
1:01:44
SPEAKER_03: 175,000 is a number I hear bandied around.
1:01:49
SPEAKER_03: Um but yeah, they both lead to citizenship and uh and Portugal actually does give citizenship in year five or uh once year five is over, you just gotta learn the language.
1:02:01
SPEAKER_03: So you know I I think those are very, you know, if you want to live in Portugal, if you actually want to live here, then yeah, D7 is.
1:02:08
SPEAKER_03: I mean, obviously in my case, I'm European, I didn't need any visa, but if you're from outside of Europe and you want to live in Portugal, I think D7 is a very easy option.
1:02:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, for sure.
1:02:18
SPEAKER_00: I know a lot of people going for it.
1:02:20
SPEAKER_00: And I don't know, it's to me it seems like it's it's pretty unique.
1:02:23
SPEAKER_00: There's not too many countries where it's like, hey, if you want to spend the majority of the year here, you can and work towards citizenship.
1:02:30
SPEAKER_03: It's like uh well, uh Greece has the same, right?
1:02:33
SPEAKER_03: The FIP visa and uh elective residency in Italy and uh non-lucrative in Spain.
1:02:40
SPEAKER_00: Uh even as like a non-European, you could do the Italy one?
1:02:44
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:02:44
unknown: Really?
1:02:45
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, if yeah, because yeah, because if you're European, then you don't need a visa.
1:02:49
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
1:02:50
unknown: Right.
1:02:50
SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
1:02:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you probably know more, a few more programs than I do.
1:02:53
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, no, but these are just these are essentially independent means visas.
1:02:57
SPEAKER_03: Just show us that you have enough income uh that you know you won't become a charge on the state, you won't become a burden to us, and then you're you're well and obviously spend the majority of your time here and consume here and pay tax here, and then you're welcome to to join us.
1:03:13
SPEAKER_03: And I I think it makes sense if you're a country to attract people you know who who are demonstrably productive and who want to consume and pay tax in your country.
1:03:26
SPEAKER_03: Great, all countries should have that.
1:03:29
SPEAKER_00: Exactly, exactly.
1:03:30
SPEAKER_00: Dude, I wanted to just kind of relive the idea, rehash the idea that we're we're really living in a crazy time in terms of investment migration and residencies and second passports.
1:03:43
SPEAKER_00: I just feel like there's so many themes that are sort of meshing together or in and coming about at the same time, and it's all super crazy.
1:03:53
SPEAKER_00: Like people getting to work remote for the first time.
1:03:57
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:03:58
SPEAKER_00: Um, you have birth tourism uh becoming more viable, you have the network state with crypto and the metaverse, you have uh a lot more information online about tax havens these days, you have online businesses being a lot more common than they used to be.
1:04:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you have movements around self-sovereignty and global mobility and all these um books, and now you're having um, you know, like thought leaders and internet personalities talking about sovereignty.
1:04:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh, you're having you know this world where you can collect multiple passports, you have e-residency coming up with uh Estonia and Lieberland and all these like crazy different things are kind of coalescing and and being invented at the same time, and they're sort of overlapping in new ways.
1:04:48
SPEAKER_00: And I feel like people are iterating a lot on um what citizenship means, and we're really questioning like what is the nation state, we're questioning you know, what is citizenship, and we're questioning just even things like what is domicile, what is tax residency, what is a tax home, those are all like different things.
1:05:08
SPEAKER_00: What is a legal resident?
1:05:09
SPEAKER_00: What's a tax resident?
1:05:10
SPEAKER_00: Um, how does that fit into the nation state?
1:05:13
SPEAKER_00: How does that fit into like maybe a broader organization like NATO or the EU, and you're in it or you're out of it, and yeah, and there's just so many things going on.
1:05:23
SPEAKER_00: Add add-on driverless cars on top of that, and it's just you know, there's so many things coming down the pipeline at the same time.
1:05:31
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, you know, I always say that imagine how well governments would treat us if we all had multiple citizenships.
1:05:42
SPEAKER_03: Like that is my dream.
1:05:44
SPEAKER_03: And I realize this is far in the future.
1:05:47
SPEAKER_03: We're at the early stages of this, but I would like I have a dream.
1:05:52
SPEAKER_03: I have a dream where each of us has four or five citizenships, multiple residents.
1:06:01
SPEAKER_03: Homes in different continents, savings in different banks, different jurisdictions.
1:06:07
SPEAKER_03: We have hard wallets buried in different secret locations.
1:06:14
SPEAKER_03: Essentially, we should make ourselves ungovernable because we don't want to be under the thumb of any individual state, because that's a recipe for disaster and terrible treatment.
1:06:27
SPEAKER_03: So yeah, stack sats, stack citizenship, stacks residencies, stack groups of friends in in you know cities that you like, uh places where you can go at the drop of a hat if things turn sour.
1:06:43
SPEAKER_03: You know, ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your next country can do for you.
1:06:50
SPEAKER_03: That's what I say.
1:06:51
SPEAKER_03: Like uh just diversify yourself internationally, and if enough of us do that, and it doesn't even have to be the majority, it just has to be like the 1% who pay half of all the income tax uh and therefore have the leverage over the state.
1:07:08
SPEAKER_03: Like if if if the top 1% of people in terms of income become multinational, ungovernable individuals, then we'll force the countries to treat us better because there is now a global competition going on for capital and talent.
1:07:26
SPEAKER_03: And both capital and talent are now ultra mobile.
1:07:30
SPEAKER_03: And each country must compete to attract them and they must prevent losing them.
1:07:35
SPEAKER_03: And so some countries, the way they're doing, they're trying to like hem people in, like fence them in with exit taxes, etc.
1:07:43
SPEAKER_03: But that's kind of just the rigor mortise of a dying form of government, I think, where uh they realize what's happening and they're trying to you know squeeze as much as they can out of these uh cash cows for as long as they can.
1:07:58
SPEAKER_03: But in the future, countries will have to compete for the favor of sovereign individuals.
1:08:04
SPEAKER_03: And I think that's where we're going.
1:08:05
SPEAKER_03: And the best way for you to make sure that the government treats everybody better, not just the people who have money, everybody, the best way for you to make sure they treat you better is to uh have a diversified portfolio of residencies and citizenships and assets and spread it all around the world.
1:08:24
SPEAKER_03: Because uh, you know, if you don't have competition between countries, I mean what happens in an environment of no competition?
1:08:30
SPEAKER_03: What do you get?
1:08:31
SPEAKER_03: You get like uh the post office or the DMV, right?
1:08:36
SPEAKER_03: They don't have to treat you well because where are you gonna go?
1:08:39
SPEAKER_03: And so that's the case.
1:08:41
SPEAKER_03: I mean we wouldn't we wouldn't, you know, any other service or product that we buy, we always shop around, we always compare what's on offer.
1:08:51
SPEAKER_03: We uh you know companies have to vie for our demand.
1:08:55
SPEAKER_03: And we should we should approach governments like that as well.
1:08:59
SPEAKER_03: Countries, we should shop around for countries.
1:09:02
SPEAKER_03: We should we should play them up against each other.
1:09:06
SPEAKER_03: We should take the thing we like from that country, and then you know, let's say, oh, I like the health insurance in country A, but I like the banking in country B, and uh and I like the property rights in country C, and you shop around and you do jurisdictional arbitrage that way, and and you know, you're not gonna you're not gonna make the world more free by trying to influence politics from the inside because it's like trying to join the mafia and turn it into a philanthropic organization.
1:09:35
SPEAKER_03: It's just not that's not what that organization was set up to do.
1:09:38
SPEAKER_03: That's not the purpose of that organization.
1:09:40
SPEAKER_03: What you have to do as an individual is to get freedom in your own life, and the way to do that is to diversify yourself geographically, globally, make sure you have multiple citizenships and and assets around the world.
1:09:52
SPEAKER_03: And yeah, one percent of people do that, and we'll get a much, much freer world.
1:09:57
SPEAKER_03: So I'm I'm glad that uh you and me were were kind of leading the charge.
1:10:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
1:10:03
SPEAKER_00: I think you know uh jurisdictional arbitrage is the term that you used, and people probably know it in to some extent, where maybe the alcohol is cheaper over state lines, right?
1:10:15
SPEAKER_00: So you you go and drive to New Hampshire and you get your alcohol, you bring it back, or something like that.
1:10:21
SPEAKER_00: Tax-free cigarettes.
1:10:22
SPEAKER_00: Uh and and now and now we're we're at the level as digital nomads, internet entrepreneurs, and expats that we're kind of playing nation states against each other, and and as you're predicting, nation states are gonna have to compete with each other more in the future.
1:10:39
SPEAKER_00: What's that gonna look like?
1:10:41
SPEAKER_00: How's that going to change our relationship with the state, or how can people sort of position themselves uh best towards a changing world?
1:10:51
SPEAKER_03: Uh so well uh how is our relationship with the state going to change?
1:10:56
SPEAKER_03: I mean, right now, one of the reasons one of the one of the obstacles to this utopia that I'm describing is that people have a sentimental relationship with the state.
1:11:15
SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, we all we went to the same schools.
1:11:18
SPEAKER_03: I know in America you had to uh say the Pledge of Allegiance, I think.
1:11:22
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, national anthem.
1:11:24
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, this kind of there's a national anthem, there's a national football team that everybody has to cheer for, there's a national bird, whatever.
1:11:32
SPEAKER_03: And and uh and uh we've been uh this has been inculcated in I mean it's we've been indoctrinated essentially to identify propaganda into the nation states.
1:11:45
SPEAKER_00: Like why do you only sing the Norwegian national anthem and not the French one, right?
1:11:50
SPEAKER_00: Not the French one, yeah.
1:11:53
SPEAKER_03: Well, the reason is that if you are a group of people that calls itself a government and proclaims the right because you know it says so on the paper that you wrote, uh, that you have the right to rule over the people within these geographical confines, then you have to engage in that sort of uh it's almost like a religious ritual where you have to thinking of like I'm part of this group, we're against all the other groups.
1:12:24
SPEAKER_00: Correct.
1:12:24
SPEAKER_03: You know, just uh talk about uh you asked me for anecdotes earlier.
1:12:29
SPEAKER_03: I was in a taxi one time in China.
1:12:31
SPEAKER_03: I always used to talk to the taxi drivers because A, it's a great way to learn the language, and B, they they kind of give you a window into the soul of the nation, right?
1:12:39
SPEAKER_03: Because they're kind of uh they're kind of the ear to the ground, yeah.
1:12:44
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, and they're like pretty average people, you know, they're pretty representative.
1:12:49
SPEAKER_03: And I remember uh they always used to ask me, you know, where are you from?
1:12:54
SPEAKER_03: And I always ask, Oh, I'm from Norway.
1:12:57
SPEAKER_03: And uh this one taxi driver, he asked me, like, well, what's the population of Norway?
1:13:02
SPEAKER_03: And I was it's five million.
1:13:04
SPEAKER_03: Uh it's like the same as this uh this uh neighborhood in Shanghai.
1:13:09
SPEAKER_03: And he said, Oh, only five million.
1:13:12
SPEAKER_03: And and he was oh, I'm so sorry.
1:13:14
SPEAKER_03: Like he felt sorry for me because you know, I was part like uh how how how pitiful was I coming from such a small country, uh you know, and it really hit home for me that you know, to him, he derives uh his identity is really wrapped up with the group that he belongs to, the Chinese people, and Chinese people being 1.35 billion or whatever, that gave him like a sense of greatness as an individual, even though in his personal life he may not have amounted to much.
1:13:49
SPEAKER_03: At least he was part of this this greater whole, and that gave him a sense of identity and belonging and pride, even.
1:13:56
SPEAKER_03: I I also don't think it makes sense to be proud of your nationality because it's like it's like being proud of your eye color because you're not, you know, you didn't do anything to earn your nationality, you can't take credit for that.
1:14:07
SPEAKER_03: But the flip side of that is you don't have to take the blame for anything your nation does, right?
1:14:12
SPEAKER_03: So you can't take credit, but you also don't need to take any blame.
1:14:15
SPEAKER_03: Um but anyway, people have this sentimental connection with the country, and I think uh once you start having multiple countries, you dilute that that sense of uh emotional connection uh to your your country.
1:14:34
SPEAKER_03: So if we can and I and I see this happening now, I see this happening for people in our generation who have traveled a great deal more, who speak more languages, who who don't just read the local from like a multinational background, maybe.
1:14:49
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that too.
1:14:50
SPEAKER_03: And then, you know, when my parents were growing up, it was like there's like one channel on TV, and you know, here's the six o'clock news, and here's what we want you to think, right?
1:15:03
SPEAKER_03: And now we're all getting our news and information from a very diverse uh set of sources, and you know, there's a lot of you know BS online, so we've had to learn how to navigate and distinguish real news from fake news in a way that our parents never had to, and so that that by the way, I think is why our parents are so afraid about fake news because they have never learned how to distinguish uh BS on the internet from the truth, right?
1:15:33
SPEAKER_03: So it it it worries them, but anyway, anyway, that's a digression.
1:15:37
SPEAKER_03: Point is our generation, I think, is way more receptive to international uh seeing themselves as uh individuals in the world rather than identifying themselves because of belonging to a particular ethnic or national group.
1:15:57
SPEAKER_03: Right?
1:15:58
SPEAKER_03: I I have a lot more in common with the people like you're Canadian, I'm Norwegian, I have a lot more in common with you philosophically and in terms of values than with the average Norwegian.
1:16:12
SPEAKER_00: And it's it's changing goalposts too because these nation states never maintain their borders for more than like 200 years, and um like it's it's not a fixed thing, I guess.
1:16:25
SPEAKER_03: No, it's not.
1:16:25
SPEAKER_03: It's uh you know, who is the who's dominant here and now in this region?
1:16:33
SPEAKER_03: I mean, nation states are essentially uh I know I know people will think I'm an extremist when I say this, but I think of governments as organized crime.
1:16:44
SPEAKER_03: It's just that it is the most a government is simply the most dominant organized crime group in any particular geographical area.
1:16:53
SPEAKER_03: They are so dominant, in fact, that they have chased out uh or at least marginalized every other organized crime group in that country, and they have a monopoly on on extor extorting the citizens of that country.
1:17:09
SPEAKER_03: And uh yeah, so it's well it's it it's yeah, go ahead.
1:17:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, I I get it.
1:17:18
SPEAKER_00: Random side question: did you ever have like a particular interest in the Italian mafia or other types of organized crime?
1:17:25
SPEAKER_00: Because I still love that stuff, and I can and sometimes I like draw connections between the two themes.
1:17:31
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I like that stuff, and you know, you'll you'll note that they're not that different.
1:17:37
SPEAKER_03: I mean, there is a difference in degree between the mafia and the state, but there's not really a difference in kind.
1:17:45
SPEAKER_03: You know, the the mafia had its omerta, the mafia had you know rules and they had conventions and they had norms that they followed, and you know, if you paid them off, they didn't do anything to you.
1:17:59
SPEAKER_03: If you didn't pay them off, they they might burn down your store or whatever.
1:18:04
SPEAKER_03: And the state essentially does that, but it's become so successful at it that it's it's codified uh its extortion, and it's even been able to.
1:18:17
SPEAKER_03: I mean, the smart move obviously was taking over education, because then you can then you can tell people that no, actually, we are this like patriarchic group that we care about you and we only want to do what's best for you.
1:18:31
SPEAKER_03: And if you didn't have us to take half your income and redistribute in the country, it would be total chaos and and you know, anarchy became a bad word.
1:18:42
SPEAKER_03: Um and so yeah, it's just a state is simply the dominant and most successful um organized crime group in a particular geographical area.
1:18:52
SPEAKER_00: Things are gonna have to change if only just because the debts and the currency stuff, it's just getting too insane.
1:18:58
SPEAKER_00: It makes me this is a random new idea, Hav, but it makes me think of how you know how private corporations used to give lifelong pensions, right?
1:19:08
SPEAKER_00: In America, we had the unions and the you know the TV company and all that.
1:19:13
SPEAKER_00: They used to give lifelong pensions.
1:19:15
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:19:15
SPEAKER_00: And then they they switched over.
1:19:18
SPEAKER_00: There's a finance term for this, but they switched over from a um they switched to a contribution model where it says like, hey, you put 5% towards your retirement.
1:19:28
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they'll match you.
1:19:29
SPEAKER_00: We'll do matching contributions.
1:19:30
SPEAKER_00: So they switched so they basically were able to get off all these obligations off of the books by just doing matching and not having to have these like lifelong liabilities on the books.
1:19:41
SPEAKER_00: And I feel like countries might have to do something like that too.
1:19:44
SPEAKER_00: Like they might just have to start doing like, hey, we'll do a matching contribution or something, but we gotta get all these insane liabilities off the books because that's kind of seems to be one of the it's like one of the last like mainstays of the nation state where it's like, look, I need my nation state because I need my pension, but it's also kind of their demise as as well, in a way.
1:20:04
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that and that's true.
1:20:06
SPEAKER_03: That's ironic, right?
1:20:07
SPEAKER_03: That the mainstay would be the thin end of the wedge that ends it all, right?
1:20:13
SPEAKER_03: Uh, you know, when I first came to Portugal, I was uh trying to take my income as uh I like I uh stand or something.
1:20:24
SPEAKER_03: No, that's what I do now, but I was gonna take it as uh a salary, yeah, and they said, Oh, it's uh 20% flat tax.
1:20:32
SPEAKER_03: I said, okay, that's that's a big improvement from what I'm paying now.
1:20:35
SPEAKER_03: Um but what about this this little point here?
1:20:38
SPEAKER_03: It says uh 11% social security.
1:20:40
SPEAKER_03: You didn't mention that.
1:20:41
SPEAKER_03: So, oh no, but that's that's not a tax.
1:20:44
SPEAKER_03: That's uh social security.
1:20:46
SPEAKER_03: You get that back when you retire.
1:20:49
SPEAKER_03: Uh well, is it optional?
1:20:52
SPEAKER_03: Like, unless it's optional, it's a tax.
1:20:55
SPEAKER_03: That's number one.
1:20:57
SPEAKER_03: Second, there is no way in hell that that money is going to be there by the time I retire.
1:21:03
SPEAKER_03: In fact, it's been spent already before I even retire.
1:21:07
SPEAKER_03: I mean, before I even pay it in, that money's been spent.
1:21:10
SPEAKER_03: And so you're right, like you have these huge unfunded liabilities all over the Western world.
1:21:16
SPEAKER_03: Uh, the government knows there's no way it can pay it for any uh I mean what they promise to pay out, they have already spent.
1:21:25
SPEAKER_03: So it's just not going to be there when you grow up, when you when you get old, when you retire.
1:21:31
SPEAKER_03: And so I think when people start to see that, uh that'll liberate them, that'll liberate them from that that final tie that they have to to the nation state.
1:21:44
SPEAKER_03: Of course, you can you can still, you know, for now, uh Social Security still will pay you, and there's still some money to pay, you know, uh Social Security, and you can still live in Latin America and receive that pension, right?
1:21:59
SPEAKER_03: I'm not listening I I'm not telling people to give up their US citizenship.
1:22:03
SPEAKER_03: I I obviously that's a that's a difficult decision to make.
1:22:08
SPEAKER_03: It's not the right decision for everybody.
1:22:10
SPEAKER_03: There could be unforeseen consequences of it later down the line, you don't know.
1:22:14
SPEAKER_03: Um and it's it sucks for Americans that they have to give up their citizenship in order to enjoy um the majority of or the best tax breaks, right?
1:22:26
SPEAKER_03: Like as an as a Norwegian or as anybody who's not American or Eritrean, I guess, um we can we can move and get better tax terms, but Americans unfortunately can't.
1:22:41
SPEAKER_03: And that's another trend that I'm a little bit worried about the uh proliferation of citizenship-based taxation.
1:22:48
SPEAKER_03: I could see some European countries, probably Australia, New Zealand, I could totally see them uh trying that move too.
1:22:57
SPEAKER_00: Uh and it's uh it seems to me like they're trying to baby step the way there.
1:23:02
SPEAKER_00: Like they're not just outright gonna be like like, yo, citizenship based, let's go.
1:23:08
SPEAKER_00: Like it's more, it's more they're gonna ease it in with like, hey, you know, three years after you give up residency, or you know, worldwide capital gains, but not worldwide earned income, yeah, or you know, worldwide inheritance tax, but not worldwide everything else.
1:23:22
SPEAKER_00: And so they're just like, oh no, it's only this one thing that's worldwide, not everything.
1:23:27
SPEAKER_00: And um, but but it'll kind of like its way up, yeah.
1:23:32
SPEAKER_03: Of course, that's a smart way to do it.
1:23:33
SPEAKER_03: Anyone who's read Robert Cialdini's influence will know that.
1:23:38
SPEAKER_03: Anybody who's been in sales understand that you know uh incremental changes is what uh what you should what you should impose to get people to to follow you and and not resist, right?
1:23:50
SPEAKER_03: Um so yeah, for sure that's the case.
1:23:54
SPEAKER_00: As we're starting to wrap up, I wanted to I have one random question, and then I wanted to get your kind of advice to uh to to a couple groups of people.
1:24:04
SPEAKER_00: But my one random question was you know the industry quite well, you know tens of thousands of professionals in this industry.
1:24:12
SPEAKER_00: What percentage of them are are practicing it as well and are are living abroad and stacking multiple residencies, getting CBI passports, all these bank account stuff.
1:24:24
SPEAKER_00: Do you think people are really taking action, or do you think the people that are really taking action, a la Andrew Henderson, are are a bit unique?
1:24:32
SPEAKER_03: Well, Andrew is at one end of the scale, right?
1:24:37
SPEAKER_03: Because uh he is really, I mean, as a true pioneer in this.
1:24:42
SPEAKER_03: Um so but but just people are you're asking, you know, the people who work in the industry, are they living, are they practicing what they preach?
1:24:50
SPEAKER_03: Are they themselves getting residencies and citizenships elsewhere?
1:24:54
SPEAKER_03: I would say yes, to a great extent they are.
1:24:57
SPEAKER_03: Uh to the extent that they can afford it, they are.
1:25:01
SPEAKER_03: Absolutely.
1:25:02
SPEAKER_03: Um at least uh you know, gathering residencies.
1:25:05
SPEAKER_03: I know a lot of people in the industry who are doing that, and uh, you know, probably half the people that I know in the industry don't live in their country of birth.
1:25:16
SPEAKER_03: Right?
1:25:17
SPEAKER_03: So so yeah, for sure.
1:25:18
SPEAKER_03: And a lot of a lot of people also are clients first, and then they they end up seeing the industry from the inside, and then they join it and start working.
1:25:28
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I I know a lot of stories like that.
1:25:31
SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
1:25:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, interesting.
1:25:34
SPEAKER_00: Cool.
1:25:34
SPEAKER_00: Well, we'll start wrapping up.
1:25:36
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I want to be respectful of your time.
1:25:38
SPEAKER_00: Uh, I thought maybe like a fun last question would be to get your advice to the listeners out there for two different groups of people.
1:25:46
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:25:47
SPEAKER_00: First, the advice to a younger version of yourself, maybe a 20-year-old or 18-year-old version of yourself.
1:25:55
SPEAKER_00: Uh, some life advice for 18-year-old Christian.
1:25:59
SPEAKER_00: And then also advice to the uh retirees and soon-to-be retirees out there, sort of older demographic, uh, in terms of maybe retiring abroad or how to um extend the range of options that they have.
1:26:18
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
1:26:19
SPEAKER_03: Uh so to a younger version of myself, uh, just in terms of life quality, try um start build start building an audience, I think is a good a good thing.
1:26:36
SPEAKER_03: Like uh start today to build an audience on social media, build an email list.
1:26:41
SPEAKER_03: It doesn't really matter so much what it is you do, you can figure out that later, but you know, you you you you're probably gonna be playing around in different fields and learning different trades, etc.
1:26:54
SPEAKER_03: But if you have an audience, uh then especially an audience like if you've been very authentic with your voice, then you'll have people who think like you and are interested in the same things as you, and then later down the line, you can probably find services or products to offer to that audience.
1:27:11
SPEAKER_03: And this is something you can do on the side while you're going to school, while you're you know working at some stepping stone job that you probably don't want to have for the rest of your life.
1:27:21
SPEAKER_03: Because the goal should be financial independence, right?
1:27:24
SPEAKER_03: So you don't want to be um you don't want to be an employee for the rest of your life.
1:27:30
SPEAKER_03: Uh not to knock, I mean, uh I've been an employee and I've learned a lot from being an employee.
1:27:35
SPEAKER_03: I I see being an employee as a great way to get paid to learn.
1:27:41
SPEAKER_03: Uh so definitely recommend um uh working for a company in an industry that you're interested in and learning those skills.
1:27:50
SPEAKER_03: Personally, I think I spent too much time in school.
1:27:54
SPEAKER_03: I would probably, if I if I were to do it all over again, I would have dropped out of school.
1:27:58
SPEAKER_03: I mean, I have a Bachelor's degree and then I have a master's degree.
1:28:02
SPEAKER_03: I probably could have stopped at bachelor's and just started started earlier with my entrepreneurial stuff, started earlier getting work experience.
1:28:13
SPEAKER_03: Um so that's one thing I would do differently.
1:28:17
SPEAKER_03: But yeah, uh start building your side hustle early, uh start gaining skills, stack skills.
1:28:27
SPEAKER_03: That's really important.
1:28:28
SPEAKER_03: So there's this concept called the um I think it's called the skill stack or the something stack.
1:28:36
SPEAKER_03: Uh this is from um what's the guy that the Scott Adams, the guy who writes Dilbert.
1:28:42
SPEAKER_03: Right.
1:28:42
SPEAKER_03: I think I think that's the first place where I heard about the skill stack.
1:28:46
SPEAKER_03: And basically he's saying, look, you could either be the world's best at one particular in one particular domain, like you can be Lionel Messi, or you can be whatever, the world's greatest violinist, and you'll get super rich and successful.
1:29:03
SPEAKER_03: But that's you know, only only one in several million people can do that.
1:29:08
SPEAKER_03: Well, but the the the more viable route is to build complementary skill sets that you can stack on top of each other.
1:29:18
SPEAKER_03: So for example, in a unique way, yeah, uh that gives you what what Naval Ravikant refers to as special knowledge, right?
1:29:25
SPEAKER_03: If you have special knowledge and you have accountability, then uh people will pay you, right?
1:29:30
SPEAKER_03: And so in my case, you know, I learned a bunch of languages, but just knowing a bunch of languages in itself is not super useful.
1:29:38
SPEAKER_03: But when you combine that with knowing about investment migration and with knowing how to write well in English, uh and knowing how to do some video editing and knowing how to do a little bit of web development and knowing how to do a little bit of this and that and the other, uh, you know, I I've now built a product kind of around me that if I were to replace myself, I would need like eight or nine people uh just to get the same stuff done because I've I've designed the whole business around my personal skill set.
1:30:07
SPEAKER_03: And so try to find like you know, obviously follow the things you're interested in.
1:30:12
SPEAKER_03: You have to be interested in whatever it is you're doing, because if you're not interested, then people who are interested and genuinely like the the subject will just outcompete you.
1:30:22
SPEAKER_03: So you definitely gotta uh follow your interests and and and just build skills, man.
1:30:28
SPEAKER_03: Like try different things, uh, you know, play around with building websites or recording podcasts or making videos or writing books or whatever.
1:30:37
SPEAKER_03: And um and and yeah, stack skills.
1:30:41
SPEAKER_03: Stack skills and and don't stay in school too long.
1:30:45
SPEAKER_00: So the and the other one, I 100% agree with that.
1:30:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh both those things.
1:30:50
SPEAKER_00: That was uh uh an excellent answer.
1:30:55
SPEAKER_03: I'm afraid I don't know, you know, I don't have experience being old, right?
1:30:59
SPEAKER_03: Uh I have experience being young, but not old.
1:31:02
SPEAKER_00: Um what have you seen just in terms of like maybe pitfalls or or things uh from from the clients that doing the golden bees and stuff that you've seen?
1:31:11
SPEAKER_00: Or just um people maybe looking for greener pastures.
1:31:15
SPEAKER_00: Uh I think sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
1:31:18
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, I think a lot I think a lot of people just wait too long, they put it off.
1:31:22
SPEAKER_03: Um they end up you know not making the move uh out of inertia, and then one day they're kind of too old or too settled in their ways to make the change.
1:31:39
SPEAKER_03: So, you know, set yourself up for the the final third of your life by you know it's really important to decide, like for the young people have to decide what they do, and then the middle-aged people they have to decide who they do it with.
1:31:56
SPEAKER_03: But then old people, it's also really important, you know, where you're gonna be because once you're old, you have less energy, and typically you have more money, but you have less energy, and so uh you want to try to find your Shangri-La, let's say, or multiple Shangri-la's, uh, while you still have the energy, so that when you get like truly old and don't have that energy, then you're already kind of set.
1:32:23
SPEAKER_03: That's what I would say.
1:32:24
SPEAKER_03: But but then again, um, what what do I know about being old?
1:32:28
SPEAKER_00: No, that's good.
1:32:29
SPEAKER_00: That's good.
1:32:30
SPEAKER_00: Speaking of Shangri-La, dude, Tower Mina was super cool.
1:32:34
SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, super nice.
1:32:36
SPEAKER_00: Between you and one of my other buddies that put it on the map for me, I was like, you know what?
1:32:40
SPEAKER_00: People are talking about towermina, let's go check it out.
1:32:42
SPEAKER_03: You know why people you know why people are talking about it?
1:32:44
SPEAKER_03: Because it was in season two of White Lotus on HVO.
1:32:49
SPEAKER_00: I've heard this.
1:32:50
SPEAKER_00: I heard Sicily in general grew in popularity a lot because of the show.
1:32:54
SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:32:55
SPEAKER_03: But uh yeah, I was there before it got cool.
1:33:00
SPEAKER_00: Dude, that's been a whole week there.
1:33:02
SPEAKER_00: I did the Godfather tour in Savoka, did a bunch of stuff.
1:33:06
SPEAKER_00: I like I enjoyed it.
1:33:07
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was cool.
1:33:09
SPEAKER_00: Cool, man.
1:33:09
SPEAKER_00: Uh, well, yeah, let's wrap up the episode.
1:33:13
SPEAKER_00: Um my guest again today was Christian Neshaim.
1:33:17
SPEAKER_00: Neshaim.
1:33:18
SPEAKER_03: Very good.
1:33:19
SPEAKER_03: Neshaim.
1:33:20
SPEAKER_00: Neshaim.
1:33:20
SPEAKER_00: Christian Neshaim from IMI Daily, Investment Migration Insider, the number one trade publication newsletter for the investment migration.
1:33:31
SPEAKER_03: That's for ice streak.
1:33:32
SPEAKER_03: That's right.
1:33:32
SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much for having me on the show.
1:33:34
SPEAKER_03: It's been a pleasure.
1:33:35
SPEAKER_03: You've uh given me a lot of latitude to talk about the things that are dear to me.
1:33:40
SPEAKER_03: So I appreciate that.
1:33:41
SPEAKER_03: For thank you for letting me talk.
1:33:43
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, dude.
1:33:44
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for coming on and great to catch up and uh looking forward to supporting each other in the future.
1:33:48
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:33:49
SPEAKER_00: See you soon, man.