These counter party dangers can vary from personal to world shaping. There are many stories of spouses that have a hidden life, or had a life prior to marriage they wanted to remain hidden. History is full of stories about governments inventing or exaggerating an incident as an excuse to start a war they can blame on others.

Anytime you enter into a contract there is risk. Most of the risks can be discovered by due-diligence research, but there are always some dangers that will remain hidden. When Lehman Brothers crashed they were counter-party to many contracts. They had been considered a safe counter-party, but they would have brought down many careless investment banks that bet on them, if the government had not reached into taxpayers pockets and bailed out the gambling bankers.

As an aside: when any institution or country is considered “too big too fail” then those running the institution are free to gamble and steal — they will be protected from their folly when they inevitably over extend themselves. Occasionally there is a scapegoat or two for the sins of the many, but the rest will escape unscathed.

“But wait,” you say. “I can see why you might view marriage as a contract, but I never signed on a dotted line to be a citizen of where I was born. It just happened.”

All I can answer to that is your signature was assumed, and your agreement with the actions of your government are implied by the support you have given them. Your signature was obtained by proxy; not the first time you were taught your countries loyalty oath, and not even the first time a teacher in your compulsive education taught you the official version of what your daily pledge meant. Your signature came after a decade or more of indoctrination.

When, at the age of twelve or fourteen you first realized an action you were being asked to take was based on a lie, and yet you went along with your well trained cohort in following onerous orders, that’s when you validated your country’s contract. That contract is voidable by you, but it will take action. If you take no actions in protest, you are assumed to be in agreement with any action taken in your name.

“But wait,” you once again cry. “I live in a democracy. With my right to vote comes agreement to abide with what the majority dictates to the minorities. It may not be a republic that represents rather than reflects votes, but a democracy is still a united statement of will I’ve agreed with.

There my friend is the evidence you have a contract with your government. You also have counter party risks associated with that contract. If you are called to war, or your assets are confiscated, you are held accountable by “a united statement of will I’ve agreed with.”

How then can the contract with your government counter-party be voidable?

They are in breach of contract. In some countries the breach may be violations of founding documents or internationally affirmed human rights. In other countries the breach of your counter party agreement can be evidenced by the huge difference between what officials said they would do when they wanted to procure votes, and what they have actually done since elected. A broken contract is voidable. Your contract has been shattered.

A bad marriage you decided on one night in Los Vegas may take many expensive months to dissolve. Why is divorce from a bad spouse so expensive? — Because it’s worth it. How long do you expect divorce from your arranged child marriage to an evil country to take? It won’t be overnight, it won’t be cheap, and it will be an ordeal. When it’s over you will have scars.

Why then do people go to the trouble of getting different citizenships and passports and renouncing their ties to tyrannical countries?

Because escape from the risks and dangers of an evil counter-party is worth it.

Bill Freeman

You may never exercise your power, yet it resides in you. You may be part of the most hive like of human societies (North Korea?), yet always within your mental reach is the ability to say “No, I’ll do it my way.”

That decision may cost your life or cause you to find your life, but it is always your choice.

What have you done with your power?

As one doting elder said “My grandson the doctor is twelve, my grandson the lawyer is ten.”

When you were four years old you never said, “I want to live inside some artificial and invisible boarders with people unlike me pretending we’re the same.” Why not?

Because you and your family, and a few friends that were like you, were who you identified with. The odds are these same people, or ones very similar, are who you identify with today. The rest of the mass of humanity is poorly known and under appreciated. Relax — you are normal. It’s over-developed nations that are recent and abnormal institutions.

Unfortunately normal is an extremely dangerous position for one simple reason — it’s boring. Being normal, surrounded by people and events you consider normal, leaves your life open to incremental erosion. Step by step your life changes, but as the stream you float on flows, you flow with it; unaware, unalarmed.

There is a waterfall ahead, and then what remains of your life will join a raging river. For now though you just float. Life is normal.

What life isn’t is linear. Look back at your life, look back at your country’s existence. Life flows in a smooth pattern that could be described algebraically, and then there was a sudden disruption and everything changed. As soon as anyone finds themselves in a comfortable niche, the niche develops bed bugs or even disappears. This is the course of history. We live in tomorrow’s history, and to those that survive it will read like a horror story.

History can be described as wars, famines, pestilence, and man’s inhumanity to man — and an occasional individual (male or female) that accepted mockery and persecution to advance mankind. We have such individuals today, and we have the inhumanity et al to complement them. Where you live right now, and the family and friends that surround you, are no protection from becoming a sad part of history.

Your action may (not will) provide such protection.

For the first time since you started school it’s time to answer a question: What do YOU want to be?

Let me make a suggestion. It’s only a suggestion because you have the power over your own life, even if you’ve never used it. Get off the leaf you are floating on, and check out the alternatives.

Get yourself free, and put yourself in a position to offer a place of escape to those that now comfortably surround you. You can probably come back, but a point is coming where if you are not prepared you may not be able to leave.

Here’s an option to consider. Visit a country that is in a different economic position with fewer demands on it’s people. You can find one where for very little money you can buy ocean front property, a mountain lakeside condo, or a large productive farm for very little. Get a place you think could serve as an extended family compound for many generations. Stay long enough to open a bank account and arrange for profitable management of the property. Maybe become a resident.

Then decide if you want to come back home, or invite those you love to come visit and maybe join you.

Who do you want to be?

Bill Freeman

Of course your business does contingency planning, even if it’s informal. The world is not simplifying and risks are increasing. Someone thinks or asks “How can we secure our supplies if James goes out of business or the shippers go on strike?” As a result you may add another supplier or two and arrange alternate shipping or on-site storage for your suppliers.

You may strategically think of them less, but your life and family are more important than your business. You are the only one who can ask “What if the currency our finances are held in is devalued by 50%, or the borders are closed during a banking holiday when food is scarce?”

You and I know that almost no one will do the following:

If slow-to-be-issued exit visas are required to leave the country, and only $500 may be transfered from the country per year, will you be trapped? What ifs like this are at the center of contingency planning. Look at trends and extrapolate scenarios, give them a percentage likelihood of occurring, assign a cost to preparing a contingent countering action. You can’t do everything this afternoon, but you can start at the highest risk scenarios with the least cost in time and money. Occasionally one risk is so great it will supersede all else, regardless of time and expense. Start cracking.

What we can and might do:

Invest a bit in transportable, emergency wealth like gold or silver.

Travel outside the country of birth and make friends with locals.

Open a bank account in another country.

Find reputable counselors in another livable country. (we might provide referrals)

leave behind our childish ways.

Okay, that last one was for me. I have a bad habit of doing what I want at the moment, instead of planning and doing what is best for the future. I’ll bet I’m not alone. It takes growing up to face the future and do something about it when I could play a round of golf instead.

Now if I were on the links and saw a drone overhead it might cause several reactions; wondering if it was watching or targeting one of my foursome, a desire to act rather than keep planning, and a request for a Mulligan. But short of a sudden reminder of 24/7 threats, golf is usually a devise for sublimation of worries, even justified concerns. I might think of contingencies while searching for my ball, but I’ll probably forget about them at the nineteenth hole.

You’re sitting at your computer or tapping on your phone to read this, so do three small things now.

*) Save one of our free reports to another tab for latter reading.

*) Call a travel agent and get brochures for a trip outside your country; no all-inclusive resorts, few if any tours, golf courses optional. Paradise will have some flaws, but having a life over invested in one local may be fatal.

*) Stop by a coin store and buy a bullion tenth ounce gold or two and several silver rounds or coins.

You’ve started, that’s the hard part. The harder part is continuing. The hardest part is once life interrupts your plans, picking up where you left off. Don’t quit. Restart. Enjoy the opportunities you’ve discovered. There is a large and beautiful world out there with new frustrations and unimaginably glorious rewards.

Build your ramp. Jump the fence. Explore.

Bill Freeman

But there are specifics you need that can be provided without reading our free reports, consulting with us, seeking referrals, or otherwise extending yourself. A comfort zone is a hard thing to leave. So, sit in your most comfortable reading chair and look outside your life for the next few moments. I promise to get you back in time for the next depressing, distracting from reality, and unactionable news cast.

The first specific is a reason for action. You know the reasons on some level or you wouldn’t be here. If you live in any of the overdeveloped countries you are watching your safety, taxes, benefits, and all other aspects of your life style being threatened. You can blame it on anyone else and probably do. Over time those things that are excellent return to average, and frequently some of those things once despised become average and then soar beyond to excellent. In statistics as applied to investments, this is referred to as regression-to-the-mean — everything eventually becomes average once again, and then frequently goes past. Few things hang around the mean for long.

It’s okay to be in a once inefficient and despotic nation that is growing in freedom and opportunity. Worse is a once wild and free country that has discovered regulation, high taxes, big debt, and a rationing of opportunity. Most overdeveloped countries won’t stop at the mean, they will fall well below it before their momentum slows.

The second specific is a reason for caution. You probably know people that have lost houses and businesses due to crooks in banks, that were empowered by laws, from bought politicians (of both parties, deceit has no party favorites). Few nations are more honest than the one you are in now, and they have laws that are unfamiliar, and societies that tolerate or attack different problems. You will need good council, anywhere in the world, including where you are.

The problem with counsel where you are is they are justly afraid of your government too. There are things they won’t tell you, things they are required to report without telling you, and things not taught in the schools they attended so they can’t tell you. And these are the honest ones. To get a view of the world outside your borders you will have to travel outside your borders. Once there, be picky. Don’t just take the word of one nice guy in a bar, talk to lots of people. Then interview many consultants as Mr. or Mrs. Smith, get some ideas from each. Check those ideas with the local consulate of the countries they mention to see if their products actually exist. If this sounds worth cautiously pursuing, start by reading a free report or two.

The third specific is a reason to stay put. You are established and well known. Yes things are getting worse; but it’s happening slowly, you can adapt. You are in a comfortable groove, you know what to expect and what to do for every day of the rest of your life. You won’t change, it would disrupt everyone’s lives around you. In fact if you stay, the people you know won’t let you change. If things slowly become really bad; well folks have survived really bad before — except when they didn’t.

If you are too tough to care, if your future is beyond considering, if buying any type of insurance policy is a waste of time:

Your newscast is on.

Bill Freeman

If the worker had thought about it before today he would have seen the potential problems with such an arrangement, you can see them now; he was waiting for someone to tell him he could save his own life, someone to let him.

He should ignore the brazen stares of contempt for his breaking company policy, quietly and without panic walk to the emergency exit, and use it. No one will stop him. If anyone else survives they may write a sternly worded letter about his disobedience.

I had a friend say something chilling to me the other day. His family and old friends from his own country no longer call him crazy for saying their land is committing suicide. They say he may be wrong, it’s too soon to worry, or it’s different this time; but they don’t say he’s crazy anymore. They also won’t think about what it might mean, to them and their family, if he’s right.

They were taught to sit at their desks until an authority comes and tells them what they may do next.

He is not a designated authority, he’s someone that walked out the emergency exit without permission. They couldn’t do such a thing, instead they are busy at their desks looking sternly at anyone else that prepares to exit. As the heat increases they will glance to see if they have a clear path to the doorway. They will wait until there are screams and panic before they stampede over each other toward a now smoke filled and crowded staircase. My friend has a place waiting for them if they can get there. Most people have nothing prepared, by themselves or anyone else.

Now let’s look at the other side of the curtain.

Responsibility is an ugly word; most of us spend our lives attempting to avoid being responsible for anything. When we get responsibility we try to shove it off on someone else. People say things like “I had children, but since I have to work, the school is responsible.” “I have a job, but since we have a bureaucracy and rule books; as long as I’m a good follower I can’t be blamed when everything goes wrong.” “As long as everybody does the same things, it’s not our fault that they fail — again and again.”

What an unpleasant way to waste a perfectly interesting life.

Because of fear.

Courage is not a lack of fear, it is an acknowledgement that many things are more important than fear. If we have the courage to do what’s right, we end up having to embrace responsibility. It’s easy to escape responsibility, there are always good excuses to remain a coward. Since almost everyone else is a coward, no one will accuse you of running from fear. In fact if you face your fears and start to prosper most people will get mad at you for showing the world what they claim is impossible, can be accomplished. We accomplish much by fighting the fears others will not face. I know a business woman who’s empire was built on a strategy of starting each day by doing what she least wants to do.

Let’s get responsible.

The following is as it is shared in airport bars around the world.

Don’t check with lawyers in your home country. They are officers of the local court and are not your friends. Find good advisors where you might want to live and talk with them. You can call yourself Smith or Gonzales for a first consultation and ask your questions. Have many consultations before you select that first knowledgeable and hopefully trustworthy counselor.

You have been trained by your government to trust your government. Question that.

You have respect for people with authority. Question this too.

You were born seeking stimulation and change. Look back; that stopped when you entered preschool. When you entered school, you concentrated on what you were required to mimic.

That silliness can end today; or you can continue as a robotic cog until you die.

It’s your choice.

Save some cash and keep it outside a bank. Buy some gold and silver and keep it hidden where you can find it. Get a passport and travel. Find some societies where you might like to live. Open a foreign bank account. Stay in a potential second home country for a month or more. Try another. And another. Choose your favorite society and stay through the least pleasant period of the year. If it still suits, start residency proceedings.

I could keep going, but you won’t get far into that list before you start getting questions, and as you act, start finding answers. Our referrals and free reports can help. Once you know enough to ask new questions you will be like that preschool child you once were: full of dreams and wonderful change.

This side of the curtain has rules
and missing-in-emergencies fire marshals.

I’ll tell you what’s on the other side of the curtain,

Responsibility
and Paradise.

Bill Freeman

* Those content to stay at home.

* Those thinking about a safe exit procedure if thing get worse.

* Those planning to leave and expand their international lives.

* Those that have already left and are adapting to our changing world.

* Those that are already diversified internationally according to well engineered planning.

All of us face daunting changes in the coming years. Life will not get easier for the world at large. At best, in some locations the changes may effect you less. The trend of much of the world toward over-regulation will not subside until after many existing governmental structures collapse. That collapse has started, desperate measures are being enacted,

What we know: there seems to be no possible tool that can shore up the crumbling foundations of our current monetary systems. All these coercive international agreements being enacted by failing economies are being stacked on top of already onerous agreements. No attempt has been made to shore up the foundations of governments. In fact any rational arguments for governments as an insurer of citizens rights are being removed from foundational principles, so rewards for career bureaucrats can be added on top of collapsing international structures.

The weather on the island was perfect. Two slightly paunchy, middle age men sitting in lounge chairs on the beach were introduced by a waiter bringing their drinks.

“This is so much better than snow, slush, and women dressed in so many layers you can’t tell what age they are,” Said the first.

“True, true” said the second, “you know so much more about their personalities when you see them in a bikini.”

“How did you break free to come here?”

“I had a rags business, I sold up-scale clothes to teenagers and their insecure mothers. There was a fire and everything was lost. I settled for a million dollars with the insurance company and decided to take a month off down here: before going back to rent a better building, in a better part of town, with new inventory. How about you?”

“I had a clothing store too. There was a hurricane and everything was a total loss. The government bailed me out and gave me five million dollars to restart. I’ve decided to dedicate my life to finding the perfect place to rebuild. It will have to be a place that has my preferred clientèle; so I’m immersing myself in seeking optimum wine, women, and song.”

The other retailer looked at him with respect, “How do you start a hurricane?”

Perhaps the life style that would make you most fulfilled is raising a family in a low stress, healthy environment with an improving economy. Maybe, as the old routine goes, you want to spend 90% of your life pursuing wine, women. and song — and waste the rest of it. You may even view a low cost of living in a paradise with high speed Internet the peak of civilization. What are you waiting for, a hurricane?

Let’s put the two together. The over-developed countries are becoming more complicated and are approaching fairness by driving everyone but the favored into an equally dependent poverty. The developing world is full of opportunity, low stress, and has beautiful homes in beautiful areas at lower prices.

Have you traveled to view these countries, not in tours or sequestered with other expats, but to compare potential homes? Go, get a bank account outside the confusion and confiscation. Get residency where you might like to dwell outside of pollution and constant aggression. Visit Belize, Uruguay, Thailand and other bargains. Visit the lands your ancestor’s wandered and fought over. Travel, read some more, and start on the road to a second citizenship; where your children won’t be conscripted at a political notion, and your retirement funds confiscated or converted to declining value government bonds.

If you think I’m nuts, print this page, bookmark it on your computer, and revisit it in two years. If I’m wrong and the whole world is then wonderful, remain in your cave. If I’m right, and it’s not too late to leave, take what you can salvage and run.

Or, for very little time and money, you can start the process now. Enjoy your visits to paradise, and your exposure to a lovely world that has been hidden from you by hoarding fear-mongers. They are hoarding your life to their benefit.

Start digging an escape tunnel before you need it. For instructions look to ground squirrels who are smart enough to have more than one exit from their home. You can also read our free reports and articles.

Consider me a hurricane, and your life savings and independent cash flow a bail-out. Spend some time on the beach, in the mountains, or on a new, larger farm where your knowledge will pay dividends. Make that new ranch large enough for many generations: generational asset management. Centuries in the future your progeny may rest under trees you planted in a country that is still growing.

This is a natural time of year for research and thinking about the future –your future. Merry Christmas to all; come back to visit with the new year. I’ll have some specific recommendations for you then.

Bill Freeman

Instead, take six months or a year and travel to a new country. You can finance it by starting small businesses or odd temporary jobs. Live inexpensively. If you return you will be more valuable to an employer. You can still get that school loan leash. If however you find a new home you just might prosper. Almost everyone will say you are crazy, at least at first. “This country (whichever one you are from) is the best country on earth, be realistic.”

Which direction is your birth country, not selected by you, headed? Is the stick being used in inappropriate ways (ouch that hurts)? Some countries are improving and learning how to grow carrots (organically). I prefer carrots to sticks. There are countries where you and your skills are are in demand. Go find them.

You don’t have to be young, or single, or without kids.

These countries will not be like where you were born, you will have to adjust to fit in with their culture. The rewards can be huge. One big reward is that you will be living. Not to gainsay the joys of a college party life, but if it is a last hurrah before a life of drab, indentured slavery; perhaps it would be better to party elsewhere.

The world is full of drab lives, staying where you are will just add your essence to the pallid, predictable pile. Instead you can be living, learning, and contributing. Every country you visit will add to your repertoire. Once you see behind the curtains of popular perceptions; your awareness of options will increase. You may find a new home, or several new homes, that fit you better than where you left.

There are beautiful beach towns where you can rent a decent apartment in a good neighborhood for less than a car payment. River towns, mountain villages, capitol cities can all be visited for less than you are spending on frustrating sameness today. There is another advantage.

Acquire residency, open a local bank account, develop relationships with new friends. If in homesickness you decide to return home, you will have another exit from the nest should future events turn hostile. Even ants have many exits from their nests. Ants are not only more industrious than most humans, in this case they are also wiser. Once you return to your first country you may feel relieved and secure — for a while. You will travel again, seeking elusive factors of belonging in various ports. The more you experience the greater the rewards of where you settle before flying off again.

The feeling of being comfortable with yourself, wherever you are, will grow. This is a feeling people wed to their lonely security blanket, placed in their crib by others, will never discover. You may at times be lonely or frustrated, but those two terms will not define your life. You will know how and where to adapt.

As Zig Ziglar said in another context, “You won’t pay the price, you will enjoy the price.”

Click on and read our free articles. Schedule a couple of weeks, in a few months, in a dorm at a youth hostel somewhere off the tourist track. Enjoy the culture, eat the food, avoid tourist traps. Attend a local expat meeting, but don’t hide with expats. If this country is at least 50% of where you might want to live, come back again after checking other countries. Remember, you don’t have to be young, or single, or without kids.

Regardless of your circumstances you will be expanding your life as soon as your feet walk on unfamiliar ground. Keep walking. That’s better than a job interview to see if you can qualify for a professional life sentence cubical.

You can be a master of nations, rather than letting a single nation be your master.

Bill Freeman

Almost everyone does it. Some children of powerful families are sent to prep schools where they learn very different lessons. “Our world is creating armies of meat legionaries, willing to die for any cause you can invent. You don’t have to create it, just make lots of promises and token advances. Blame someone else for set backs. Hold the reigns of power and drive your legion for your own benefit. If a mere human asks why; marginalize, drug, or eliminate them. It’s your world — to the winner will go all the spoils. The meat will be consumed as always.”

Perhaps you’ve been playing ball by their rules, “Keep your eye on the ball. Sit on the bench until I tell you to play. Play your position.”

Turn your back, walk away from the rigged game and other people’s self-indulgent rules.

What do you want to do? Have you noticed that question is being asked less and less? Now you are more frequently being told what to do, or at best being given a choice between two unpleasant options. The open ended question without conditions is something from your past. The change has been so slowly insidious that we’ve not noticed. We have arrived on the freeway unaware, and we are soon to die playing someone else’s game. It is not an accident.

It is your life. Choice is still almost infinite despite official questionnaires that requires you to choose (A) or (B). It would be nice to pretend that choice is yours. Where you are playing no longer allows you the dignity of refusal. You will have to go someplace else where there is no standard to carry, a place to reflect and resolve. Home is the place you no longer belong.

Accept it. They have been moving away from you all of your life. We once knew our countries. Now we are told that they must make decisions about us without our knowledge and that may be detrimental to us — and we see the few profit in their hidden ways.

It’s time to leave. With our governments getting more distant and their decisions more callous, our future is more tenuous.

You don’t have to leave yet, but you need to travel. The different natures of governments in different stages of development will reveal the cycles of man. Spot where your birth country is in it’s cycle and compare the known consequences with similar societies in the past.

Once you travel to real places and taste of their societies you will discover that Spring is a choice, Summer a pleasure, Autumn a warning, and Winter may be approaching. Go someplace where spring is well advanced, and settle down. Seek a place where severe governance storms won’t happen till autumn wanes. That might take many generations, even centuries. You’ve not been encouraged to think centuries, only until the next raise.

If you wait as Fimbulwinter intensifies you will never make it through the pass to a more pleasant world. Already your mind and body are adapted to a chill that would have made a more pleasant clime imperative a few seasons ago. Your country is drifting into a snow bank, and you are quietly drifting with them.

Escape. Travel. Open an offshore bank account or two, take some long vacations, buy some foreign land. Don’t say you can’t afford it. What you can’t afford is to stay where you are until your feet are frozen to the earth. The long storms of sustained winter are starting to howl.

I’ve mixed some metaphors here because both are happening, and reinforcing each other — dragging you along. Let’s end where we started.

You have the choices to get off the freeways (examine the original restrictive rules and recently evolving changes to them) and move away from permanent winter (travel and establish expat residencies, PT citizenships, and acquire a second passport).

Play ball where rules are fair, safe, and fun.

Do you feel the chill?

Bill Freeman

Read the next two lines carefully, they belong together:

Politicians desire to lead the blind, deaf, and dumb so they instituted public schools to disable children.

If you attended an elite private prep school you understand. If you attended a public school you are incensed — just as you were taught. If you are just curious, you can own yourself.

Regardless, right now there are many that believe they own you. Your employer, your union, your magazines and newsletters, the websites and acquaintances you follow, and of course your governments and their bureaucrats. If you proceed naming them with an “I’m proud to be” or a “I belong to” than you believe it too. Those whose patterns of thought always support one world view, and reject or ridicule other’s ideas; have probably already left this page.

Example: “History is only the register of crimes and misfortunes.” Voltaire

You might add: “and a tool selectively used by others to shape my world view.”

Asking, “How do I own myself?” is but a query. Deciding, “I will own myself,” is a resolution. As soon as you decide to be autonomous — Voltaire would have said, “you are autonomous.” If you’ve decided to be free, what then is a next small step? Read books and news from other nations, political parties, and societies. You will see that history is malleable, that no constrained world view can encompass the truth in it.

Owning yourself requires freeing your mind.

All of that is but a first small step. The good news; your mind walks like a centipede. You may never finish freeing your mind, but you don’t have to before you take other steps. The other steps will support the momentum gained by your having started a first step.

A second step is freeing your body from the limitations that your prior owners are using to limit your actions. This step is not mentally arduous, like your body it is physical. You physically apply for a passport, you plan and take trips to other nations. You open bank accounts and develop other financial relationships offshore. You may acquire other personas, residencies, citizenships, passports. The centipede keeps moving, many sequential steps flowing naturally. Each step reinforces other steps taken or soon to be made.

If you want to own yourself, rather than be a programed service automation, start walking.

Or accept slavery.

Bill Freeman