Humans, that’s you and me, are better at synthesis than math, odds making than adding up the evidence. We are unlikely to dig in and find flaws or support for others arguments, we listen, read, and too frequently – then wander on. What we can do is what I’ll show below from my own syntheses. Take the time to ask yourself what are the odds of the following happening. You’ll be surprised to learn that everything you believe and have read can be summed so easily.

A word of warning: If you believe what your political party or TV tells you and have never honestly sought the opposite arguments go someplace else. The numbers you would get are programed into you and valueless.
“Robots need not apply.”

Chance Obama will become a dictator: 5%

Chance the laws Bush and Obama have created will eventually empower a dictator: 90%

Chance America will have a “political savior” (dictator) within 10 years: 50+%

Chance currency controls like Argentina’s will prevail in America within ten years: 90%

Chance YOU will need specific permission from several government agencies to travel to, from, and around the USA within ten years: 70%

Chance money in 401k and IRA accounts will be forced into gov bonds within ten years: 80%

Chance of the Euro failing within 10 years: 90%

Chance of Yen failing within 10 years: 90%

Chance of dollar failing within five years of Yen’s failure: 95%

Chance of a new monetary system within five years: 60%

Chance of a new monetary system within ten years: 85%

Chance friend/family will have their assets confiscated and/or end in jail within 10 years: 45%

Chance of another world war:

Chance you will be in a country damagingly involved in that war:

Chance you will move offshore to protect you, your family, and your assets:

Bill Freeman

The second type happens in war, in prison, and from countries against their citizens. There is a living obstacle and a direct effort is made to remove it – usually permanently.

Discussion and arguments don’t carry on, one party swings to kill or maim, and a party is carried off the field. (Friends help you move, political cronies help you move and hide bodies)

Knives, guns, court systems, executive orders. There is no warning, no slow escalation. Just violence without mercy. The winner walks away without looking back, his adversary rendered nonfunctional.

Don’t give away your life cheaply.

Most of us are not prepared for this type of battle. All you can reasonably do is practice attacking and use situational awareness. Then you don’t hesitate – avoid such battles when possible, run if necessary, and if you have to – severely damage your opponent before he ruins you permanently.

What if the battle is not hand to hand?

There are laws on the books in your country that can ruin you financially and put you away permanently. All it takes is one low level bureaucrat or enforcer to be annoyed with you and your current life will end. You will be the living obstacle and a direct effort will be made to remove you – even if it takes a few such efforts. It probably won’t: you can have your bank accounts drained, your assets frozen, and your friends alienated by false accusations before you can shout help.

Your body will be removed from the scene of battle, broken or whole your days of freedom will end.

It doesn’t have to happen.

You can lower your profile, spread out your assets, and pre-plan a route of escape.

Or you can wait for the shiv to come stabbing from a dark corner of a politician’s heart.

Bill Freeman

If I say America is turning or has turned into a police state, a high percentage of Americans will assume I hate America and I’m attacking it. If I say George Bush (either one – CIA or shurb) turned America into a police state I’ll have half of the voting public agree with me, that sounds like a song from their convention. If I say the charming Prince Humperdink Obama is turning the good ol’ USA into a fascist/communist country the roles will reverse – this speech is assumed to be from the other party.

The proclamation didn’t change much, but it’s value to the hearer did – one supported self chosen ignorance the other rebutted it. Somehow it was no longer an attack on America, but instead a political position.

“America is becoming a police state.” Don’t consider that an attack to repel, consider why you would defend against it. If the cause of your defense is that you were schooled that America is home of the free consider this:

If it is truly the home of the free, why would they have to constantly tell you – it would be obvious.

But this is not an attack on America.

I’m visiting another country now. A friend here was taught that his country is the best in the world. He knows that’s true and points to every sports victory or successful poet as proof. His dream for retirement is realistic, a condo looking over his local surfing beach – in his country. He considered no other beach and no other country even though his country is changing. Why leave the best country in the world?

By retirement it will be a different country even if it’s name remains the same. By then it may not be the best country in the world for him. He doesn’t know; but he would consider such a statement an attack on his values.

As humans we confuse what we’ve been told with truth. Truth is not consensus, it’s not who shouts loudest and longest, it doesn’t necessarily come from the best storyteller, it’s not who we choose to follow or ignore.

A teleprompter programmed by a speech writer is not about philosophy, but psychology.

Truth is truth.

“The world is a book, and those who don’t travel read only one page.” – St. Augustine

The world is becoming a police state. Overdeveloped countries are not your friends. The safest places may currently be the countries that are least efficient. Move you, your family, and your wealth toward safety, fool yourself about a country’s safety after the storms have passed.

You can still safely believe that next year the Cubs will win the pennant. Any allegiance to larger, artificial team values is dangerous.

Bill Freeman

I heard a story many decades ago (forgive me if my remembrance is inaccurate) about some visionary expats. In the 1930s they realized another war in Europe was inevitable. They missed some great years of economic growth by leaving too early – but their expat enclave was styled to avoid what they knew was coming. They were therefore safely away from Western Europe when the conflagration ignited; ensconced on a self supporting island village in the Pacific ocean. The Japanese invasion swept right over them.

We don’t know what’s coming next. I don’t know what’s coming next.

All we can do is prepare for what we anticipate and develop as many other options as possible. If you have no options your future may be cut short. Even if you have options you may not have time to exercise them. There are no guarantees on the future. If you buy an option on the future it may cease to exist just when you need it. Gold stored in Austria prior to WWII would have been small comfort to an Englishman once war started.

Again: you want as many varied options as possible.

Nothing about the future should scare you more than: someday knowing you have to escape, having time to escape, but having nowhere to go.

Bill Freeman

“How can that be good news?” you ask. Simple, if change is unavoidable, then staying where you are is impossible; where you are is leaving you. Nowhere is there a safe, this place will never change, cave in which to hide. It”s good to know that choices are demanded before choice itself is swept away.

You must view trends, consider likely outcomes, and select your options. We can help. To do nothing is to wait on a sea wall with your back to a tsunami. Notice options is plural. Your choice does not have to be a one time selection of a cave a bit higher up the sea wall. Most of the world is available to you. You can establish many alternatives to allow maneuvering as your future unfolds. Read our free reports.

The full power of being a PT, a Perpetual Tourist, Is coming into view even as initial storms sweep past. In the past PT was the domain of liberty minded individualists that chaffed under the bondage of counterproductive regulations. Now, as the bureaucratic world implodes, all of mankind is threatened by the exhausting of centuries of accumulated wealth. Governments the world over, lead by safe-cracking officials, are colluding in spending our inheritance to sustain their dominance of citizens.

I hope you have a really bad feeling about this.

Mankind has his seasons. We are entering winter. It is time to reference your nomad roots and migrate to better and safer lands until spring once more arrives. In spring it will once more become apparent where opportunity lives. Move to where you can sustain your life and wealth so you will be available to help ignite the next renaissance.

Consider your options. Pack your tents.

Bill Freeman

The first-world is becoming a unified police state, and to avoid danger you and your family must move to a safer location. You haven’t moved. You know it’s true, but you’re waiting until it’s too-late so you can be sure. Then you’ll start investigating.

Forget that big picture. Since it hasn’t motivated you, maybe the little picture will.

The little picture is about your life focus and what brings you joy.

I’ve just had my best roast beef sandwich in years. It came with a salad that featured many tomatoes. I could taste them – delicious. I was recently in the USA where tomatoes are genetically altered to look good on supermarket shelves for a long time. The tomatoes I just had for dinner were grown so someone could enjoy them with a meal. I did.

Pleasures are often short lived and we continue in them from hope and habit. Joys expand and satisfy.

I also enjoyed the greens in the salad, the freshly baked and slightly salty bread, the partially cooked peppercorns, and the beef. The entire simple meal was a taste explosion made remarkable by comparison with a fancy roast beef sandwich I had not long ago in the land of declining freedom and the next home of liberty’s grave. Of that sandwich all I remember are the mounds of tasteless beef (probably 15% water), the dry bread, and some flavorful olives – probably imported.

The first world sandwich was much larger, but after I should have been full I still felt empty and kept eating. My body had wanted food, what I ate was a product. The sandwich I just savored was like a good book, interesting and involving all the way, and at the end I was satisfied. Life should be full of satisfying joys.

The country I’m now in is fresh and new to me, I’m tasting life, adventuring into the unknown, loving learning like a four year old.

You still work at your same old job. You may die working there or shortly after retirement.

Wouldn’t you rather taste life? Starting tomorrow morning?

Bill Freeman

She’s going walk-about.

According to her world view we live in a world of forced allegiance to one of maybe two hundred countries. Individual countries have been cowed into compliance with a few dominate world powers. She doesn’t expect our current period of serfdom to last as long as the dark ages. She sees a world following this one where there will be thousands of countries or city states existing in competition for creative individuals. I hope she’s right.

For now, her government thinks it has her penned down. Her name showed up on a list. A list that is referenced by anyone with a government clearance but that she can not access or challenge because it’s not public. Even if it’s corrected her sources have told her that other lists copy this one as a starting point, so her data, correct or incorrect, is already spawning new limitations and future punishments. She may not be allowed to fly out of her country, may have her passport confiscated, and certainly won’t have it renewed. She could end up in jail or dead. She has no idea why she’s on an expanding series of lists.

She said she’s actually relieved, She revived an old joke “I’ve mixed feelings; kind of like when my estranged hubby, with his doting mother alongside, drove my Italian flag painted Alfa Romeo off a cliff.”

She continued, “I’ll get past the invisible border, then go where I wish while the childish governmental bullies of the bureaucratic past descend into their rebellions.” (Yeah, she talks like that sometimes, especially when shes been doing some deep thinking). “I may come back and visit the new competing countries that will spring up from the corpse of this one.”

For the last hundred years governments have increasingly colluded to install citizen control devices like passports, visas and permissions to first monitor and then control travel and commerce. Once societies are trapped in a single location (or convinced there are no better alternatives) they can and are abused. She sees a future where within decades these strictures and powers will fall along with the bureaucracies that maintain them. She will wander about and occasionally observe the internal conflicts in the country she leaves behind. She’ll enjoy a world that values her because she’s a tourist, that visited countries hope, is spending money.

She has other passports, she has other citizenships she’s garnered over the years. She won’t flaunt her independence before slaves, that would just make them angry enough to want her also enslaved. Most citizens don’t even realize they’re slaves, they reflect what they were taught — that they’re loyal and patriotic. Many slaves will die, as those they are loyal to, sacrifice and abandon them.

The future she sees offers hope. For now she will just disappear to the best of her ability and wait for an inevitable collapse. As she says “I may be wrong on timing, it could take centuries to finally rid humans of this noisome world compliance model. I won’t be hurt in that case. I’ll be enjoying myself in the playgrounds of the world. If I’m right I’ll miss being caught up in a maelstrom and still be enjoying myself.”

She believes it’s time for her to go walkabout.

 
Bill Freeman

Walkabout as defined in Wikipedia:

“Merriam-Webster, however, defines the noun as a 1908 coinage that refers primarily to “a short period of wandering bush life engaged in by an Australian aborigine as an occasional interruption of regular work”, with the only mention of “spiritual journey” coming in a usage example from a latter-day travel writer.[2] To white employers, this urge to depart without notice (and reappear just as suddenly) was seen as something inherent in the aboriginal nature, but the reasons may be more mundane: workers who wanted or needed to attend a ceremony or visit relatives did not accept employers’ control over such matters (especially since permission was generally hard to get).[3]“

Seeking international diversification refers to having your assets in various countries so as to limit, as Doug Casey has said, “politician risks.” One mattress is not enough to protect against official kleptocracies. In fact the whole world may not be large enough to hide effectively. Your only real hope is to reduce your visible size as a target. Spread your assets like a child spreads vegetables around her plate to make them seem partially consumed.

Your most important asset is yourself and your family. How do you decrease your physical presence as a target?

Everyone is a well documented target at home, there is no longer any privacy there. With effort and a few lies a bureaucrat can now learn about you anywhere in the world. Don’t be low hanging fruit.

Once you are plucked from the tree and stripped to your core; it’s worth giving you jail time to peel away any protective barriers. You want to convince ravenous bureaucrats that the first step in consuming your value is to arrest you and peel your brain. They greatly prefer to pursue simple forced forfeitures of known wealth — without warning. It’s easiest for them if they can confiscate everything you own first so you can’t afford a defense.

Bureaucrats may be insatiable reptilian carnivores, but they are also eager to advance in their particular governmental hierarchy of greed. You may need a shower afterwards, but for now put yourself in their position. Which of the following statements will make you sound better when you talk to your Big Brother boss:

1) “I think this guy may have money sir, so I’m researching a way to find and seize it.”

2) “Lord Vader, I’ve ripped 10 million dollars from a citizen’s productivity today and have her scheduled for torture to discover any hidden assets.”

Remember that Lord Vader also has a boss, and The Emperor is not as forgiving as Darth. Go get your shower and come back.

So where do you, as a possible Darth-target, start?

If you know Mr. Vader cares about loyal people like yourself, the same way cats care about slow mice, it would be nice to find a safer place to reside. Don’t nest with a lump of cheese in the middle of the room. Take a manageable piece with you to a safer place, nibble a bit, then check to see if it’s safe to return for more. As a human that’s called international diversification.

You’ve probably heard about catching monkeys by roping a coconut to a tree, boring a small hole in the coconut, and filling the cavity with a sweet rice mixture. The monkey grabs a handful of the treat, but can’t get his closed fist out of the hole. The monkey will struggle frantically to remove his hand, but not at the price of dropping the rice. A native can then stroll up and club the monkey.

You may be similarly trapped.

Let go of promises that keep getting broken and start traveling. Find several countries where you would be comfortable spending time. Get information and referrals from experts and from local expats that have gone through the process. Do your “due diligence” and interview several lawyers in each country. Pick a lawyer that’s well connected and experienced. Start the process for residency in each country that seems appropriate. The lawyer’s staff will help you get a bank account if that’s required for residency. Expedite.

If you start toward residency in one country, and they change political administrations or national laws during the process, your efforts may turn moot. If you start toward residency in several countries your odds are improved that one or more may succeed. Once residency is acquired start on the road to citizenship. Once you have a second or third citizenship your life options expand greatly. It may take three years or more.

In five years Lord Vader may have vaporized your homeland’s liberty. Having a residency and bank account elsewhere may make you personally a less desirable target. If you feel your image being posted onto a 2X2 frame at the end of a firing range; another residency location can give you an escape route. A passport from another country may save your life.

I’ve mixed a lot of metaphors here, but there are just three steps.

Step 1) Find interesting countries that will accept you.

Step 2) Find a competent and connected attorney in each country.

Step 3) Get your international diversification started.

Bill Freeman

This is for our ensconced homeland friends. If you are easily offended by direct talk, leave now. If you reside outside the homeland’s ever extending reach you also need to be concerned, but you’re not easy targets — yet.

It will be too late if/when: You’ve been crowded into a corner by armed and darkly uniformed people telling you to empty your pockets. You’ll notice wall-rings for securing shackles, black striped or orange costumes for you to wear, and a distant bullet scarred and blood covered wall where objections to mistreatment are answered.

But that can’t happen here! It can. When might that happen? That’s a nebulous thought requiring analysis of governmental authority’s fear and greed. First we must face more calming propaganda.

Have you noticed how any debate of the last few decades has been shaped to not talk about human rights in-general? Presidents of the United States used to make general statements about human rights. “Every man should know that his conversations, his correspondence, and his personal life are private.” – Lyndon B. Johnson

Today we will hear statements about how corporations need to respect the privacy of Americans — by clearly stating in a privacy document (that few read), where and how they will violate those privacy rights. Government’s responsibilities are now intentionally left out of human rights and other debates — except as a threat. Only American citizens are supposed to be protected today, not all humans. There are a lot of exceptions where any right can be abused. LBJ’s seeming assertion that universal respect for human and civil rights pertained to “everyman” now seems quaint.

Remember that president Johnson spoke when he was massively expanding president JFK’s Vietnam conflict. It was a time much like now, but with an America just creating the controlling spawn we face today. Peaceful protests and violent domestic terrorism were both being met with sometimes violent repression. Yet LBJ still remembered and extolled an America where everyone’s human rights were respected.

Music (here) about protesters at the Democratic National Convention protesting LBJ’s war — and during Republican president Nixon’s tenure (here) when he was too slow stopping the war as he promised during his campaign.

Back then almost “everyman” world-wide still understood their human rights were being usurped when governments overstepped their bounds.

Most of you understand that governments have no money of their own, they produce nothing, they only consume what once belonged to subjects and citizens. Many understand the next step of wisdom and realize that governments have no rights. Individual humans have rights. Governments can deny those rights or ride roughshod over them, but human rights still belong to individuals — world wide.

Governments are not the various societies they repress. At best, as once happened in America, a group representing an intellectual core of a society creates a compact defining and limiting a new government.

That my friends was the constitutional contract, adding to the Declaration Of Independence where each individual signer pledged his life, wealth, and sacred honor. That is a now broken contract, unenforced by those without honor; a contract that should be voidable by you at will. Unfortunately in the real world it’s not that easy. The government has decided they own you, if you leave without permission they will accuse you of stealing a machine (yourself). As a manufacturing tool you will have to ask permission to leave your factory, pay some fees, and wait on their convenience for a response.

Inconvenient and infuriating as it is, that’s how our whole world has evolved over the last century or two during the industrial age. To our governmental plant-managers we are productive machines. We can be replaced by other cogs, but it is not easy to be removed from their inventory lists. In fact it’s getting harder and more expensive to leave.

First you must prove that someone else owns you. Sufficient proof of serfdom will require citizenship in another country. The ways to new citizenships are, with notable exceptions, either time consuming or expensive. Read some of our free reports and start to develop an understanding of what is required. As technology and government greed overwhelm human rights, your options are shrinking. What is lawful, safe, and acceptable today may become risky tomorrow, but staying as you are was dangerous yesterday. Where will you be in five years if you don’t start investigating today and acting tomorrow morning?

How will you look in an orange jumpsuit? That may be one outcome. Be careful. The industrial era is almost over, but imploding bureaucracies are hanging on, and they are becoming more oppressive.

As a final warning: travel and experience the world before you commit to a new residence. You will miss many things you now enjoy, but if you try you will find even more new things to appreciate.

Societies bound by geography are slowly dissolving even as borderless communities of like interests form. Start making transitions now; as the rest of your life will be influenced by sporadic, massive change. You can enjoy the change and flow through it — or be trapped on a shrinking island.

Bill Freeman

Just as you are researching the internationalisation of your life, so you should be researching the current, optimum composition of asset classes. It’s your life, no one cares more about it than you do. Enjoy the price of developing understanding, or pay the price in under-performing investments.

Thinking about investing started me thinking about experts. Most experts aren’t. It’s not just the flaws in their reasoning, or the assumptions they’ve been taught to accept: It’s that the systems with the most potential are far too complex for our minds, models, or algorithms to decipher.

Years ago Long Term Capital Management collapsed, with two Nobel Prize In Economics winners writing the algorithms. We are now watching the world monetary system collapse, with brilliant people doing all they can do to avert disaster. They are making it worse. They are experts, and this knowledge has deluded them into thinking they understand how 7 billion people think, and how to manipulate them. LTCM collapsed with a simple bet on Russian investments, country systems are now collapsing on simple currency bets, both failed from expert misunderstandings of complexity.

Complex systems do not follow projections. When thousands or billions of factors interact, no selection of less than the total universe is sufficient for a model. Even then huge surprises will occur.

What does this have to do with you as a PT? It answers the question, “What’s next?”

The only sufficiently erudite answer is: “We don’t know.”

Wealth is created through concentration and preserved through diversification.

In investing this leads to the conclusion that you will want a safety net (gold, foreign bank accounts, additional passports, some cash, etc.) in case every strategy proves ill. If you are poor you will also want investments concentrated in one or a few well thought out and researched asset classes (like: gold, eventually real estate again, commodities, your own business) where large payoffs are possible if they are successful. Accept time risk rather than applying leverage.

If you are well off, enhance that diversification internationally. When your past efforts are recognised by the building of wealth, your greatest enemy may become your own government. While your wealth is in your hands it represents an ability to start businesses and hire workers; but to bureaucrats it represents effortless pillage to expand their power. Unless you want to play by their rules in their arena, you will be played for a sucker. Just like a kid moving vegetables around his plate to make it look like he ate some; move your wealth around so it looks like less.

Someday in someplace, conspicuous consumption will once again be acceptable. In most places it is not — until we exit this depression. Those who insist on being public with their own wealth will receive no tears when they are attacked — although it may be okay for government employees to flaunt the wealth stolen from taxpayers for a while longer. So what does this have to do with the price of a politician in Washington? Nothing, but it does lead to an opportunity.

The exception: in most of the world tourists will still be treated better and receive greater protections than citizens. If you want to enjoy your wealth, travel. As a PT the world is still open. With many passports every country can be convinced you are owned by another country. You can own yourself. In a complex world that is a reasonable goal.

Start your long term planning with current action, so you can eventually live for today.

Bill Freeman