Dual citizenship

[bug_out]

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[Diesel]

Very interesting, so what would be your first choice?

[das]

I wonder if Chile wouldn't be a good idea. A solidly democratic country with a stable economy and excellent environmental policies. Easy to defend from Argentina who is melting down still. 95% white and white-amerindian (77% for US) population that is strongly Chatholic.

Agriculture includes grapes, apples, pears, onions, wheat, corn, oats, peaches, garlic, asparagus, beans, beef, poultry, wool; fish; timber. While industries include copper, other minerals, foodstuffs, fish processing, iron and steel, wood and wood products, transport equipment, cement, textiles.

High unemployment at 8.5% (6% US) and 20.6% of the natioin living under the poverty level are two downsides but there is a strong middle class. Average population growth of 1.01% is comparable to the US as is the life expectancy and median age of the population.

Exchange rate for Chilean Pesos are still strong at 516 per US dollar. But MOST important public debt is less than a third what it is for Americans per person. Eventually this will mean you will owe less to keep the government solvent.

This is what I would do if I had the money and the desire to leave the US.

[TheUnboundOne]

Dual citizenship

Bug_Out and Das, It's funny, I had your same temptations back in the Clinton Administration.

Yes, it is legal to have dual citizenship, as long as the nation is not one we are at war with and as long as you do not use your status to give aid and comfort to U.S. enemies.

Alas, though, the world outside the United States is turning more and more against the U.S. and in many ways, it isn't greater shakes anyway.

Yes, there are plenty of offshore havens like the Grand Cayman Islands or St. Kitts/Nevis with no income, sales, or corporate taxes, but they can also have severe restrictions on gun ownership or can otherwise be socially oppressive.

Yes, there are places like the Netherlands that have legal drugs, legal prostitution, and greater social freedom, but they also have high progressive tax rates, an extensive Nanny/Welfare State, and face the danger of getting over-ran by Islamofascist invaders.

Even if you found an ideal deserted island Paradise or a Principality of Sealand that had all the freedom you could desire, you would still have to deal with natural perils like fires, storms, hurricanes, volcanos, earthquakes, etc.

For the time being, there simply is no second United States of America for Citizens of the U.S.A. to run to for refuge. This fact, along with the expense, has taken away any temptation for me to live permanently abroad.

If things ever got too oppressive and dangerous in the U.S. and I ever had to go abroad, it would only be to round up a posse to help take my nation back.

Freedom and prosperity lives or dies here. If freedom and prosperity dies here, it's ultimately dead for the entire Planet, perhaps never to be revived.

Others are free to leave if they wish and I don't knock them for it, but for me, I see no other choice but to stick it out and struggle to make my own life and my nation better.

[TheUnboundOne]

Dual Citizenship

Dear Bug_Out,

Fret not, I didn't misunderstand you. I don't morally object to dual citizenship that is not used against the rights and security of U.S. citizens, but for all the reasons I mentioned, it has its pluses and minuses and it's not a panacea for either personal or social problems. And it's just not for me at the moment.

Now, if someone could take terraforming, island-making, climate-controlled mega-scale engineering technology and build an America 2.0, without the historical baggage of slavery, Jim Crow, Manifest Destiny, Prohibition, and other compromises against freedom, with all the blessings of freedom and none of what's rotting us away today, that would be something to behold! I would want to swim to something like that!

:cool:

[das]

TUO,
Interesting idea you have there. America minus the ugly parts. Let me take your idea for a short ride (far from where you were going btw.)

I don't think it would work. Slavery, evil in every way gave us immense economic development...as it did for every country (yes including Africa) that employed it. Jim Crow, again evil in every way but not an unforseeable reaction to having a culture overthrown by force. Prohibition, a monumental waste of time in my opinion but a natural reaction to the abuse of stimulants and the rising power of women/homemakers/wives to control the political/legal laws of the nation.

My point is that each of these evils was a reaction or the consequence thereof. In my examples removing them doesn't change the fact that something would have taken their place. Without slavery the South would never have developed at the rate that it did. Ultimately we need to resolve to accept that evil was done by men and women who considered themselves good or benevolent. To judge them outside of their times/cultures is to stand apart/above them.

As an example of this consider that a hundred years from now people may look back at the waste we have made of our environment and consider all of us traitors to mankind. No, I am not being reactionary but consider the evil of burning coal/oil for combustion/energy when you have cheap/clean/efficient power sources? Not a perfect example I admit but a society uses what it has, when new/better ways come along most people fall over themselves to adopt them.

Two-hundred years ago that cheaper/efficient power source was slavery. Let me turn this on its head and say the epidemic of underemployed labor force in America today is similarly a crime in my opinion. Service sector jobs are not the solution. America needs to produce to be great. Training our children to work at fast food jobs is going to ruin this country. Failing to build an economy that needs healthy, active, trained workers is a crime of epic proportions.

Rebuilding America 2.0 is not the answer because it will have to be populated by whiny, overfed, under educated, entitlement culture, emo tea-sipping, metrosexual, tree-hugging radicals. How could you ever hope to populate it with hard working, honest, healthy citizens from a culture of defeatism?

Everything THIS America needs it has in my opinion.

Having said that let me add that I don't believe I would be a good candidate for America 2.0. I am still struggling to regain the health/weight of my youth and I am addicted to the internet and the automobile. I have never served in the Armed Forces or dedicated time to my country. I am ashamed to say most tests would show me to be a miserable contribution even though I have worked since I was 14 and I have managed to educate MYSELF in spite of two degrees.

My point is that a perfect world is a dream/smoke/illusion. I study preparedness because it gives me a small amount of control over a world that increasingly I am ill equipped to survive. If TSHTF tomorrow all my preps would keep me alive a few months longer than the sheeple but after that? If I was lucky, I mean mana from heaven lucky, I might make it a year, five at most in a real end of the world breakdown of society. My guess is a LARGE part of the Survivalist movement would be in the same situation.

I pray nightly that EVERYTHING I do to get ready is a HUGE waste of time/money/effort. Watching the hundreds of people I know and love lose contact, die, starve, disappear would be the worst life I can imagine. Would I struggle for the sake of myself and my family, yes. Would I work first and foremost to ensure the survival of a strong community over my personal life, yes. THAT is the best of me.

Having an inexhaustible larder, ammo, weapons will not make a bit of difference if my descendants are illiterate loners bunkered up in the woods. People can and will learn to live in communities again if there is an economy they can understand and propser within. By prosper I don't mean a macmansion, jet setting vacations, vacation home and all the toys. I mean a job you can be proud of, a healthy lifestyle, medical care for emergencies and a community to be proud over.

That is still possible in America and certainly doesn't take a new beginning to achieve.

[das]

Anyone else here read reddit.com? Seems at least someone is thinking of leaving the country. http://www.reddit.com/comments/6xuo2...igrate_before/

Comments and suggestions from the readers. I am still not convinced that this is a winning strategy but interesting that common (non-preparedness minded) types are thinking along these lines.

[forever_frost]

My wife is from New Zealand. All I have to do is apply for citizenship to become a dual citizen with here and there. Beautiful place. After I get her home, I'll do exactly that just in case.

[TheUnboundOne]

Das,

To address a couple of points, actually, in terms of productivity, slave labor was and is never a match for the efforts of free people.

As novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand observed, all that man needs to survive ultimately comes from his thinking, reasoning mind, and the mind cannot be forced to think. One thinking man can (and indeed did many times) make machines that do the work of hundreds or thousands of slave laborers.

All great industrialism and material progress resulted to the extent that men were free to think, to invent, to invest capital to make their conceptions real, and to keep the fruits of their own labor. (And no surprise, the industrialized North had the munitions to defeat the pre-industrial Feudalistic South. Hard fact for us Southerners, I know.)

And yes, we should strive to put ourselves in a position where we can think of ourselves as above or better than the past, otherwise there can be no such thing as moral progress, or progress of any kind. Yes, we should learn from the past, but don't be bound by it or think that "they weren't capable of any better." We all can always stand to do better, and I'll look forward to looking back and laughing at some things we now take for granted.

Also, regarding the America 2.0: It wouldn't be among the undesirables that you mentioned. An America 2.0 would be like a man-made mini-continent in the ocean, made with either offshore platforms or genetically-modified coral islands. That is where the terra-forming and mega-scale engineering would come in, and naturally, it would require some brilliant minds and some hard workers and lots of capital to accomplish. Maybe someday, it'll be a reality.

Until that day comes, we're both still struggling to make life better. Don't be too hard on yourself. You at least acknowledge where problems are and as the GI Joe slogan goes: "Knowing Is Half The Battle!" (TM)

:)