You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run
I’m not leaving the US for reasons outside my control but if it was within my ability to leave, I would leave in a heartbeat. This country is rapidly turning into a Gulag state and with the USA PATRIOT Act and Military Commissions Act, to name just two notable examples, that is not hyperbole. There is every reason to believe that this process will continue unabated for as many more decades as it has already been unfolding.
Freedom is an idea, not a place and sure as hell not a political system. The American experiment conclusively proves that the only way to secure freedom is through cunning, mobility, capital accumulation and evasion of the slaveowning Elites. You cannot escape enslavement by trying to stand stil while all the other lemmings flood around you to their demise. You cannot resist the tide. Mises said it best, “no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction”, just look at 20th century Europe. Europe was obliterated in a cataclysmic orgy of wanton violence and property destruction. Whole cities, replete with modern factories, automobiles, telephones, radio systems, etc. etc. were wiped off the map. The wise, circumspect European fled the destruction before he could not flee it. The wise American today will do the same.
I’ve lived in #3 all my life - it is nowhere near as prosperous or free as the USA (yes I have been there), and rapidly becoming worse than it is now. In comparison the USA still looks like the land of opportunity to me. 1 and 2 are also becoming less free.
The U.S. is becoming less free. Yes, the list is certainly not perfect (I mean, how accurate can you really be when trying to rank entire countries on a “freedom” scale?) Our own Stefan Karlsson has challenged the usefulness of the index due to the fuzziness of many of the categories used to determine freedom.[17] But then again, that was over 6 years ago. I’m sure the measures have improved since then.
But either way, it’s a decent place to start to answer your question. Did you click on the individual countries to see the details on how they came to those conclusions? What specific insights could you provide, and/or what specifically do you disagree with?
Greater restrictions on trade and tiny local population means cost of goods much greater than in the USA (which has access to the division of labour of >500 million people locally)
The first point is exacerbated by restrictions on immigration (there are a lot of migrants compared to other countries, but a lot less than the USA).
Huge amounts of land owned by government which no one is allowed to use. This (as well as other government policies) means that the median house price is a few times that of the USA. I realise that there is a lot of land in the USA which is unsettled due to government control, but at least the US had a much greater period of settlement. This is the main reason that I want to leave - but who knows, the bubble may burst soon enough!
You can’t really own guns; in general there are a lot more laws to protect you from yourself.
Interesting. I’d like to hear other takes from more locals. At least your currency isn’t being debased like it’s last month’s welfare check. In fact your dollar is reaching record highs all the time. Didn’t you just hit a 32 year high this past week?
And just FYI, there are barely 500 million people on the continent of North America, let alone in the U.S.
…As I said, barely 500 million in North America. If you want to consider countries like Cuba and Panama “local” to the U.S. in terms of their population helping our economy, we might as well count the 600 million you’ve got nearby in Southeast Asia. And we can go ahead and throw in Melanesia and Micronesia since they’re even closer. And that’s not counting the 20 million you’ve actually got in your border
But it sounds like you don’t like any answers given to you. You ask “where else is free?” I show you a list and your response is “those places are getting less free.” I tell you how your dollar just hit a record high yesterday and the U.S. dollar is hitting record lows, and you say your dollar is being devalued too.
No, Southeast Asia cannot be counted due to restrictive trade barriers. It makes a lot of difference. I wasn’t arguing with you, just pointing some things out.
I am not sure how http://www.heritage.org/index/Ranking is calculated. But I have lived in south africa for a number of years and the uk and I can say that south africa is far more free than the UK (not only in a purely economic sense). I find that the, what they call third world countries, are more free than the first world countries. They have less regulations and less of a police force and the countries with more empty space also appear to be more free as you can get away from the law far easier. You would have less of a chance of an enforcement officer of any kind arriving at your door in a rural remote region of south africa then you would of denmark or norway or germany or the uk, due to the size of the country and size of the government. This ranking must be regarding more the trading of stocks and similar, than starting and running a business.
I heard that the only country without a central bank is panama. I have been thinking of moving to the USA and then eventually Costa Rica or even back to South Africa, depending on certain factors.
