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Ralphs. Fresh for everyone. ♪ Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua Sheets, and on today's show, I'm going to continue my series on why I left the United States.

And in this episode, I'm going to share with you the simple fact that a massively important reason why I left the United States was for my children. I wanted to plan and prepare so that my children's lives could be better and more protected and more resilient than my own life.

Being the father of now five children, I feel this responsibility quite acutely, that I have a need to protect my children. Now, there are two specific risks that I was most concerned about protecting my children with, and one positive thing. The positive thing that I'll talk more about at the end is simply that I wanted my children to be prepared for global opportunities.

It seems to me that those who have a little bit of cross-cultural experience, those who have a little bit of cultural and linguistic dexterity are more well prepared for the future that we will live in over the coming decades than those who don't. But I'll talk about that at the end of the show, because the two defensive measures were much more influential for me and still are.

The defensive reason, number one, is that I wanted to make a plan so that my children wouldn't get drafted and die in a useless and/or immoral war. When I was worrying about this six, seven, eight years ago, it didn't seem like that much of an issue. But as I've stated recently, I believe the best time to plan and prepare for things is long before you ever need them.

If I had made a podcast six or seven or eight years ago, I think that maybe 10% of people would have heard my ideas and said, "Yeah, well, that's probably worth paying attention to." And probably 90% would have said, "That's ridiculous. I'm not going to worry about it." Today, it feels like it'd be more 50/50.

It seems like 50% of people would say, "Yeah, you know what? That's worth thinking about." And 50% would say, "No, not a big deal." But this has always been a concern for me. I come from something of a military family. I don't know how far back that military history goes, but my grandfather was in the army in World War II.

And I don't remember, I don't think he was drafted. I think he volunteered to serve in World War II. My father was in the Navy during the era of Vietnam, and he enlisted in the Navy prior to being drafted. And so he was not actually drafted, but he probably would have been, and he simply enlisted as an officer in the Navy and went through his naval career.

But even though I come from a military family, my own father and grandfather sought to dissuade me and my brothers from ever joining the American military. And while there were some battles and challenges because I thought the military was cool and I thought it would be really neat to join, and I would go on about all the things that I would learn from it and the benefits there would be from it, I think my brothers had similar arguments with my father, I'm grateful today that I avoided enlisting in the military.

But as I learned about a draft and I learned about the ideas behind military drafts, I always wondered, "What would happen if I were drafted?" There was a time when I was a young man where I thought being drafted into the military would be awesome, because then my dad couldn't keep me from going, and I wanted to go off and join the military.

I wanted to go off and go to war. After all, who wouldn't want to go and go to war and fight for his country and defend freedom, etc.? And if I were drafted, then my dad couldn't say no. And then as I grew a little bit, then I realized, "Why would I want to be drafted?" Of course, you could just go sign up if you want to sign up, but why would you want to be drafted?

And I became more concerned about the imposition of a military draft, and of the conflicts that such a course of action creates for people. Now, discussing the merits and demerits of a military draft is, I think, a very interesting intellectual exercise. I find it very fascinating to consider the benefits of military drafts.

In some ways, I think your best outcome from a military perspective would come with a military force that is created entirely out of draftees, because then you're avoiding the kinds of sociopaths who join the military to get their rocks off on some crazy thing, and you're just getting a broad sampling of the public, a broad sampling of the people.

And there's good arguments for this. I like John T. Reed's argument, an essay that you can find, about why he thinks there should be a universal military draft. And I think that if we study the experience of countries that have basically a standing draft, everyone from Israel to Singapore to Brazil to Switzerland to Armenia, I mean, there are just so many countries that have standing requirements for military service, I think it's really interesting to see what that can do in a culture.

Unfortunately, many of these countries, though they have a draft on the books, they don't necessarily enforce it uniformly. And you can buy your way out of it, or you can just substitute various types of service, etc. So there's not so many pure representations of a military draft. Probably the most hardcore would be to look at the state of Israel, where all young men and all young women are drafted, and to study what has happened to them and in their culture because of that culture of service.

My biggest issue with all of those arguments, though, comes basically down to what is the purpose of a military? And I hope you'll stick with me, I'm trying not to do too much philosophizing on these things, but a few minutes is warranted. When you look at military service, it's one thing for there to be a military that is based around the concept of and the actual practice of homeland defense, the defense of the homeland, a defensive military that is organized, trained, etc., to defend your nation from external attack.

It's another thing to be drafted into a military that is being expected to go on the offense, to go and invade a foreign power, to go and engage in some form of imperialist conquest, or to engage in nation-building on the other side of the earth, etc. Now this gets quickly very philosophically and morally sticky, because, for example, you could make the argument that, "Hey, just because our military is deployed on the other side of the world doesn't necessarily mean that it's not a defensive deployment.

After all, it's better to fight them over there than to fight them on our own home turf." But I'm generally uncomfortable with most of those kinds of decisions. And so it would be one thing, in my opinion, if all people or all men were drafted into some form of militia or organized community-level defense group, and that community-level defense group basically involves military training, military enlistment for the defense of our county, our state, or perhaps even our country.

But I want that army to be at home, not abroad. And this is where you get, as an American, into very turbid waters, where you're trying to figure out, "Well, how do I negotiate this?" Because, with the exception of perhaps the War of 1812, and perhaps even the American Revolution, the vast majority of the wars that my nation has fought have been fought on other soils, in other lands.

And that makes it much less exciting to want to sign up and go and enlist. Because now the moral clarity of a just war that is defensive in nature, from a foreign invader, etc., is just not quite present. And so if I think about being drafted into an immoral, or even if not immoral, in many cases simply useless foreign war, I'm a lot less excited about the concept.

And I'm very much not excited about the concept of my sons, who I have spent years and hundreds of thousands of dollars investing into, with blood, sweat, tears, energy, labor, daily effort, etc. I'm not so excited about a government taking my sons and sending them off abroad to die, and me and they not having any say in the matter.

That seems to me to strike at the heart of something that is evil and is wrong. And so it's one thing if somebody wants to go and enlist. I think generally speaking it's still probably dumb to do, but at least I can understand and I can respect the values of people who do.

The time that I was the most pro-war in my life was in 2003, before the American invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, and those military actions. And in the wake of the 9/11 furor and patriotic fever, etc., that engulfed the United States, it was very common for young, hardcore patriotic men to go and enlist in the military.

And I always think about the football player Pat Tillman, who enlisted and was later killed, I think in an accident, a friendly fire incident, in the military. And the reason that story was so impactful is that Tillman was a good-looking guy, had a great career, he was a professional athlete, made a lot of money, etc., but he turned away from all of those things to go and to serve his country.

But I look at that at this point and I say, "What was the point? Did he really do anything positive? Did his death actually mean anything? Was there any positive effect of his death?" And I'm not aware of any. I don't want to offend anyone who knew him and loved him.

I can admire his desire to serve his country and his homeland, but the actual actions, which are really the only thing that counts, feelings don't matter, it's the actions and the impact. What was the point? A completely wasted life, a wasted death that did nothing positive, when if he had stayed alive, just think of what he could have done.

And so it's hard because none of us want to jump up and down on the graves of a dead man or the grave of a dead man, and none of us want to speak ill of people who have noble purposes, but I look at it and say, "It's one thing to have a noble spirit and noble purposes, but it's far more important to have good judgment and wisdom and understand when such nobility is warranted." And signing up for a foreign adventure, well, maybe there's good that comes from it.

You can learn, you can grow, you can enjoy the relationships of your buddies, you may do a little good while you're abroad, but it's much more likely that you're going to face excruciating moral circumstances, much more likely that you're going to return with a broken body and a destroyed mind and a destroyed spirit.

It just doesn't seem smart to me. I think all of us men want to die a noble and worthy death before we get to death. I mean, life is terminal, right? We all die. We should focus first on living a noble and virtuous life, but at the end of the day, I want to die a noble death.

I want to die with honor in the way that I die. And so if that happens in violence, fine. I'm not scared to die in a violent event of some kind. But if we want our death to be with honor and with virtue, and we want to die in righteousness, then we have to begin by living in righteousness and living with our integrity attached.

And if you are involved in circumstances that might be immoral in some way, such as serving in a military in an immoral war, then you have to be very careful about ever being in that, because though your friends and comrades in arms would undoubtedly honor you, it's going to be hard for those who can look at life with a little bit more perspective to feel the same sense of honor.

So we need to be really careful about the circumstances that we get ourselves into, especially those circumstances that can result in death. And so as the father of four sons, I have given a lot of thought to not sacrificing my sons to somebody else's god, but rather to give them the freedom to choose the path of virtue.

And that means that, of course, if they want to go and join a military, as adult men, that's their choice. But to be forced to do that, to me, seems a very wrong thing to do. So how do you protect your sons from a military draft? What can you do?

What should you do? Again, before I go, I would say that I honor certain nations' laws that have a military draft. And I think that if a draft is universal, then you shouldn't necessarily go through life trying to get out of that draft. But I particularly appreciate those nations who have a draft and they engage exclusively in defensive military operations.

My own nation does not do that. And so I'm much more hesitant about sacrificing my children to a politician's desire for power or for global control or for a legacy of some kind than I am a proper defensive military and/or military action. So how do you protect your children from a draft?

Well, there are a few things that you can do. First of all, you can just simply try to live in a place where there is no draft. And in a nation like the United States, thankfully, since the Vietnam War, there has been no draft. And I think that the cultural zeitgeist is very much against a draft.

And so will most of us as parents ever have to deal with our children being drafted? Probably not, because, again, the culture is against a draft. One of the outcomes of an intense focus on individual fulfillment and individual autonomy, which is the philosophical king right now of our entire worldview, we believe in autonomy at all costs, that I have complete and perfect control over all of my decisions.

Society be damned, my neighbors be damned, it's all about me. I can do what I want, I can live how I want, et cetera. That is the religious philosophy of our day and our culture. Well, that doesn't mesh very well with any concept of sacrifice and serve your country.

And so I would say that it's unlikely that our nation would engage in any form of military draft. But I don't like things that are unlikely when they are big in impact. It's unlikely that my house is going to get hit by a hurricane and get destroyed. It's unlikely, statistically.

But if the outcome is unacceptable for me, that my house is going to be destroyed, I'm still going to protect against it, so I'm going to buy an insurance policy. It's unlikely that my nation would impose a military draft. But if I've got four sons and I want to protect my four sons from being drafted, I'm not willing to just continue on with unlikely and say, "Ah, it's probably not going to happen." I'd like to make a plan for it.

So what can you do? How can you protect your children against a military draft? Well, you can begin with things that don't involve internationalization. So, for example, you can avoid selective service registration. Now, it's something of a crime for any American to talk about things like not enrolling children in selective service.

And so I'm going to avoid that and say that the government requires you to enroll in selective service. And so all young men are supposed to sign up for their selective service registration. The thing that's very frustrating to me is I distinctly remember my selective service enrollment when I was a young man, and it was basically just foisted on me.

I showed up in class one day at school. There was the form. I filled out the forms. It was all part of the senior year thing, and I didn't know what I was doing. But there I was enrolled in selective service. There are a significant number of downsides to not being enrolled in the selective service lists.

You don't get access to government money. You don't get access to government jobs. There's a whole bunch of things you don't get access to. But I would really prefer if somebody had informed me about those things properly when it was my time to enroll in selective service. And so at the very least, we as individual citizens can inform ourselves about the options, inform ourselves about the legal requirements of selective service registration, and inform ourselves about the sanctions for non-registration, and then make an informed choice.

Informed consent is, I believe, important. So that would be one thing that can be done. I think most people, though, after reviewing those documents, are probably not going to avoid selective service registration, for the same reason that while technically it's possible to do things like live without a Social Security number, et cetera, when you consider the costs of so doing, generally speaking, you go ahead and sign your children up for their federal identification number.

And because over the years the costs of doing without these kinds of registrations have become so high that unless you are very ideologically committed or totally free financially, et cetera, then you wind up just towing the line. That's how government works. So what practically could we do? Well, if there were a draft, one of the things that we could do is we could leave, or our children could leave the country.

And here I think studying the history of Vietnam is, and the draft in Vietnam, is illustrative. There are a whole bunch of ways that people avoided the draft in Vietnam. They're quite unkindly called draft dodgers. And that was quite a rebuke when I was younger. I put myself into right-wing Republican circles when I was a teen, and there was still kind of this lingering argument about draft dodgers.

I remember that George W. Bush was accused of being a draft dodger because he had joined the Texas National Guard or something instead of that. And I think President Trump, same thing. Oh, he was a draft dodger because of such and such. And there's a whole long list of things that people could do to avoid the draft.

They could sometimes go to college. They could get certain exemptions, a medical exemption, or different things that people could do. But I don't like a lot of those tricks because while effective, to me, they don't seem--it doesn't seem honorable to engage in those kinds of games. It's not honorable.

Either I have a great deal of respect for people who either do what they're asked to do or say, "No, I'm not going to do it," and are clear about it rather than run around and lie about it. So I'm not going to bother with getting into long lists of how do you fake an injury or how do you figure out how to be crazy or whatever and avoid service.

To me, that just--it's not honorable. And so either you sign up and you do what you're asked or you say, "No, I'm not going to do it." And so I have a great deal of respect for people who are conscientious objectors. I've known a number of conscientious objectors, people who their government imposed a draft and they said, "No, I'm not going to go and fight." And so they, in some cases, sat in prison for the duration of a war.

In some cases, they went into something like medical service. They found some way through to maintain their integrity. And so you can just become a conscientious objector and deal with the consequences and bear them like a man, straightforward, and deal with it. Or you could leave. And so in the Vietnam War, one of the things that many men did is they left.

Famously, they would go to Canada. The border with Canada and the United States is completely porous. It's an enormous border that is relatively easy to cross. The cultures are very similar. The language is common, etc. And so for Americans, escaping to Canada has generally been a way to escape tyranny.

The Underground Railroad was a way of taking escaped slaves who ran away from their slave masters in the southern United States, getting them through the north, out of the danger of laws like the Fugitive Slave Act, etc., and getting them into a nation where they could settle and they could live as free men.

And so the Vietnam War going to Canada tactic was just simply one of those things. So what happened is many people left the United States. They moved abroad, moved to Canada, moved to various places, and lived there. The Vietnam War ran its course. And then some years after the war was concluded, legislation was passed that gave a broad amnesty and forgave the actions of anybody who had left the United States and gave amnesty for those people who avoided their draft requirements by going abroad.

By that time, many people had fully acculturated in their host nation, in many cases in Canada, and many of those families are still living there to this day. They became Canadian citizens. They lived in Canada. They, in some cases or in many cases, renounced their U.S. citizenship, not in all cases, and they are Canadians today because of this event or, again, in many other nations.

And so I think this is one of the things that you can do. And if my children were ever drafted, I would discuss with them whether or not they should serve in the military. We would talk about the war itself, whether it is a moral and just war or whether it is an immoral and unjust war, talk to them about the impact, etc.

At this point in time, I would be perfectly proud to say that my children are not in this country because of – and they've left to go abroad. By the way, let me – before I tell you how to do that and how to prepare for that, let me just interject a slight interlude here.

It's often very hard for people, especially for my audience, to imagine that your nation would be the one engaging in an immoral war because, of course, all of us are steeped in a culture of nationalism and patriotism and we believe the best about our own country. But sometimes it's easy to look at other nations and see about the effect or the impact of another nation's war.

And so I would encourage you, think about something that is clearly immoral, for example, the recent invasion of Russia to Ukraine, in addition to some of the other wars that Russia has initiated over the last decade, as she seeks to regain her territory before she dies, if one is to believe Peter Zahan's analysis.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a perfect example of an immoral war, an immoral actions in war that puts a moral stain on the actual soldiers involved and the entire uselessness and pointlessness of the whole endeavor on both sides of the issue. I myself have worked with, over the last year, a handful of people who have fled Russia primarily to escape the draft.

And in one case, I worked closely with one man who he was at the, I met him abroad as a refugee. He was a refugee, but he had done exactly what we're talking about. He was in the Russian army as a young man. So therefore, he was subject to being called up again as having formerly been enlisted in the army.

When he was in the army, he was not a Christian. He didn't think about the morality of military service. He just went in the army. Later, he became a Christian and he himself had four children, three sons. And all of his sons are at ideal drafting age for the Russian army.

And he himself was not yet out of the upper age band, which he was subject to recall and re-enlistment in the army. So when Russia invaded Ukraine, he took it very seriously. And after some time, he decided that the only way that he could do it was to flee the country.

And so he sold what he could, gathered together what money he was able to, and fled the country with his children. That example, I hope, should be obvious to you. Is that imagine yourself as a father. Imagine that you yourself were subject to a draft. And yet the president or the potentate of your country is saying, "We have to go and do this thing for the common good.

We have to protect our nation." And yet protecting your nation involves invading a foreign country. Are you really going to go and do that? Are you really going to go and feel honorable about that? Are you going to feel proud when your sons are dead or one of your sons is dead in an action like that?

And then the other thing is that if you just study it a little bit, let's pretend that the actual outcome itself were moral. Just pretend. Pretend that Russia was just regaining its former borders. Russia was just saying, "Hey, we were the Soviet Union, but we're going to get our land back because this neighboring country of Ukraine has taken our land." Just pretend that that were morally right.

But go and look at the battlefield. And you go and look at the battlefield, and what you see is that all the men on the battlefield wind up committing war crimes, all of them, because of the impossible nature of war. So it's not a morally just thing. And so even if the actual war itself were somehow moral, the actual actions of the soldiers are not.

Because when men go off to war, atrocities happen. You're in a situation of groupthink, etc. You get into us versus them, and war crimes happen. And then you're dead. What a pointless exercise when it could be avoided, and at least you avoid it by going abroad. And by the way, this is one of the most impactful things that you can do.

If you want your nation to actually change, you're not going to do it with a vote. But you can do it with a vote with your feet. And as recent history in Russia, I think, demonstrates amply, hundreds of thousands of the best and brightest of the Russian nation have fled in order to avoid being drafted.

And that more than anything secures the long-term defeat of the Russian nation and will bring the country to its knees because your best and brightest realize there's no future for me. So they go abroad. They assimilate into other cultures. They start a new life. They marry abroad. They have children abroad.

And the demise of your own country is basically assured because of it. It's not happy. It's not a good thing. But it's based upon the decisions of the rulers. And so recognize that it happens to people all around. Now look at the Ukrainian situation. Now, if there ever was a just war, in my mind, the Ukraine defense of itself and of its nation and of its territoriality qualifies.

You have a foreign aggressor who is invading your land, who is coming in to take your land and is murdering your people, committing outright genocide, war crimes nonstop, et cetera. And so you say, okay, this is absolutely a just, morally speaking, a just military effort. Let me ask you a question.

Is the moral justice the only thing that matters? Or do you need to think about some hope of success? Does it really matter if you succeed in defending your country for a year or two only to lose the ultimate war? How do you feel if that's your son, your brother, your father, et cetera, who has died?

Though you have pride in the integrity of that man. Does defending the physical land, is that really going to be the thing that's going to propel your family forward? Is that really going to be the thing that matters to your orphan children, et cetera? And so I don't fault a man for fighting for his land.

I understand that. But I still question if that's really, in many cases, worth it. Is it worth it, dying, to defend your land if you have the opportunity to simply take your family to another land and spread your culture there, spread your values there? Land come and go, emperors come and go.

And so I don't want to be harsh or caustic in my comments here. I want to respect those who take care of it. But I just don't see how a specific piece of land is, in most cases, worth dying for. I believe that human beings and the people, what happens to those people, that's the primary thing.

But if you look at a battle, if I go into a -- let's say I go -- I'm on the street and five guys are approaching me and they're going to beat me up and probably kill me. There is not a chance in the world I'm going to fight with those guys.

Either I'm going to turn and run or I'm going to negotiate or I'm going to hand them all my money. I'm going to do something to try to avoid dying. Because an intelligent man, when he faces a war that he cannot win, does not fight in the first place.

You should only fight battles or wars that you can win, that you at least have some possibility of victory in. So back to draft dodging. As I said, you always have the choice of enlisting in the military. You always have the choice of being a conscientious objector and dealing with the consequences.

Or you have the choice to leave. And I do not believe that leaving is in any way an immoral choice. I would say that if -- If leaving were an immoral choice, then things like a mass amnesty for all of the Americans who left the United States during the war and went abroad, that kind of mass amnesty would itself be immoral if leaving were an immoral choice.

But what we see in a mass amnesty is simply that leaving is always a moral choice. You may have to deal with the consequences of leaving, not being able to come back to your country for some time, not being able to attend the funeral of your parents, etc. So there are certainly consequences, but it's not immoral to leave.

So leaving can be done either in a comfortable way or in an uncomfortable way. So let's play these two scenarios out. Scenario A is that somebody leaves the United States and goes to Canada during the war. And first of all, that American has to request some kind of legal status with the Canadian government.

That American would have to request a legal status as some form of refugee or some form of political asylum from the Canadian government or any other government around the world. Thankfully, many governments do grant refugee status or political asylum status to people who are fleeing their nation. But I do not believe that this is something that a prudent man would rely upon.

Go back to Russia and Ukraine. Immediately the day that Russia invaded Ukraine, just a couple of years ago, Russians and Ukrainians faced massively different levels of discrimination by foreign governments all around the world. And Russians, as the aggressing nation, being citizens of the aggressing nation, Russians faced massive, massive discrimination.

They lost travel rights all around the world. Their passports were restricted in terms of visa-free entry, etc. They were kicked out of many citizenship programs. They were kicked out, in some cases, of residency programs. They lost the ability to renew their residency, etc. Now, in most cases, most ordinary Russians had nothing to do with the actual Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Maybe some oligarch somewhere living in London did. I'll let people more informed than me work that out. Most Russians have done nothing, any more than I myself did anything, by being an American in anything that my own nation has done. People are powerless over their country. And so, being a Russian was not, if you're born a Russian, your parents are Russian, it's not your fault that your nation did this dastardly deed.

But all of a sudden, now you face the consequences. And so, in the case of the Vietnam War, Canada was, of course, sympathetic to many Americans. But what if it weren't? What if it were a different scenario? Today, Canada would be very different in terms of its relationship with the United States.

Because of the political changes that have happened in Canada and in the United States. So, just because you yourself are innocent in an event, that doesn't mean that when fleeing the country, that you're going to be treated as some kind of mortally upright person. There's a good chance that you're going to be stained by the actions of your country.

Not always, but in many cases, you will be. And so, you can't depend on refugee systems, etc. But that's the first thing you would have to have, is you would have to have some kind of legal status. Otherwise, your host country's government could kick you out. Well, what if you couldn't get that legal status?

What are your options? Well, in some cases, one of the options you would have would be to be some form of a perpetual tourist. And for many of us, I think this can and is a decent way to live. If you come from a nation that has a Tier A passport, you get lots of visa-free access to the world, you can live as a perpetual tourist for a very long period of time.

You can go to nations that give you 90 days entry, 6 months entry, etc. As an American, there are many countries in the world that I can go to and spend 6 months in. I can go to Panama, I can go to the Bahamas. Actually, there are 8 months or 12 months, I can't remember.

I can go to the United Kingdom for 6 months. I can go to Albania for a year, visa-free. There are lots of countries that I can go to and just spend 6 months in as a tourist. And many, many, many, many more countries that I can go and spend 90 days in.

So I can go back and forth. I can do the Schengen Shuffle across Europe and go back and forth and spend 90 days in England, 90 days in France, 90 days in England, 90 days in France, etc. And I can live as a perpetual tourist for a very long period of time.

But what if my country just invaded a foreign power? Well, I still have that right. And again, I go back to the Russians. And so what happened is the Russians faced significant barriers to visa applications and lost visa-free access to some countries because of their country's invasion of a foreign power.

So think of the example of my friend. You're fleeing Russia because you don't want to be drafted and you don't want your sons drafted in an immoral war. But the whole world judges you based upon the immoral war and says, "No, you're not welcome here." The next thing that happens is even if you can get into other places, sometimes the places that you can get into are very friendly with your government.

So a Russian might be able to go to Serbia. But the Serbian nation, the Serbian government has a much closer relationship with the Russian government, so you're not quite as safe in Serbia as a Russian draft dodger as you are in, say, the United States. But you can't get into the United States unless there's some form of special program.

And those special programs all went to the Ukrainians, not so much to the Russians. So I hope you see that in some cases being on a tourist status is okay. In some cases it's not. The other big problem of a tourist status is how do you make a living?

How do you make money? We don't like to imagine ourselves completely financially independent, living off of our Bitcoin wallet stored off in the middle of nowhere with just the passcode phrase that's in my head. But reality is we've got to work. And so if you don't have the ability to work in a country, you often can't live.

And so you're doing some kind of cash work, et cetera. Now you're even more vulnerable. You've got no insurance, no legal protections, et cetera. It's not a great situation to be in. I'm thankful that the Internet has made options for people, et cetera. But we're not into a perfect world where men's right to work is universally acknowledged.

Most nations restrict your ability to work legally based upon your immigration status. So the third option or the third problem you face with this plan is what do you do when your passport expires? Let's say that you had tremendous foresight and every three years you renewed your passport. Not so easy for most people when it's $180 to renew your passport.

Not so easy for many people when it's $180 times four or times six for your entire family to renew your passport. Let's assume, however, that you had great foresight and you just renewed your passport two years ago so you've got eight years left on your passport. What happens eight years from now when you can't bounce around anymore because you've got to go and renew your passport?

Remember, by the way, that just because you as an adult might have an eight-year passport -- or sorry, so for me as a U.S. citizen. As a U.S. citizen over the age of 16, my passport validity period is 10 years. But my children's passport validity period is only five years.

So they only have five years. I have 10 years. Remember also that many countries will not let you into their country if you don't have at least six months remaining of validity for your passport. So your 10-year passport drops to nine and a half years and your five-year passport drops to four and a half years.

And it's $200 per person to renew them. And so you're not really wanting to do that every single year. You're wanting to wait a little bit. And so what happens if -- let's assume again that you did it two years ago. So you actually have seven and a half years remaining on your passport.

How long did the Vietnam War last? How long were you out bouncing around as a tourist? It's not super comfortable. And how hard is it for your name to simply be on a list of people that we're not going to grant a passport to in renewal? So you may be living in Canada.

You go into the foreign embassy. And of course, foreign embassies can't arrest you because it's sovereign ground for your country there. They can arrest you if they want to. In most cases, most draft dodgers don't face this stuff. But still, let's be realistic. It is a right that they have.

But they can just simply say, "We're not going to renew your passport." Today, the United States government, Department of State, will not renew your passport if you owe more than -- was it $1,500 of child support in arrears? If you're in arrears on your child support. They won't renew your passport if you're accused of being seriously delinquent on more than $50,000 of tax debt.

So you face one of these situations where they refuse to renew your passport. And all you can do is fly back to the country where, oh, it might be convenient to arrest you. And instead of arresting you and sticking you in a prison that we have to pay for, let's arrest you and stick you in the army so that you can actually do us some good.

So in many cases, leaving the country and living as a tourist or something like that can work. In many cases, you may be able to be granted an asylum status. There are a number of countries around the world who have granted political asylum to Russian refugees who fled Russia over the last couple of years, last year or two, year and a half, whatever it is.

But that's not something that I think prudent men should rely upon. So what do you need? Well, the first thing, the simplest thing that you would need is an actual residence permit. And ideally, an actual residence permit that was put in place long before it was ever needed. And so if you have a residence permit in another nation, even if you're not living there today, but you have the right to go and live there whenever you want, that's something that is really valuable.

It would be ideal if that country were a neutral country, weren't involved in global arguments and wars, et cetera. That's what any residence permit for any country can do. Because with a residence permit, at least you would have a place that you could go. And in most cases with a residence permit, you can work your way to citizenship in fairly short order.

So let's say that our young American man has a residence permit for Canada. He hasn't lived there, but he decides to go there. He's got seven years remaining on his passport because he had great foresight. He renewed it every three to four years. But he's got seven years remaining on his passport.

He goes there, he lives there now, and in three years he can apply for Canadian citizenship. A year later he has a Canadian passport. Now he has the full rights and privileges of being a Canadian, and he doesn't have to go to the American embassy and renew his passport.

He can just let it sit there a decade, 15 years, 20 years, whatever it is. He doesn't go back to the United States, but he can go everywhere else in the world. He can travel as a Canadian, et cetera. And eventually an amnesty is passed or it just becomes ancient history.

Nobody cares. And he can go ahead, and if he wants to resume his American identity, he can. And so a residence permit, I think, is the basic way that you plan for that. The second way that is superior is simply having a second citizenship. And the reason this is superior is that residence permits generally have to be renewed.

And in order for you to renew them, with most nations you have to have been inside that nation, living there in many cases, living there for a certain amount of time per year. Whereas citizenships do not have to be renewed. Let's flip it. Let's say that there's somebody who's living in the United States on a green card.

As I talked with a recent caller, somebody who's living in the United States on a green card is a permanent resident of the United States, has the right to live in the United States, but has to live in the United States. If that person just moves abroad for five years and doesn't go back to the United States, legally speaking, the green card can be stripped.

And now he or she has no legal status in the United States. But if somebody is a US citizen, as I am, and I have, let's say I've left the United States, I've gone back many times, but let's say I haven't gone back in five years, I don't have to do anything.

I'm just a citizen of the country. And in fact, I don't even have to have current documents. I could leave the United States at 25 years old. I could move to Uzbekistan. I could lock my American passport in a safe somewhere. And I could live in Uzbekistan for 50 years.

And so I'm 75 years old now, and I realize, you know what, I can't live in Uzbekistan anymore. I'm going back to the United States. Well, all I need to do is pull out my 50-year-old completely expired passport out of the safe, and either I just figure out how to get myself to the US border using another document.

I might use my Uzbek passport. I might travel to Mexico, travel to Canada, travel to a nation that has a sea border with the United States, et cetera. But all I need to do is show up at the border and present my 50-year-old expired American passport. And after some detention and a whole lot of conversations, et cetera, I'll eventually be let in.

Or I just go to a US embassy, or if there is no US embassy, I go to a Canadian embassy or something, et cetera. And I request an emergency travel document to get me back to the United States. Again, I'm going to be hours and days of demonstrating that I am indeed still an American citizen.

But at the end of the day, I don't have to keep documents current. Citizenship is for life. And so that is the ultimate backup plan. And so when I was considering this for my own children, I realized all I need to do is get a second citizenship for my children.

And it doesn't have to be a citizenship from a country that they would actually live in. It just needs to be a citizenship that is different than their American citizenship. And then if there's a draft, they can leave the United States. They can go abroad. They can live in their country of citizenship.

Or they can just use a different country of citizenship to establish a residency in some other country, using all of the normal means and methods that people use to emigrate around the world. They can live and do business and raise children and do whatever they want abroad. Just don't go to the United States.

And then eventually it's settled. And if they want to go back, they can. Or if they don't ever want to go back, they don't have to. To me, the idea of spending 10 or 15 years living in Italy or living in Brazil or living in any other nation in the world, raising your children, doing business, loving your neighbors, building local community, etc., is infinitely preferable to being sent off to die in a useless immoral war or sitting in a prison cell and just sucking your thumb.

Again, what if you've got children to raise? What good do you do your family if you're sitting in prison? And so if there's a path that's open to you that has no downside that I can come up with other than your time abroad, a little bit of money, in some cases a lot of money, whatever fits your budget, and yet you can have this ultimate protection from something like a military draft, to me that seems really, really valuable.

And that was a big reason why I chose to start walking down the path of internationalization. I think keen-minded listeners could quickly come up with other scenarios in which everything I've just said about avoiding a draft really makes the difference. Let's say you're falsely accused of a crime, something you didn't do.

Some people get a fair shake in the justice system, many people don't. Or let's say you're falsely accused of doing something illegal, but you haven't done anything immoral. What do you do in that situation? Should you go and sit in prison for doing something that is alleged to be illegal, but that is not immoral?

That's a big issue. We'll talk more about that in the next episode in this series. But there is one other issue that is related to protecting my children that was also very important to me. And it has to do with economics, national debt, and taxation. I'm not going to get deeply into taxation here because it's much more relevant in the next episode, but I do want to talk about economics and the national debt.

One of the things that I have observed over many years of being interested in economics and finance is how many people assume that our children and our grandchildren are going to have an enormous debt that they have to pay back. After all, our nation is trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars in debt, in actual debt, and is hundreds of trillions of dollars in debt in unfunded liabilities.

And we always say, well, it's wrong for us to put this debt on our grandchildren. It's wrong for us to borrow money today that our grandchildren will have to repay. Now, quickly, I myself don't think our grandchildren will ever repay the national debt. I don't know what it looks like, but I myself, it's my opinion that the debt will eventually be defaulted on.

I think that default will be quite varied in how it presents itself. I think there will be a variety of different mechanisms that are used for that default. So default doesn't mean all of a sudden that today all the debt, no debt payments get made. That happens in many nations around the world.

I don't think that's going to happen in the United States necessarily. I think that a lot of the debt obligations are going to be defaulted on through inflation, significant levels of mass inflation. I think that a lot of the debt obligations are going to be defaulted on simply through changing the promises.

Hey, Joshua, you were promised you would get Social Security starting at 67, but we're going to change it and it's going to be starting at age 82 now. Or, hey, Joshua, we know that when you started contributing to Social Security, everybody was going to receive it, but after all, you're a multimillionaire.

So we think that that's not fair. We think that this is just a program that's there for other people. Those are all various forms of default. I think artificial suppression of interest rates, all kinds of things can be done, and I think there could and probably will be some forms of outright default.

So it's my opinion that myself, my best guess is I don't think the debt will ever be repaid. I think it will be defaulted on in a variety of forms over a long period of time. And I've seen enough nations default on their debt at this point in time to know that you can default and get on, in fact.

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National default is not necessarily a big problem. But let's say that I'm wrong. Let's say that I'm wrong because, again, I like to always assume I'm wrong. What would I do if I were wrong? What if my grandchildren are being saddled up with an enormous national debt? And just imagine my grandson and he's going off to work at his first job and he's making, you know, $682,000 per year, which is equivalent to a $27,000 starting salary today.

And his debt rate is 72% sorry. His tax rate is 72% and he's got to pay 72% to pay off the national debt from all the borrowing that his grandparents did under President Reagan and under President Bush and under President Clinton and President Bush and President Obama and President Trump and President Biden, etc.

And so my grandchildren are paying this off. Is that right? Is that morally just? Of course not. But is it legal? Of course. You and I are paying taxes on stuff that are, you know, all the costs from World War II still. So it's certainly possible. Now, the United States has balanced this fairly well.

The tax rates aren't particularly high. It's a pretty dynamic place, etc. But what if it got out of control? Wouldn't it be nice to just escape from the whole system? Wouldn't it be nice if you could just say, yeah, there's no value in this anymore. And again, it's hard for my primarily American audience to think this about their own country, but I just see it around the world.

What if you're from a nation that is saddled with decades of mismanagement and you have the option to move to another place? What if you're a Russian who's saddled by a complete collapse and no long-term future and demographics, you know, death, etc? What if you're Chinese? What if you're Japanese, etc?

Do you really have to sit out the great stagnation? Do you really want your grandchildren, your children, and your grandchildren to have to sit and fight in the great stagnation for 30 years? Or do you want your children and your grandchildren to be free to go someplace that is more vibrant and more active and there's more opportunities?

Quickly, I don't think economic vitality should be the primary thing that we make our life decisions about. You can live a great life in a country that's in broad-scale collapse, but at the end of the day, it certainly matters. And yet, what if your country follows you around the world like the United States does?

Wouldn't it be nice to have another citizenship? Just say, "I'm done with these guys," and have your children be able to renounce their citizenships and be done and be freed of a debt obligation? Go and pull up one of the debt clocks. Here you go. I did it. I pulled up usdebtclock.org, current U.S.

national debt, which is, again, this is the on-budget debt, not the unfunded liabilities. Current U.S. national debt is $33.7 trillion. Debt per citizen of the official on-budget debt is $100,382 of debt per citizen. Debt per taxpayer is $259,103. So right now, if I have a child who is a taxpayer, that child is inheriting a debt burden of $259,103.

Now, to me, in most cases, that's not that big of a deal because, after all, all those offsetting reasons I said. But if the child could renounce his citizenship and be done with that $259,000 debt, be done with those annual taxes, and just be done with it, especially if the child had a better solution somewhere else, something to do, better country, better economy, et cetera, is that not worth considering?

I think it is. And so what do you need to renounce your citizenship in a situation like that? What do you need to get out from underneath that $259,000 debt burden? Well, the answer is you need another citizenship, or at the very least, you need another residency that could turn into a citizenship if you go and live in that place.

And so if you have another citizenship, then you can renounce your first one and be done with it, and that ends all of your obligations. And so these two things go together. And because, for example, if one of my children renounced his or her U.S. citizenship, he or she would immediately be freed from any kind of draft obligations and would also be freed from any debt obligations.

I'm not talking about personal debt. I'm talking about here taxation. That seems really worth having to me, and I've always found that very motivating. And so as a father who desires to give good things to his children, especially given that kind of a bit of an adventure, a bit of a lark, and yet could quite literally save my children's lives or their fortune someday, this kind of planning seems like a good idea to me.

It seems like a good idea to at least have one other country that I have a legal right of residence in and, if possible, to have at least one other country that I have a legal right of citizenship in. And that is a big reason I started the process of internationalization, was for my children.

Those were two specific risks that I'm looking at. And I'm saying I don't think that the United States is going to start a draft, and I don't think that the United States is going to have ridiculous levels of taxation. But if the US did start a draft, and that resulted in the death of one of my children, or if the United States did go into ridiculous levels of taxation, and that became an ongoing drag on my children's and on our family fortune, that would be really just frustrating to me and quite devastating in the case of death.

So let me just do a little bit of planning. It's pretty easy to do, pretty fun to do. I've enjoyed it. And let me do a little bit of planning when I'm able to in order to free them from that possibility so that my children can enjoy more freedom in the future.

The interesting thing about it, as I said, is that as I achieved this, I became much more focused on the positive stuff, meaning that it's one of those things that if you have it, you have a backup plan, then the importance of the backup plan today is not such a big deal to me.

Meaning it's still important to me, but five years ago when I had nothing and I had to start from zero, then it was really, really important to me. I thought a lot about the negative sides. Now that I have it all done and I don't have zero, and I and my children could be free of our nation, et cetera, then I'm just very emotionally relaxed about the whole thing.

And so these reasons were really important to me five years ago. Today, I know they were really important to me, but they're things that I've done. Check the box. And so they're not emotionally present anymore because I know I have a plan for them, which leads me to the third thing.

It's simply that today it's become much more about just the enjoyment of it. It's become much more about the sense of adventure that I talked about in the previous episode. And it's become much more about the opportunities. Just kind of interesting to learn another language, learn another culture, travel widely, look at the world through a balanced perspective, not engage so deeply in the nationalism of one place, but view the world broadly and then appreciate a place.

And as I've tried to say many times, the ironic thing about it has been that my appreciation of my own country has grown. And I sometimes feel like I shouldn't necessarily tell people that you have to go and do this stuff because maybe it was just all in my head.

But I don't think I would have the same peace that I have today if I hadn't done it. Meaning what I mean is it's all in my head is that I acknowledge that it's unlikely that the US government is going to impose a draft. I acknowledge that in many cases it's possible to avoid a draft through other means, et cetera.

So maybe it wasn't necessary for me to do all this to avoid a draft for my children. So do I have to tell everyone else that they have to do it? The answer is you do whatever you want. I'm glad I've done it. I'm really grateful for it. And I've enjoyed the process.

And then today my appreciation of my country has grown because of that process to the point where I could and I probably will in the future. I don't have any date yet, but I probably will in the future. Go back to the United States and appreciate so afresh so many things about it.

So that's part two of my story of why I left the United States. Part three is going to be probably the most important. And that's where it's going to involve me and my reasons for me. Because at the end of the day, yes, I care about my children. But we all have to make our own way in the world.

And all this stuff was important to me for my children. But it was not the only thing. There are a lot of reasons that I myself wanted some of this freedom and why I left the United States. In closing, I remind you that if you're looking to do some of this for yourself, there are two resources that I have right now for you.

Resource number one is I have a course called internationalescapeplan.com. So if you're the kind of guy who just does well with the course, go to internationalescapeplan.com, buy my course. I'll walk you step by step how to create through how to create an escape plan for yourself. And the unique thing about what I do in that course is I give you a phased approach.

You'll notice in my own commentary that I'm not heavy-handed, nor am I deeply prescriptive. I don't say you have to have five citizenships or you're being stupid. I think it's cool if you have five citizenship, but it's not necessary. There's a path on the internationalization spectrum that is right for all of us.

In my course, I talk about phase one. Phase one is you have a passport. Have a passport, a credit card, and a cell phone. And if you have a passport, a credit card, and a cell phone, you know, good. You're better prepared than a lot of people, and everybody should do that.

I don't like to shoot on people, but everybody should do that. Phase two is a little bit more, and it goes on all the way to phase four, becoming a full-fledged expatriate. But internationalescapeplan.com is where you can get that. The other thing is right now we're just finalizing the enrollment for our event that we're hosting in January.

And this event is an internationalization event that we're hosting in the nation of Panama, Panama meaning the Central American nation of Panama. It'll be in Panama City in January 2024. And if you are interested in this and you haven't signed up, it's more expensive than my course, but it's a huge value, you should go to, I was blanking on the URL, expatmoney.com/radical, link in the show notes, expatmoney.com/radical and sign up for that event.

Because I will be there, my friend Mikkel Thorup will be there, he'll be there presenting, talking about a lot of things. Gabriel Custodiat, my other friend, we're co-hosting it together. We're going to be there, plus a bunch of listeners from the show, and we're going to be there for a week talking about it.

I'm not even scratching the surface of the benefits of internationalization that can be done. I'm just sharing with you some of the ones that were the most important to me when I started this journey. Hey, would it be cool to go and set up an international foundation and have all kinds of money tax-free?

That'd be great, but I didn't know, I didn't have a lot of interest in that when I was getting started. So I'm telling you my story, but your story may be different. And so I would love for you to come, hang out with us in Panama. Panama is a nation that can offer a lot of these benefits in terms of a partial Plan B.

And so we'll talk about those things, but our event is not exclusive to Panama. So we're doing a full Panama investment tour, talking about Panama specifically, but we'll talk about other options and other nations as well. Sign up today for that, finalizing registration this week, next week, this month anyway.

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