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Hackproofcourse.com, bitcoinprivacycourse.com, internationalescapeplan.com. Today on Radical Personal Finance, I want to share with you why I will probably go back to the United States in the future. Why I'll probably move back to the United States. I've been doing this series and this show is, I plan for this show to wrap up the series.

I've done four podcast episodes on why I left the United States, sharing quite sincerely and sharing many of the most important reasons as to why I myself left the United States and moved abroad. But the capstone for this series is going to be today's show, which is why I will probably go back to the United States.

Now, if my language sounds wishy-washy, it's because it reflects reality. Meaning that I have not moved back to the United States at the moment. I do not live there and I don't have any specific plans to move back to the United States. But that has more to do with the fact that I've built a great lifestyle and a great situation for myself abroad that has many good advantages at this phase of life.

But looking down the road, I think that those advantages will change in the future. And I want to share with you some of the reasons why I think my circumstances probably will change in the future. And this is one of those shows where if you've ever felt guilty about not moving abroad and not leaving the United States or any country, I think I'll help you give you some good rational reasons as to why you'll want to stay.

And at the end of the show, I'll share with you why I'm actually quite happy about the path that I've taken and how it has helped me personally and why I still recommend that other people pursue your own internationalization path. Let's begin by defining some terms. I want to share with you how things have changed.

When I say I'll probably go back and live in the United States, these terms don't mean what they used to mean for me, nor do they mean what they used to mean for other people. I think one thing we can begin with and should begin with is simply how the concept of living somewhere changes.

It changes when you yourself have moved or traveled a lot. It changes in our society as our society has changed and the technology of our day and age has changed. It is a concept that has changed. And I want to begin by sharing a simple story. In 2018, my wife and I were considering getting rid of our stuff and going full-time traveling.

At the time, we were going to buy an RV. That was the plan. And we were just talking about it, thinking about it, etc. But prior to that time, I had lived for all of my life in one place in Florida, one town in Florida. That was where I was from, where all of my connections were.

It's where I had built my life, my businesses, my loved ones. Everything was in Florida, in one town in Florida. And as I was considering going on this trip, it took us quite a long time to come to the decision to pick up and go. For many months, we were considering, "Well, should we go and do this?

Should we travel? Should we not?" It was difficult for us to come to that decision. We spent a lot of time thinking about it, a lot of time talking about it, a lot of time questioning, "Is this what we should do? Is this something that is good for our family?" etc.

And it took quite a while until we both came to the confidence and we were in agreement, "Yes, let's go ahead and do this. Let's go ahead and sell our stuff and put the rest of it in storage and buy an RV and go travel around the United States." Months to come to that conclusion and then months to prepare.

Well, fast forward a couple of years or a few years later, my wife and I were having a similar conversation. This was now in 2021 and we were considering going full-time traveling again. As I recall, the second time around, it basically took us about one evening of conversation and a day to sleep on it to come to the decision to go full-time traveling again, even though the actual transition was much bigger.

So the first time around, we were going to buy an RV, put our stuff in storage, etc. Second time around, we were just going traveling in suitcases, put the rest of the stuff in storage, but we'd slim things down a lot and we weren't even going to have a vehicle.

We were just going to go live in Airbnbs and travel around the world. Plan was to spend six months in Europe, spend six months in Asia, etc. But the second time around, even though we had more children and everything was in theory more complicated, it took us about one night of conversation, another night to sleep on it and talk about it again, and we were decided.

It only took me a few weeks to handle all the logistics of the stuff. Stuff got rid of quickly. It was just done. The reason was simply that it was no longer unknown. We had been there, done that. We knew what needed to be done. We knew what it was like.

I knew what it would be like to travel, in that case full-time. I knew what needed to be done and I knew how relatively easy it would be to switch back and to change. That was something that I learned by experience, but it has been something that impacted me and changed how I think about things.

I think another person might have experienced this with, say, moving. If you've ever moved from the town that you grew up in, the first time you move away, there's a lot of thought that goes into it, a lot of difficulty of that decision. The second time you move from that town somewhere else, it's easier to make that decision because you know what's involved.

This is one of the experiences that I've had with the concept of living somewhere. Now, there's many of my fellow countrymen who move frequently around the United States. For better or worse, we're a very nomadic culture. We move a lot and most people don't think a lot about changing cities, changing houses, changing towns, but where the line is often drawn is that of changing countries.

Yet, what I've experienced is that changing countries is not particularly different than changing towns. It just means that you're less likely to drive a U-Haul truck with your stuff in it and more likely to ship a pallet with an international shipper or ship a container or something like that.

It just changes the logistics a little bit, especially once you deal with the paperwork and all of the details. Once you go through a residency program, once you get a visa, once you get another citizenship or something like that, then that all changes as well and you realize, "Okay, I've been there, done that.

It wasn't all that difficult." The concept of even living somewhere changes when you've traveled a lot. I would highly recommend, if you've never done it, that you go through the exercise at some point of getting rid of all your stuff, selling it all, and then buying it all back again because it changes the kinds of things that you buy and it gives you a chance to reset.

Once you realize how easy this is to do, then it changes your perspective. Today, the idea of moving back to the United States, for me, is not that big of a deal. Just like the idea of moving outside of the United States is just not that big of a deal.

It does come with downsides. I'll address some of the downsides in a few minutes. But in terms of the logistics, once you've done it, it's not that big of a deal. So if I sound somewhat cavalier or flippant with how I'm talking about this, it's because I understand that it's not that hard to do.

It's not that hard to change. It's not that hard to move abroad. It's not that hard to move back. And you don't have to make long decisions. You don't have to necessarily commit yourself and say, "I've got to be here for 40 years." You can actually come and go and change with frequency.

Now, there are other changes that do affect this as well. So for me, one aspect of it was going through the process of moving my family from one country to another country. Then we moved back to the United States. I'll tell that story in a minute. Then it moved abroad on me almost immediately again.

And so having done it and traveled a little bit does change. By the way, I think this is also due and important that we note that it's due to technology. And by technology here, I don't mean digital anything, although we'll talk about that in a moment. I mean, just simply the technology of travel.

We are living in a day and age in which the world is very, very small. I was reading Adam Van… I don't know how to say his last name… Empty America on Twitter a couple of weeks ago. He made the comment that struck me as very powerful. He said, "It's our best Black Friday ever at JCPenney, and we've got thousands of deals all week long.

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Offers valid on select styles in-store through 11.26. Exclusions of five Black Friday deals excluded from coupons. See associate for details." Today, you're closer… meaning, so today you can fly from the city that you live in to Pakistan in less than a day. He said, "Today, a guy living in New York City is functionally closer to Pakistan than 100 years ago you were if you were living in New York City to someone in Los Angeles or San Francisco." In terms of the technology of travel, I don't think we've caught up with what that means.

Basically, today, you can be from anywhere to anywhere, more or less, at least from any major city to any major city, within about 24 hours or so. And you can do that pretty inexpensively, all things considered. Even if your ticket is a few thousand dollars, still, it's pretty inexpensive compared to what it used to cost to travel from one place on the planet to another place on the planet.

And this is one of those things where once you do something, it changes your perspective. I remember when I first started booking my own airplane tickets, and I remember how I would agonize for weeks over airplane tickets. And I would plan a trip, and I would agonize, and I would buy.

And the first few times I bought a ticket abroad for myself to go travel by myself, I remember it was a huge decision for me, even if the money, the actual money involved wasn't necessarily all that big. I always wondered with every trip, "Should I go and do this?" Well, today, I've bought so many airplane tickets over the days, over the years, that buying an airplane ticket is not that big of a deal.

I bought 56 of them in the last couple of months. We had eight on my most recent trip. We had eight different airline legs, and I have seven tickets each, so I bought 56 airplane tickets. And so the idea of buying an airplane ticket is no big deal, especially if it's for one person.

I mean, when I go to buy an airplane ticket, and I just have to buy a single ticket, man, it just feels the cheapest thing in the world. Fly across the country, fly across the world, one person for a meeting, I'm sold. It's easy. But that's something that just simply comes with doing it, with experience.

And I've realized how weird that would sound to me of 10 years ago, when I had to think really carefully about each decision. The technology of communication, though, has changed everything fundamentally as well. I'm a millennial, but I'm one of those millennials who remembers how it was prior to the digital connection revolution.

I know what it was like before the computer, I know what it was like before cell phones, and yet I'm also a digital native. And more importantly, internationally, I started engaging in international lifestyle exactly at the turning point of this digital revolution. And so I remember what that was.

In 2005, I studied abroad in Costa Rica. And at that point in time, when I went abroad, we had virtually no connection back home, meaning that I was in the day and age in which we were fully and truly there, fully and truly immersed in the culture, immersed in our studies, immersed in the local environment.

I was kind of on the leading edge, that I had a Skype account, and I had a plug-in headset, and I had my laptop. And so I could take my laptop and go and find some Wi-Fi somewhere, and I could plug in my headset, and I could call my family on Skype.

But I also still used calling cards to call back home when I called back home. I would go and use a computer in a hotel lobby and send an email every now and then, but I was still away. I wasn't home. I was away. I signed up for Facebook in 2005 in Costa Rica.

And so that was the starting point where all of a sudden I started getting in touch with everyone. Well, a couple years later, we have the iPhone, we have omnipresent Wi-Fi networks, and that was the first phase at which people were universally in contact. It wasn't inexpensive to take your cell phone everywhere, but you started to have Wi-Fi everywhere, and the consistency of that made it so that people were always in touch.

And it was Skype, and then it was Facebook, etc. Well, that meant that when people left, not a lot changed. I remember when I talked, you know, back to Costa Rica in 2009, and I talked to some of the professors I had had, and we talked about this and about how things had changed, and that now students who were studying abroad were no longer fully abroad.

They were still trying to be abroad, but they were trying to also keep in touch with their life back home. And this is one of those things that has changed across our society, is that formerly, if you left the town that you grew up in, and you moved to a town in the next state over, you had a breaking of all of your old relationships, and you substituted new relationships.

But today, that breakage doesn't occur in the same way. We'll now bring in the world we live in now, where many of us have cell phone plans that basically work everywhere in the world, and it changes things even more. I don't even pay attention, I don't get local SIM cards, sometimes I'll get a local SIM, but I don't get local SIM cards, I just use one phone, one phone number, one phone plan, doesn't matter what country I'm in, it all just works.

All of my financial infrastructure, it all works exactly the same. I swipe a credit card, and it swipes the same in Florida as it does in China. It's just all the same. My place is not the same as Cuba. So it just works, everything works. And so this means that the difference from one place to another is not as stark as it once was.

And when you go through these changes, when you go through the concepts of you're connected, your phone is connected, your financial infrastructure all works, it's all the same, no matter where you are, and then you've moved around a lot, you've bought airplane tickets a lot, then the concept of living in a place changes, doesn't change all that much.

Meaning that it's not as hard as it once was. Another big change for me that would make my comments on living somewhere sound different has to do with finances. Simply that when your finances are small, then your living expenses, meaning your cost of rent or cost of mortgage, etc., are often a very significant portion of your finances.

But if your income grows, in many cases, your living expenses become a much less significant portion of your finances. And you can make that decision intentionally in a number of ways. And so I never understood, because I didn't grow up with having multiple homes, I grew up having one home, I never understood the concept of when people had multiple homes.

But if you've been one who's had a vacation home or had multiple homes, you recognize that you can comfortably go back and forth between those homes. And if you stock them both the same, it doesn't make a big difference to you which home you're in. You just have certain things that you do in those homes.

Well, once you cross borders a lot, and you have homes in multiple countries, then the same thing basically applies. And so if you ask me, "Joshua, where do you live?" then the question would be, "Well, how do I answer that? Do you mean what's my legal address where I receive mail?" Well, of course, I have a couple of legal addresses where I receive mail, but I don't sleep there.

"Do you mean where I sleep? Well, what part of the year are you talking about? Are you talking about a holiday? Are you talking about a non-holiday? Is it cold? Is it hot?" etc. And then depending on where you're involved and your financial ability and what you've set up, you can pretty comfortably have multiple homes and live in multiple places and get around among those places without it being that big of a deal.

Even if you don't have multiple homes, meaning you don't own them yourself, if you get a little bit of practice in the short-term rental market, then you'll quickly discover that you could be pretty comfortable just living in short-term rentals. And that also is a brand new technological innovation, I guess, in a few years now, but I'm just referring to Airbnb and other vacation rental sites, that formerly, if you went back 10 years, then if you were going to travel, you had a couple options.

Option one was to stay in a hotel. And most of the time, you'd be staying in a nice business hotel or something like that that you were comfortable of. Maybe it was a brand name that you knew. Of course, you could stay in a local place. In many places in the world, you can go and you can rent a cabina or something like that.

But you're staying in a hotel or you're going through all the difficulties of setting up a rental apartment. You might go and rent the apartment. Then you have to figure out how to get my utilities turned on and you got to do all that and you sign leases, etc.

Airbnb and other sites have completely revolutionized this aspect of a home as well. I think many people can live very comfortably in Airbnb on long-term rentals, multi-month rentals. I don't think it's so great with children. I've done it a lot and I don't love it with children. I have a list of things I don't like about Airbnb, various things.

The biggest annoyance is usually the kitchen doesn't have the gear that you need. But if you were a couple or a small family or something like that, maybe you travel with a suitcase that has your frying pans and your kitchen tools that you know that you need. You can go and do a month-by-month rentals in these properties and the price is very, very affordable.

The price depends upon the city, obviously. It also depends upon the specific landlord or host. But I've estimated just off the top of my head that you probably pay about 20% to 30% more to rent an apartment on Airbnb than you would if you went and did it all yourself.

Now, that may sound like a lot, may sound like a little. I consider that a bargain of a steal in exchange for flexibility. Think about it. You want to go to another city, almost literally anywhere in the world. You want to go to another city and you want to rent an apartment.

You want to rent an apartment for a month, possibly two months. And all you got to do is plunk in your credit card. And when you show up to that apartment, the apartment is rented, the lights are on, everything is clean, the internet works, everything is ready for you.

It's completely furnished. You can show up, you can live there, and you can leave two months later. And you only pay 20% more for that as compared to what you would have to go and find a landlord and negotiate a lease and sign yourself up for a long-term commitment and go around and get your lights on, get your water on, get your utilities on, buy a bunch of furniture, get it all set up, etc.

A mere 20% more for all that convenience, it's astounding. Now, if you know you're going to be in the same place all the time, obviously, get your own place. But that convenience means that I think a lot of people can and do live fairly comfortably just in Airbnb rental apartments.

And it doesn't cost all that much more, especially if you're engaging in some form of geo-arbitrage. And so when you question these concepts, the concepts of living in a place don't mean what they used to mean. Again, if I'm posting on Facebook and talking to my friends from the city that I grew up in, I can show up in the city that I grew up in and have, to some degree, similar relationships as to what I would have if I lived there the whole time.

I can negotiate and coordinate activities, etc. If I got a place to stay and all that stuff, the concept of living in a place is just different than it once was. And so I find this a really powerful expression of our modern age. And it means that the way that we talk about things hasn't yet caught up.

When we talk about, "I live here," traditionally, our language would indicate that I'm committed to this place. But I can live in multiple places around the world in any year. And I can live in multiple places around the world over the course of a few years. So when I think about moving back to the United States, I'm happy to consider that in a comprehensive way, meaning that, "Okay, I've changed from one location to the other location." But it's much more likely for me to be simply, "I spend more time in the United States." And the amount of time that I spend in the United States can vary.

Do I live in a place if I spend three months there out of the year? Right now, I can easily and comfortably spend three or four months a year in the United States if I want to. That's not a problem. Or does it mean I live in the place eight months?

Or do I have to live there 11 months, etc.? So you see how things change. And these words that we have, we haven't yet invented a new vocabulary to account for these. But there are some things that I really appreciate about the United States. And those things do factor into my saying, "Yeah, I'll probably move back to the United States." And I have found that I think with children, especially children of a certain age, I don't think a nomadic lifestyle is ideal.

One of the personal assets that I have enjoyed that I didn't fully appreciate when I was younger was how you can build such a richer network of relationships by living in a place for a long period of time. It's one of those things where you're kind of blind to it because it's always been the way that you are.

But remember, I said I lived in a place, one place for the entirety of my life until I was in my 30s. And when I left that place, all of a sudden I realized how valuable that web of strong connections was that I had built and how integral that was to my life and lifestyle on so many levels.

And I want my children to have a similar benefit. I want them to have the opportunity to build that web of connections on a deep level. And that implies a greater commitment to place. It doesn't mean it has to be one place. I don't think any of us would...

Let's say that you live in Atlanta, Georgia, and you live there 10 months a year, but then during the months you send your children to Italy, to the old country so that they can connect with their family there and they spend summer vacations there. Well, you're really obviously connected to Georgia, but you have connections in both places.

So I think it's more important that we have consistency over time to build those connections and build those resources than it is that it just be one specific place. Also, one more comment, I'm going to get into specifics. Your needs change at different points in your life. And your need and desire to go abroad or move to another place will vary.

For example, as you can tell from the previous episodes, it was very, very important for me to have the option and the ability to leave the United States. It was very important to me, and I have invested an enormous amount of time, an enormous amount of money in building those options for myself.

If I did not have those options, it would still be just as important to me as it was a number of years ago when I started to build it. So I don't regret anything that I have done. It was very important to me to have the option to leave, but it was never my plan that I had to leave, that I really wanted to leave, that that was the most important thing for me.

And so you want to ask yourself, what do I specifically need at this point in time? Why do some people go abroad? Well, maybe you need tax savings. In my situation, what I described, it wasn't so much tax savings from a how can I keep more of my money perspective.

It was more of a matter of I need to figure out how I can legally get out of the tax net if I need to or want to. And that can be something that is, that moving abroad can help a lot. But most people don't need tax savings because most people do not make millions and millions and millions of dollars a year.

If you do make millions and millions of dollars a year, you kind of have this really difficult double-edged question. Number one, I make millions and millions and millions of dollars a year. So therefore, if I can eliminate or significantly reduce my taxes, I can save lots and lots of money.

But also, I now make millions and millions and millions of dollars a year. So that means that I have complete and total freedom. Shouldn't I live where I actually want to live? This is why I advise people that tax savings should be one component of your overall structure and plan, but not an exclusive component.

Because tax savings for the kind of, for lower income don't matter, for middle income don't matter all that much. And for the high income, you get to the point where it's more a matter of where do you want to live and are you really going to let the tax man govern that, et cetera.

There may be other freedoms that you need. So for example, I homeschool my children. Being able to homeschool my children is very, very important to me. But it wouldn't be important to me if I weren't homeschooling my children. It's only important at a certain time in my life. And that may be with young children, maybe that as my children get older, I'll enroll them in different schools to get other things that I can't provide in a homeschool environment.

Or it may just mean that my children have grown and moved out of my house. And so therefore homeschooling them is no longer a big deal. So the United States has the world's greatest homeschooling freedoms of any country in the world. You can homeschool in many other countries. But if you want basically absolute freedom to educate your children as you see fit, the United States is the best destination for you.

There are other things that people want that don't apply to me. So for example, sometimes people go abroad because they want to party. They want to go where they can live cheap and party on the beach or do drugs or meet people, et cetera. There's a bunch of degenerates running around the world basically traveling exclusively to party with no long-term plans, et cetera.

That's completely irrelevant and immaterial to me. I don't party. I don't do that stuff. I don't run around with those who do. And so it doesn't matter to me. So I could live in the United States and the ability to "party" is not important to me at all. But on the other hand, what is important to me is having a place where my children have opportunity and them having opportunity.

So one guy might get on an airplane and go to Nicaragua because he can live on the beach and surf every day and party every night and has a whole harem full of Latinas. But when it comes time to actually raising children, he's thinking about a different thing. And if you compare the opportunity that he has, especially as an expat, as a foreigner, and his children have in a place like Nicaragua versus a place like Florida, there's just no comparison.

Now, if you were from Nicaragua, if you were part of the culture, the connected class, the rich class you were already in, then maybe you would live in Nicaragua, et cetera. But in general, for an outsider coming in, it would be hopeless for you to try to build something big and create opportunity for your children in Nicaragua if you had the opportunity to go to the United States.

And so your needs change over time. And for all the same reasons that you might live in a small town and move to a big city, then move from a big city to a small town, the same thing applies on a country level. And you will want to consider that personally.

One of the first big reasons why I seriously consider moving back to the United States is that life in the United States is life on easy mode. It really is. I understand and I'm sympathetic to those who don't find life in the United States to be life on easy mode.

But in everywhere I've gone and what I have done, I have found that life in the United States is life on easy mode, all things considered. I think there are things that on any particular issue, I could name other places that I've found that, "Hey, on this issue, I think this is a really great spot," or, "I really like the culture here," or, "I really like how they do this process." But on across the issues, life in the United States is life on easy mode.

Most things work, and most things work pretty well, especially most of the things that matter to you on a daily basis in terms of building a life. Some of the simplest things, like getting a job. The labor market in the United States is outstanding. Anybody who wants to be employed can be employed today.

Anybody who wants to build a career can build a career over a few years. Anybody who wants to live on their salary, you can live on just about any level of pay that you get in the United States. Certainly, if you're getting started and your wages are low, you're going to be working a lot of hours, but there are ways to live on the income.

If you've built a lot of money and a lot of business and whatnot, then that is not so important to you. If you have an independent business you could do with an internet connection, that matters less to you. But for most people, that's a big deal. And recognize that I view most of my life through the eyes of my children.

For young people, that's a big deal. The ability to simply get a job, be paid properly for the work that you do, and grow that job into a career is incredibly important. And in the United States, most things work. The job market is simple. There's not a lot of discrimination.

There's not a lot of barriers to entry. Yes, some industries, some jobs are restricted with licensing schemes, etc. But most of those make mostly sense. You can work your way through them in a reasonable amount of time. You can get the relevant paperwork done fairly quickly. You want to live in a place?

You can go and live in a place. You don't have to register with the police. You just go rent someplace. If you need a bedroom, you can go onto Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace. You can find a bedroom to rent. If you want an apartment to rent, you can find an apartment to rent today of reasonable size.

You can find a house to rent, etc. There are disparities among cities. Many of the complaints that people make comes down to, "Well, I can't afford to live in Miami." Well, you may not be able to afford to live in Miami, which is why you might consider moving somewhere else or figuring out how to afford to live in Miami.

But the cities that everyone complains about, you can fix that by just choosing another place. Housing is cheap in Iowa or Ohio or Georgia, etc. And so you can change a lot of things pretty simply. Most things in the United States work well. The government systems are generally fairly straightforward.

As much as I might like to complain, just like we all do about the Department of Motor Vehicles, in some cases, it makes a lot more sense than some of the other ones. Over the last few years, I've built a stack of driver's licenses in different countries. And so I've spent a good amount of time sitting in motor vehicle offices, getting driver's licenses and whatnot.

And the process in the United States is simpler and more straightforward than it is in most places, and it's more predictable. And so life in the United States really is life on easy mode. The accessibility that you have to stuff, the United States has the most resources of any country in the world.

And I mean that on a macro level as well as on a micro level. On a macro level, the country is abundantly blessed with incredible fertile farmland and incredible rivers and highways for transportation systems and all kinds of just basic natural resources. And even just the human resources, the cultural capital and the people in the country, etc.

is powerful. You can start a company and you can find employees who are qualified in most companies. And so it has the most resources from a macro level of just about any country in the world. But even for individuals, little things like Amazon. It's our best Black Friday ever at JCPenney, and we've got thousands of deals all week long.

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Offers valid on select styles in store through 11/26. Exclusions of five Black Friday deals excluded from coupons. See associate for details. Amazon is amazing. And I'll tell you quite frankly, the cheapness of life in the United States is pretty stunning once you've been out of it a while. I remember when I was growing up, my parents had lived internationally.

And so we had various international friends and they traveled a good bit internationally. And people would come and visit us. And I distinctly remember we had this friend who would come and visit every year from or every couple of years from England. And whenever he would go back home to England, he would buy all kinds of stuff.

He would buy saws and big equipment. He was a carpenter at a carpentry company. He would buy all this stuff in the United States and take it back to England as luggage on the airplane. I never got it. I was like, "Don't you sell the stuff over there?" And what I discovered as I've gotten older and traveled more is that the sheer volume of stuff that you can get in the United States at cheap prices is really unmatched in most anywhere in the world.

There are always exceptions. There are certain electronics you can only get in Japan. There are certain products that you can only get in Asia or in Europe, etc. But on the whole, the United States is a shopper's paradise. I find myself now doing exactly the same thing that my friends used to do.

When I go to the United States, the mailman knows that I'm coming because the boxes start stacking up. And I'll make enormous Amazon orders because I can get exactly what I want and it shows up at my door and it's cheap. It's just crazy cheap. I used to look at going shopping at the mall or something like that and look askance at that because I thought, "Well, who would shop on the mall?

Don't they know they can save all that money and make it half price by shopping online or getting something at some specific store?" Well, now I go to the United States and if I didn't get something on Amazon, I just go to the mall and I feel like I'm getting a deal.

And so the number of resources the country has is amazing. Even if you're not buying new stuff, the secondhand markets in the United States, because of the huge population and the wealth of the population, the secondhand markets in the United States are incredible. Just simply the stuff that is thrown away in the dumpsters and on the side of the road is amazing.

Then you bring in the secondhand markets and cars and electronics and all the stuff that's available today for anybody who wants it on any secondhand basis is incredible. All of the built-in resources to the whole country are amazing. You have libraries that are stocked not only with all the books that you need and all the books that you want so that you don't have to buy all the stuff, but they're stocked with technology connections and computers for all and a podcast studio and a video studio, etc.

Not only the government stuff, but there's all kinds of libraries where you can go and, "I want to rent a camera. I want to rent a lens. I want to rent all this stuff." It's available. It's amazing. The technology, the access to technology in the United States is second to none.

It may not be on everything, but on the vast majority of things, the best new gear and the best new gadgets are released in the United States. All the best software is available in the United States. It's incredible. Even things like the banks in the United States, it's easy to go and get things done.

It's annoying. I get annoyed. You have to go and fill in all your personal information, but compared to the process I've been in some countries around the world, it's easy. Everything is cheap in banking services. It doesn't cost you a lot. You have great banks. You have more financial privacy than you have in many countries of the world.

It just works. Resources in terms of funding, you're trying to start a business and you need funding for it. It's like the money just falls out of the trees at you. You can go and borrow money in any number of ways. There's investors left, right, and center. Just the people that you know around you, you know millionaires everywhere who could if they wanted to invest in your business and invest $10,000 or $100,000 or a million dollars and get you going because there's just oodles of them.

They're everywhere. Those resources mean that in many cases, if you're going around the world and you are trying to start something or do something, the resources that are in the United States are abundant. When you need money or resources, it's there. When you need to get stuff, it's cheap and it's available.

It works so well. I think this is one of the reasons that perhaps Americans started to appreciate this with all the shortages that started to happen during COVID. We had shipping issues and all kinds of supply line issues and whatnot. It was one of those things where it was basically the first time that Americans had to face what so many people around the world live with every day.

Hopefully, you appreciate that. It's hard to appreciate it if you're accustomed to it. All you want to do is growl and moan and groan about inflation and prices these days and everything is so bad, etc. Travel a little bit and learn to appreciate it. I remember so distinctly. Let me come back and emphasize.

Friends, the ability to access work in the United States is so transformative. In 2012, I went to Haiti. I remember how much that experience changed my life because I was just surrounded by people who couldn't get a job because there were none. I went back to the United States and I just looked around and I just thought, "There's jobs everywhere.

It's amazing." Access to work is an enormous issue. Access to opportunity is an enormous issue. That's probably one of the biggest things that is likely to draw me back in the future. In the United States, the diversity of opportunity is enormous. It just feels like it's completely untapped. Every time you turn around, you've got someone new, some new story of somebody who has built a business and something you never thought of.

What happens is when you go looking for it, they're everywhere. You don't have to necessarily have an original idea. There's a guy that's pitching a franchise here. There's someone who says, "Why don't you open this store for me there?" You can become wealthy with all these things just through hard work and a few years of deep, deep effort.

You don't need amazing ideas. One of the biggest things that has affected me has been trying to figure out how to give opportunities to my children. As I stated in the episode where I talked about going abroad for opportunities, there are certain opportunities that I have been able to give to my children by going abroad.

But there are also many doors that have closed based upon going abroad. For example, I think that any parent of children in the United States can pretty easily help his children earn a few hundred dollars a week if they want to without that much difficulty. You can make a few hundred dollars a week just having your children bake bread and sell it at church on Sunday morning or put out a stand on the side of the road.

Lemonade stands don't work anymore, but selling fresh homemade bread to your neighbors does. All the stuff that is built into the US experience is still there. It's so easy to do if anybody wants to do it. But that's because there's plenty of money and there's plenty of support. The entrepreneurial spirit in the United States is something that extends down even to children.

We admire children who go and bake bread and sell it. We admire children who learn how to tie balloons and go and tie balloons at a local festival. We admire people who dedicate themselves to these things and do it. And so it's not that difficult for a 12-year-old to make two or three hundred dollars a week in, I don't know, 10 hours of work per week on a consistent ongoing basis.

That doesn't exist in many parts of the world for various reasons, but it doesn't exist in many parts of the world. And before you cry about "it used to be better" and they're going to call the health department, yeah, sure. But there's a culture in the United States of basically thumbing your nose at the health department.

And if the health department shuts down your baked bread that you trundle around the neighborhood and sell to all your neighbors once a week, and they actually shut that down, you'll have twice the number of customers next week when it gets printed up in the newspaper because everybody hates the health department, broadly speaking.

As Americans, we just despise government officials sticking their nose in where it doesn't belong. And so there'll be more support than ever. And when you look through the levels, the opportunities that are there in the United States are a big deal. Even simple things like right to work. The most discriminated against classes of people in the world today are the very young and the old and very old.

And they are the most discriminated against people, legally speaking. All of the laws around the world that were designed, in theory, to protect children from being exploited as workers have become an extreme weakness in helping children to develop their skills in the workplace. And so many places in the world, you can't get a job legally of any kind until you're 18 years old.

In the United States, most states, you can start working legally in various capacities, certainly by the time you're 15. In many places at 14 and at 13, and you can always work in some capacity in either a family-owned business or in your own business of some kind. And so even if you may not be able to go and get a job at 12, you can still work at 12.

And not only is it legal to do, but the culture supports it. And so there are lots of people who will hire a 12-year-old and pay cash and be happy to do that. There are lots of business people who will support a 12-year-old entrepreneur, etc. And so that level of opportunity is hard to match in many places of the world.

And because that opportunity is so broad, you don't need a lot of training. There's just businesses left, right, and center. Now, there's lots of opportunity in many places in the world for you to go and build yourself after professional formation. You can make piles of money living and working in Hong Kong.

You can make oodles of money living and working in Dubai, etc. After you've had training and formation and licensure, etc. But to make a ton of money as a 12-year-old in Hong Kong, that's really hard to do. And that's why their systems are so focused on academic proficiency and you just live, breathe, need school all the time.

Whereas in the United States, a 12-year-old, you want to start a business, again, a couple of hundred bucks of investment, boom, you're in business. And that's so pervasive across the culture and so widely accepted that it means huge opportunities for children. And I genuinely think this is one of the biggest advantages growing up in the United States, that the access to these things can help your average 18-year-old or your average 20-year-old to have such a deeper level of experience of working for others, of earning money, of having his own sense of freedom, that from a maturity perspective, it can put a child far ahead of many of his peers all around the world.

I'm not saying anything against academics, etc. Super important. But it's not that hard to put those two things together. I've known homeschool student story after homeschool student story after homeschool student story of teenagers who have, they do three to four hours of school in the morning. They get twice or three times the level of academic results that people get in the government schools just due to efficiency of time.

And they work three to four to five hours in the afternoon. And they make basically a man's wage, sometimes it's doing their own thing. Sometimes it's something as simple as doing bookkeeping or tech support or something like that. Again, you don't have to come up with some great new idea.

All you got to do is learn a skill and apply it. And you can just do it consistently. And so a teen in the United States can get above average academic results, can save 20, 30, $40,000 a year through part-time work, and still have plenty of time to hang out with his friends, to goof off, to work on personal hobbies, personal skill development, etc.

Whereas around the world, that's much, seems to me much harder to do. Not only do you face much more significant issues with homeschooling in many cases, more legal hoops to jump through, more worries about government agents sticking their nose into your business, but the culture doesn't have the same opportunities.

The jobs aren't as abundant, they're not as easy to get. And so there are standout exceptions. There are entrepreneurs who are above average ability who can put their free time and make it. You can make it in any country in the world. But the depth of being able to make in the United States is really unique.

So average people can make it big in the United States if they simply apply the right techniques consistently over time. And so I think that's a big deal. The USA has huge opportunity. The United States broadly has extreme stability. Now, I understand it may not feel that way. It has not felt like the country is particularly stable over the last decade or so, because we are in a time in which it's probably not stable.

But what's interesting about that is that the vast majority of people, if they turned off their access to social media, if they turned off their Apple News or Google News accounts and they stopped getting notifications on their phone, and they turned off their NPR and radio news and they turned off all the news, that stability isn't so visible on a daily basis.

I'm not denying that there's more instability than perhaps there has been at different times. But the perception of instability is something that we do to ourselves based upon what we consume. And perhaps as a political junkie, I'm very more sensitive to this than many people, but it doesn't have to be that way.

Broadly speaking, the United States is very, very stable. And what's interesting is that even though our current national politics have become very extreme, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, whoever comes next, and the back and forth, the actual system itself continues to work broadly pretty well. Politicians bark a lot, they say a lot, but they don't actually change much.

They don't legislate. Congress is not passing laws. Politicians are not actually changing much from a legislative perspective. You could see that as a positive thing or as a negative thing. I can make both arguments. But the system itself is designed to suppress extremism and to be very slow to change.

And that leads to an overall sense of stability in the country that doesn't exist in some other places. There are many other stable places. And I would say this is one of the least important place things. But it is still important to recognize that the USA broadly has stability.

The basic institutions across the land, the institutions of government, the institutions of our civic life, et cetera, while changing, right? Yes, we are bowling alone. Those changes are important. And in another context, we can look at those because they're important and we should deal with them. But they change very slowly.

And so there's broadly stability. And within that stability, there's enormous opportunity for individuals to be successful. I think the bones of the United States are really good, and they continue to be really good. I appreciate more than I ever did the basic strength of American geography, the basic physical wealth that the country has, and the basic protection that it has from outsiders, the basic wealth building features that the country has.

I think it's fantastic. I think the governmental system matters enormously. And while politics is often chaotic, and while there's many abuses that have happened and are happening by government, the basic protections for individuals in the United States continue to be some of the strongest in the world. The First Amendment, man, if you don't think the First Amendment matters, just go and hang out in England for a while.

It's crazy. You think, oh, well, we broadly have these same traditions. The United States was birthed out of the English tradition. The English-speaking peoples of the world come together. The First Amendment is a big, big deal. And the basic… And so you have two components of that. Number one, you have the law itself.

And number two, you have the broad civilizational support for the spirit of the law. And in order to have a functional society that operates according to its principles, you need both of those things. You need the law, but the actual application of the law doesn't happen all that much.

You need the culture to enforce the spirit of the law. And when the culture supports the spirit of the law, you have the true impact of the law. When laws are established, they are basically a virtue signaling device. They're trying to tell you what to do and what not to do.

And many people who break the law will never get caught or punished by the justice system. But the impact of the law will work broadly across a society. And so something like the First Amendment is enormously important. The Second Amendment, enormously important. It has been one of the biggest victories for those of us in the conservative sphere of politics over the last 30 or 40 years.

When I was younger, I was very worried about the right and the freedom to keep and bear arms. And I was very worried that things are difficult and whatever. This has been one of the biggest political successes that we've had that I can point to. And that revolution has been happening step by step over time.

It's been amazing. Once again, it's not just the law. The law itself has been strengthened. We've had just consistently fantastic court cases across all of the relevant issues related to the right to keep and bear arms. But it's more important, the actual practical outgoing of it. So not only is the law, does the law there, but there's a culture there.

And not only is there a culture of common gun ownership, but there's a culture of 3D printing, of having printing parties where you get your friends together and you either mill out your 80% lowers or whatever you're doing, or you build firearms. It's just the culture is there supporting it.

The culture of modification, et cetera, it's enormous. And so it's hugely impactful. And the Second Amendment has an enormous positive influence on suppressing all of the things that can't be suppressed by the First Amendment, by simply speech. And so having that as legally rock solid, as well as culturally rock solid in the United States, is an enormously positive thing.

Thankfully, it's mostly symbolic. I think that the best way to view the Second Amendment and the broad ownership of firearms is in a symbolic manner. One of the reasons I didn't talk about this, because I have a long list of minor reasons in my notes, but one of the reasons I left the United States was because I became convinced that I would never be involved in an armed revolution of any kind.

And one of the safety valves is that when people don't feel like they have another choice, then they often participate in some kind of armed revolution or insurrection or something like that, because they just don't feel like they have another choice. And I decided that I'm firmly opposed to revolution, especially armed revolution, because of the inability that anybody has to control the direction of that revolution.

And it often will result in something far worse than was behind. But I realized that it would be much safer if I had the release valve and I knew I never had to stay in a particular country. And so that was one of the reasons why I left. So, you know, right, people, broad scale firearms ownership is not a practical thing.

Nobody's going to pick up guns and go and, you know, storm City Hall and whatnot. But it's a very symbolic thing, because knowing that you could do something at any point in time, puts a little bit of spine, spine in your back, a little strength in your spine. And it has an effect across the society.

And it's enormously impactful. And if there ever were military invasion of some kind, or if there ever were military issues, it could go very badly. But I think more likely, it would be it basically doesn't exist. And you look at places around the world, you look at, I guess, the most recent kind of big name wars have been Israel and Ukraine.

And you look at how, I mean, Israel itself had all these just crazy gun control laws, when you've got enemies on your very border, and thousands, hundreds and hundreds of people are dead because of it. And so just knowing that that is, it's a very impactful issue. Third Amendment doesn't matter anymore.

It doesn't matter right now. US Army can't even recruit enough soldiers, let alone quarter them. But Fourth and Fifth Amendments, hugely impactful in terms of the basic bones of the country. And what's important is that while there have been abuses, the courts have consistently found that these laws are binding.

And what has happened is that there has become a culture of obeisance, of complying with those laws. So in American policing, etc., respect for the Fourth and Fifth Amendment privileges, it exists as a matter of culture. And that's an important thing. Incidentally, policing issues is one of the things that has made me just hang my head because try as I might, I cannot find a solution to the woes and the difficulties going on in policing issues.

But I'm grateful that there is a culture of respect for the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Sixth, Seventh, Eighth Amendments, all of the criminal justice stuff, this is, I think, a big weakness in the United States right now. But thankfully, it's one of those things where light has been shined and is being shined.

And that light, I think, has the opportunity to serve as a disinfectant. I'd love to see some big activism for some more activism. I think one of the great things, the development of YouTube law has been great. We've seen that in some high-profile cases over the last year or two, where the ability of people to get inside high-profile cases with the lawyer of their choice commenting on it has been fantastic.

I would love to see some kind of initiative where definitely I would love to see all federal courts televised. I don't see any good argument as to why all court trials should not be televised. And so I'd love to see some success of that. And maybe over the next 10 or 20 years, we'll do that.

We'll see that some of the justice projects and things that have come to help people advocate for people who have been unjustly imprisoned, etc., has been useful. And I think the ability of the average individual citizen to air facts of a case and have that go broadly has been a really good move.

And it's been really, really good. And so criminal justice systems are hard to get right, but I think there's progress in the right direction. So I'm optimistic. I'll stop. I'm not going to go all through all the amendments. 10th Amendment is a big deal, etc. But the point is that those legal bones of the country are pretty good.

And I think they matter. I think they matter and they impact things. More importantly, for me personally, is that the legal environment of the United States, for me to do things that are important to me is stronger than it is in many other places in the world. I remember this.

So where I've really noticed this big time is in 2021, I took my family to Costa Rica. And we were on a ferry to, I think it's at the, I can't remember what it's called, the peninsula that you go across from the, towards the beach. And we were on this ferry and I started talking to this German woman who was on the ferry that had a couple of children with her.

And I was, as parents do, you talk about children and whatnot, and she looked like we'd probably have something in common. So we just started talking. And her story was that she was a former school teacher, and she and her family had fled from Germany because they were concerned about, number one, she didn't have the right to homeschool her children.

And number two, they were concerned about their children being forcibly vaccinated, especially during the COVID pandemic, against their will. And so she and her children had fled from Germany to Costa Rica because they felt that even though they were tourists in Costa Rica, that at least they could homeschool their children, and at least they would be free of forced vaccination.

Her husband was still working at a company in Europe, and he was going back and forth as much as he could, but they had decided that they were going to try things in Costa Rica. As I was talking to her, it was interesting to me is, you know, it's like the best place in the world for you would be the United States, because freedom to make your own health decisions, and especially to keep needles out of your arms and out of your kids' arms, stronger in the United States than most places in the world, or at least anywhere that I know of, and freedom to educate your children is stronger in the United States than any place I know of.

And so it was one of those things where I realized, "Huh, if those certain things are important to you, the United States is fantastic." I was a little concerned in the beginning of the pandemic as far as what the United States would do, but ultimately it kind of pretty much did what I thought it would do, which could mean that it could be either uniquely bad or uniquely good, but it pretty much did what I thought it would do.

And so some of those things, your ability to raise your children the way you want to raise them, to live a life where you're left alone, to educate your children, I think that those are some things that are very important to me, and especially as my children get older and become adolescents, will be increasingly important to me.

And I also take an enormous amount of comfort from the fact that I believe that these are things that are strong and powerful. So for example, right now, I'm an enormous advocate of the homeschool movement. Basically, I try to be in the same way that C.S. Lewis was an advocate for mere Christianity without getting involved in the specifics of which particular variety of Christianity was superior to another one, at least in his popular comments.

In my popular comments, I've tried to focus on basically any thoughtful decision made by parents that doesn't involve plunking your kids in a government school without careful thought and consideration as to whether that industrial school system is correct for you. But right now, the homeschooling movement in the United States is enormous and growing enormously.

The classical school movement in the United States, enormous. Every classical school out there has waiting lists a mile long, and so that's going to bring an enormous amount of response from the market to increase supply. Montessori schools, basically every alternative form of education is thriving right now in the United States when compared against the government school system.

And if you believe, as I do, that the government school system is one of those root causes of a whole lot of issues in American society, a whole lot of stupidity in the population, then I consider this to be one of the most exciting things that can happen. And you just imagine where we've gone from a society where maybe some tens of thousands of children were homeschooled to now we've got hundreds of thousands per year graduating from homeschools with strong educations and clear, good, critical thinking skills and deeply informed perspectives and whatnot.

It's exciting. It's genuinely exciting. And when you recognize that these are young men and women who have been equipped with the skills of knowledge to teach themselves, these are young men and women who are accustomed to earning their way. They're living in a world where a young person of today is more empowered than ever he has been.

It's just incredibly exciting. And so I think some of these things are going to have a tremendously positive influence on American culture. And I think one of the things that has also happened for me uniquely is that I've gotten old enough to recognize that if something cannot continue, it will eventually stop.

That's something that I've newly grasped on an emotional level as I approach my fifth decade of life. As I start, I've seen now, I've lived enough to see so many movements that at one time seemed so powerful and so strong, and I've seen them collapse. And you go back in hindsight and you analyze those movements and you recognize that for an experienced observer, the ultimate collapse of that movement or the ultimate success of another movement was predictable.

It would be like the simple impact of character and virtue. If you are a grandfather and you see a young man or a young woman of character and of virtue, you know that in the fullness of time, those basic innate qualities that are being expressed in actual observable truth will eventually lead a young man or woman to a successful lifestyle in the fullness of time.

And so even if that young man or woman faces a setback of some kind, an injury, an unfortunate event, et cetera, you know that character and virtue in the fullness of time will take that young man or woman to success. On the other hand, you know if you see a young man or woman who does not have character or is not practicing virtue and developing virtue, but rather is showing the exact opposite, you know that in the fullness of time, that life will collapse and be destroyed.

You don't have to know specifically what it will be or what the specific cause will be. And you're not particularly worried just because you might see short-term results. Maybe the young man or young woman is very good-looking and so is the popular kid, and then the person of virtue is not good-looking.

Well, you know that high school is not life. And so eventually, these underlying characteristics of virtue and character will eventually lead to success or failure. And you don't have to predict what specific circumstances will be the proximate cause of success or failure. You just know that in the fullness of time, this is the way life goes.

That's not to deny that people can change. You, of course, would accept that people could change. But absent change, you know where things are going. And so I look at the world very much like this now, is that I've lived long enough to look at an institution. And if my analysis is correct, I know that this institution will either succeed or fail based upon the underlying characteristics.

I could be mistaken. We all have to question things. But in the institutions that I care about or the causes that I care about, I know fundamentally that in the fullness of time, this position or that position is going to succeed or is going to fail. Ten years ago, I did not have that confidence.

Even five years ago, I did not have that confidence. I was too consumed by the news of the day and the frustrations, et cetera. Today, I have that confidence. I've seen enough rise and enough fall for me to recognize that if something cannot go on, it will eventually stop.

And so that has filled me with a sense of optimism that I now look at some of the things that annoy me or that have annoyed some of my friends and things that people hate about the United States, and I look at it and I say, "This is going to stop.

One way or another, it will stop." And all I need to do is be faithful with the perceived solutions that I think are worth considering so that when that particular movement starts hemorrhaging disciples, that there's a superior option available for them, and they can latch onto that. And in today's world, social change can happen faster than ever before.

And that can be both dangerous, but it can be incredibly positive. And so when I think about the United States, I think about it as a country whose bones are really good and who is going through some enormous turmoil. I've also spent enough time spending time with geopolitics to recognize that where we are right now in the decade of 2020 is a unique decade.

And by the end of this decade, a lot of things will be different. There will be a changing of the guard, and there are several significant financial aspects, political aspects, demographic things that are changing. And so I think that there are reasons to believe that this decade in the United States is probably particularly dark.

And I think there are good reasons to believe that in the next decade in the United States, there will be enough changes and enough transformation on various levels of institutions and economies, et cetera, to think that it'll be a much different time, a much brighter time. And so I don't feel particularly bad about sitting out some or all of this decade abroad while raising young children, because virtually none of the issues that I've described affect my life with young children.

By being outside of the United States, I find enormous detachment from the culture, both for me and also for my family. So my children don't have to face the sordid daily kinds of things that many parents in the United States do have to face. And while there will be a time in which I will bring these things to confront them, and they will understand, being outside the United States has been a nice thing.

And it's been a nice thing for me to get all the other advantages that I've said in previous episodes. And then we'll see what things look like in the years to come. At its core, in the same way that I've said publicly, I think probably I have more of my people in the United States, broadly speaking, people who see the world something like I do than I do in probably any other country in the world.

There are other large countries, China, India, both have enormous populations. But what they don't have is the cultural heritage that I have. They don't have the way of seeing the world that binds me together with those who do. When you get outside the United States, you have smaller countries where there's much smaller populations of people who see the world as I do.

And so that, I believe, makes an enormous difference. And you should pay attention. Because if there are a large number of people who see the world like you do, and if you care about being a builder of society as I do, then you should pay attention to where you can go and where you can build with people who see things the way that you do.

There are big objections that people have to leaving your country and going abroad. And I think that some of them are valid. The two things, or I guess I would just say two things that I have thought a lot about over the years. I've thought a lot about the negative impact of being a wanderer, of being a nomad.

By nature, I've always been attracted to some sense of wandering or nomadism. But I've always been conscious of the fact that that's probably not the best thing for the long term. In the book of Genesis, when Cain kills Abel, God's punishment for Cain is to damn him to be a wanderer on the earth.

And I've always thought a lot about that. That here your punishment is that you have to be a wanderer on the earth. Now, wandering the earth was a much bigger deal for Cain than it is for me in terms of the connectivity in the world, the ancient world versus today.

But the point remains that God punished Cain for killing his brother by punishing him to be a wanderer. And over history, wanderers or nomads have not generally been broadly appreciated by other people. They're not usually lauded or praised for their lifestyle. The second aspect, though, of being a nomad is, is it possible to build as a nomad?

When I was younger, I would read these blogs of travelers who would move three months in this country, three months in that country. They only owned the things that they had in their backpack, et cetera. What's interesting to me is that over the years, as a lot of us have kind of tried this out, the basically universal consensus, whether you have children or don't have children, whether you're single, whether you're not, has been that a wandering lifestyle is probably not a productive lifestyle, that you need to have a base that you work from, or you need to have a couple of bases that you work from.

So you might have three bases, you might have two bases, you might have one base, but living in hotels and bouncing from Airbnb to another Airbnb does not build. And I had to go, and it's not a good thing to do when building. You don't build something that lasts and that impacts.

And I had to go and experience that for myself to be convinced of it. I am now convinced of it, that I like to travel, I like to move, I enjoy that, but it is not productive. It's especially not productive with children. It's just not productive. Having a base that you work from, or bases that you work from, is core and fundamental.

And again, that should be obvious. You're listening, you're saying, "Of course, Joshua, did you not know that?" Well, there's a difference between knowing something intellectually and knowing something by experience. One of the great problems of the English language is that we don't have multiple versions of the verb to know.

Many languages have multiple levels of the verb to know. In Spanish, it's the difference between conocer and saber. In French, it's the difference between connaître and savoir. In German, it's the difference between kennen and wissen. In Latin, it's the difference between nosco and skio. In Greek, it's gnosko versus aidenai.

And so, this is the distinction between knowing something with facts or information as compared to knowing something with experience, personal acquaintance, personal familiarity. And so, I knew that intellectually in times past. I now know it from experience. And that changes things. That level of knowledge is important. It's important.

By the way, I think this is something that makes it in the English-speaking world, because we don't have this texture in our language that we should have, it causes us to be a little bit blind to the differences that we should note about the need to go and experience something.

And so much of our education is just knowing something intellectually versus experiential. And in cultures where the language itself includes normal everyday distinctions among these kinds of knowledge, it makes a big, big difference. The second big objection to the idea of going abroad would involve something like, "Don't you have a duty or a responsibility of some kind to stay and fight?

Shouldn't you stay and fix things?" And this is one of those things that has always bothered me, because I believe there's an element of truth in it. In the Gospels, Jesus talked about the difference between a hireling as compared to the shepherd, the true shepherd. He talked about how the hireling or the hired man, when the sheep come, then – or sorry, when he's guarding the sheep and the wolf comes, then the hireling runs away, and the wolf comes and gets the sheep.

But the shepherd doesn't do that. The shepherd stands up and he protects the sheep. And I've thought a lot about that, because don't those of us who have a care and a love for other people have some measure of responsibility to care for those people? Or to put it differently, don't you have a responsibility to stay and fight?

Short answer is yes and no, in my opinion. No, meaning that it's a choice that you make. It's not something that someone can impose upon you. No, because I think if you're going to fight, you should believe that fighting has some chance of success, and you should have a plan to fight, a plan for success.

Otherwise, you just die a pointless and futile death. Remember here, of course, that while this could be taken in a physical sense, I'm speaking metaphorically. If you're going to stay and fight, quote unquote, you need to have a plan as to what you're doing and a reason to stay and fight, and a plan as to how you're going to have success.

And I think most people who say, "Well, you should stay and fight," don't have anything like that. They just don't have the guts to get up and leave, and they want to impose that same kind of thing on you. And so I believe that you're far better off if you have the option to leave and you choose not to leave than if you don't have the option to leave at all.

And so basically, in the world of internationalization, in my mind, it has come down largely to if you have the option to leave, then you can make an actual true decision about whether you should, quote unquote, stay and fight and improve things where you were from, or whether you're better off in another place.

And that's a personal decision that only you can answer. But I think all of us are better served by having the choice, because then we'll feel confident in our decision. The guy who winds up fighting in the army because he got drafted, because he couldn't leave, I don't think he makes as good of a soldier as the guy who could have left and said, "No, I believe in the cause, and I'm genuinely going to give myself for it." And so for me, it has seemed better for me to create the optionality of being able to leave and then go back if that's the right choice, rather than to just not create those options.

And I don't think this is something that anyone else can say to you. You may have a strong and clear conviction that I was put here, I was planted in this place by God himself, and live free or die doesn't matter. I'm going to stay here and I'm going to do my job and duty.

And if you have that, then there's no question, you're not questioning that. But someone else doesn't have that, and that person should also be free to make his own choice based upon his unique circumstances. That's the basic essence of liberty, is that you have the liberty, the freedom to make your own choice.

I've found a lot of mental freedom from the frustration that a lot of Americans experience simply by being abroad. And I think it has dramatically improved my own, I hate the term, mental health, but I don't know what else to say, my own psychology, my own way of thinking.

By being distant from it, I look at so many people that I have known, that I probably had a lot in common with five years ago, and by being distant from it, I'm not old and bitter. I didn't let the vinegar of my frustration express itself on my countenance.

And I've lived a happy and free life. I've lived honorably before men and before God, and I have, I'm raising my children and loving my neighbor and living a good life. I see nothing to be ashamed about in that. And this time abroad has been good for me. I've stated many times though, my appreciation of the United States has grown enormously.

And while I don't have any plan to move back today, I certainly don't mind visiting and getting benefits from the country. I keep my flags planted there. And I look at the country much differently than I once did. And I feel like if I went back, I would go back with a much better understanding and a much clearer appreciation of the good, while also a clearer knowledge of the things that I would like to change.

And I would feel much more willing and able to roll up my sleeves and work at those issues that I think I could affect than if I was doing it from a sense of desperation or something like that. I think in some cases, it may be how people feel after they divorce.

You see someone who's in the midst of, or just initiating divorce or in the midst of divorce, and often they're just filled with bitterness and it's all his fault. It's all her fault. And they can't see things clearly. They can't say anything good about the spouse that they're divorcing.

Let some time go by, five years, 10 years, they go through some experiences. And it seems to me that most of the time I talk to people who are 10 years out from a divorce, they have a much more balanced perspective. They can acknowledge the truth about their ex-spouse, and they can also acknowledge the truth about themselves, and they can acknowledge the good things about their ex, and they can acknowledge how, you know what, this could have gone different directions.

And so that's how I feel, is that I feel like I see more clearly the good things about the country of my birth. I appreciate many of those things. And I see how I could move back there and be perfectly content there for many good reasons. I also see that all good things are not confined to the borders of the United States, but in fact, they can be experienced in many other places.

And I can see how it's one of those things where this guy is probably better off abroad. This girl is probably better off in the United States. This guy is better off in the United States. This guy is better off abroad. This guy should go back and forth. This guy should renounce.

This guy should not renounce. Seems stupid for me to even say that out loud, because I'm just, I'm making one of those statements that's not much of a statement, but that's real life. It's one of those things where going through the exercise of building options for yourself and internationalization to some degree, solves some enormous problems.

And I think it's an enormous win if you move abroad and recognize that, you know what, it's much better for me outside of the United States. It's also an enormous win if you move abroad and recognize, you know what, actually, it was much better for me inside of the United States.

And is that not an expression of life? Life is, we go through experiences, we make the best decisions we have based upon the knowledge that we have, the information that we have at a certain time and the cold calculation. Then we go through the actual experiential knowledge process. And with that experiential knowledge process, our knowledge is more fully formed.

And we recognize that the experiences of our life influence what we actually do in the long run. Let me conclude with a story. I think this will be a funny one. I kind of buried it here at the back intentionally, but it'll clear up questions. I know that I'm fairly circumspect and it's a little weird where I don't say, well, I live here and let me tell you about this and whatnot.

I do that because I just want the protection for my family. When you spout off on the internet, like I do, there's a bunch of internet weirdos who can make your life nasty. And I just try to make it slightly difficult that if they want to make my life nasty, they have to work just a little bit harder to do it.

I don't expect that they couldn't find me, but I just don't want to give them an easy pickings. So forgive me, but for the love of my wife and the love of my children, that seems like the right decision for me to make at this point in time. But I'll tell a story from a few years ago.

And it's a story that brought confusion to a lot of people because like, what on earth? Where's Joshua? What's going on? So a few years ago, I had moved outside the United States, lived abroad for a few years. Then I decided we went traveling. And while we were traveling, everything collapsed.

We were in Europe at the time. We'd spent three months in Europe. And my plan was, as I said, spend six months in Europe, six months in Asia. And this was 2021. And I thought the world was done with COVID. That was why I went traveling. I discovered the world was not done with COVID.

And I was not having a good time. Nothing was working. We were in France. I spent a month in France with my family. And I thought, this is going to be great. We're going to have a great time. We rented a great house in the French countryside. It was going to be an amazing experience.

But France was still doing COVID. And I didn't have the barcode. And so we couldn't go out to eat. And so quite literally, the entire time we were in France, we were able to eat at one restaurant with my family where they didn't check for our passe sanitaire. And it just annoyed me.

We weren't having fun. So I was like, that's it. Let's go back to the United States. We've been gone for a while. So we decided to move back to the United States for various reasons. And I moved back to the United States. I rented a house. I signed a one-year lease.

And my plan was to live in the United States for a year and then kind of reassess and figure out because I hadn't been in the country much and been abroad. And I thought, OK, let's go back and check it out. So we moved back to the United States, rent a house, et cetera.

I'm fully in the mode of set up a household, set up everything. So I move into this house. One week later, I've gotten sick. And I find that the house is full of mold. So I immediately called the landlord, immediately start filing claims and whatnot, and decided that instead of trying to live there and deal with mold remediation and whatnot, that we would just move out and I'd find a different house.

So I moved in, signed a one-year lease. Months later, I moved out, took a couple of weeks to get rid of some stuff and figure that out. And I was planning to rent another place. But the rental market in Florida where I was was pretty crazy. And I was like, I really want this.

And so we decided to go travel for a while. So I loaded up my wife and children. And we started traveling around the United States. We traveled around the United States for about three months, living in Airbnbs, doing month-long rentals, and traveling and visiting family and whatnot. And while we're on the road, I realized, you know what, if we could find the right place, living abroad, there could be some benefits from it.

And long story short, we found a great house in another country and moved abroad again. And so that experience, I've never been a wishy-washy guy. I'm a guy who tries to move with purpose and clear goals and a clear plan, et cetera. But that experience once again showed me that these decisions, they're sometimes only big in your head.

And that for an outside observer or someone who has not been through what I've been through, those decisions can cause whiplash. It's like, well, you go here or there, et cetera. If you're just imagining loading up the moving truck and moving five times over, it just seems stupid and crazy.

But if you minimize your stuff and you have a little bit of experience moving here and going there and traveling here, et cetera, then it doesn't seem such a big deal. And while I don't recommend that lifestyle as a good long-term perspective, my family and I enjoyed it. We had a great time.

We were together all the time. I think my children have great emotional stability because we're always together. We have the same basic daily routine no matter where we happen to be in the world. And so here we are in multiple countries, left, right, and center, making multiple decisions. But it just shows me that a lot of these decisions you can change.

And what's interesting is that when I was younger, life didn't seem like that. It seemed like you made your choice and that was it. And what I've realized is that there are few decisions that are permanent. Your choice of career when you're young, it's not permanent. You can change.

You can change it every few years if you want to. You may be able to change. Some people can change it more frequently than that. Your job, you can change it. You can change it whenever you want. Change every year, change every few years, not a big deal. Your location, your living location, you can change it.

I don't think it's smart to change it very much, but you can change it. What country you live in, you can change it. You can change it every few years. You can change it every few months. There's no one to tell you you can't do it. There are some things I think you shouldn't change.

I don't think you should swap out your wife. I don't think you should swap out your children. Some people disagree with me and they swap out their wives and they got a few families and children here and there and I don't talk to them and whatnot. I don't think that's smart.

But other than your wife and your children, pretty much everything else in your life, you can swap in and out whenever you want to. And there's an element of inconstancy to that, but there's also an element of freedom to that. And I would encourage you, if you feel like you're stuck where you are, just take a little bit of a change, do something different than you're accustomed to, and build those muscles that would help you to change frequently because it makes you a stronger person.

Then you'll appreciate also the many benefits of consistency, the many benefits of living in one place for a long period of time, working in one job, having one career for a long time. Don't take those changes lightly. They are important and they should be considered. But if you're the kind of person who, personality-wise, is attracted to that, check it out for yourself.

Try it out. Try it out a couple weeks, a couple months, a couple years, couple decades, and you can consider and you can always change. Plane tickets are crazy cheap these days. All you got to do, hop on an airplane, sell your stuff in one country, buy it in another, and you can set things up.

Legally speaking, you do sometimes need to set up some legal stuff. And that's where the internationalization stuff comes in. And so I would commend to you, set up the legal stuff, but all the rest of it can be done. If you have a country that you hold a passport in, then you're golden.

You might want to just keep a driver's license for a local place. You might want to keep a local phone number. You might want to have a mail drop of some kind. Set that up. You can move in and out at will. And that's one of the great things about the world that we live in.

Whereas we're not living in 1900, where moving from one country to another meant you're never coming back and you're never going to see your parents again. I respect those people like crazy. We don't live in that world anymore. You can go back whenever you want. You're an airplane flight away.

You can change. And so take advantage of it if it's something that is appealing to you. In closing, if you want more on this, remember I do have a course, a huge Black Friday sale, internationalskateplan.com. Also, I'm hosting an event in Panama in January. Go to expatmoney.com/radical, expatmoney.com/radical for all the details.

I would really love for you to come and spend a week hanging out with me in Panama. We'll talk about every country in the world. I'll probably tell you where I live. I'll probably tell you the good and the bad about it. I'll probably go deeper with some of the stuff that I haven't talked about here publicly.

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