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My name is Joshua. Today we're going to talk about freedom from government control, freedom from state control. This is part of our 7 Rings of Freedom series. This is ring number 6, wherein we talk about state liberty. I'm going to share with you some ideas about how you can live freely in an unfree world.

Now, I put this show as point number 6 on purpose, because I believe that this is the order that you should think about these things in. As much as many people like to talk and worry about politics, and I'm one of them, as much as most of us like to moan and gripe and complain, blah, blah, blah.

Reality is politics doesn't matter nearly as much to your life as all the things that I have talked about previously. As much as we complain and gripe and complain, complain, did I say complain? As much as we moan about this new law and that new law, the reality is most of the time laws don't affect us all that much.

And most of the time you can pretty much ignore the laws and get away with it, if you have some of those other things in place. And so everything I've talked about heretofore is going to be, as I see it, a foundation for the ideas discussed in today's show.

If you have everything I've talked about previously, then the context of government control is probably one of the least of your worries. And moreover, you will probably need some or all of the things I've previously talked about in order to be effective here in this show, or in these areas.

Because, just an example, I'm going to talk about changing your jurisdiction in today's show. Moving yourself from a jurisdiction of more government control and less freedom to a government to a jurisdiction of less government control and more freedom. Well, in order to do that, you're going to need some of those previous things I've talked about.

It's hard to move if you don't have any money. If you're deeply in debt and you don't have any money, you can't move. It's hard to move if you've got a job and you've got to figure out how to get a new job. It's possible, but it's hard compared to having a business that you can just move with you.

It's hard to move if your wife has a job too, that you've got to figure out how do we replace her job. And it's hard to move if your children are in local schools. It's a lot easier if your wife doesn't have a job outside the house, if your children are homeschooled, if you're out of debt, if you have money saved.

And if you have your own business, now you can just simply move pretty easily. It's not that difficult to move from one state to another state, from one country to another country. It's not even that difficult to be a perpetual nomad, traveling all around the world and getting the benefits of nomadry.

So, everything is preparation for this. And I think that if people spent the time that they spend griping about politics and invest that into gaining freedom in their personal life, the politics matter less and less. They really do. And unfortunately, I think that thinking about politics is for many people really destructive.

It's been destructive to me. And I'm talking from personal experience. Whenever I get interested in politics and I get sucked into something, it destroys my personal freedom. The last time I got sucked into politics, I remember I was in Idaho. And I was in Northern Idaho and I was hunkered down at a campground trying to write a course.

I was trying to write my credit card course that I started selling last year. And that was when all of the Senate hearings for the Supreme Court Justice in the United States, Brett Kavanaugh, were on. And I got interested in the topic. And I lost days of my life just sitting there staring at that YouTube, watching this thing, this debacle, and getting nothing done.

And that was so expensive. It was such an expensive thing for me to lose three days of my life to this thing over which I had no control, that if it ever affected me whatsoever, it was only tangentially and only had the ability to get me mad. And when I could have spent that three days and invested it into my own personal freedom and gotten my course done sooner and taken that three days and written a whole other course.

And so that's the last time I got involved in politics. And I just say I've seen it again and again. As a political junkie, I've just seen it again and again. Anytime I get involved in politics, it harms me in one of these other areas. And so I'm going to give you some practical things that you can do, not getting involved in politics, but I just want to point out to you that politics really doesn't influence your life nearly as much as everything else does.

If you have all the rest of these things in place, then it doesn't really matter who's president. It doesn't really matter who's in Congress. The things that it's actually going to impact your life on are just a handful and peripheral versus all the rest of this. And the older I get, the more I'm convinced of that, that my life only has marginal changes depending on who's president.

And most of those marginal changes are not even visible from the outside. Now, I do care. I don't want to be too dismissive. I do care, and I've done things in my life based upon preparing for who becomes president in the next election. I mean, I left the United States for a reason, for many reasons.

And part of those were, "Who's going to get elected next president?" I'll share with you some of the strategies that I put into place and some of the strategies that work. But at the end of the day, if you've got everything else, chances are the government control doesn't affect you all that much.

So I'm going to go through a number of different things. But what can you do if you are living in an area where your freedom is eroding and there's more and more control over your person, over your business, and over your life? What can you do? Well, let's get some of the low-hanging fruit out of the way with first.

You might be able to vote. Voting sometimes matters. I have a conflicted relationship with the concept of voting. I'm okay if you do, okay if you don't. Voting sometimes matters. I can't deny that elections do have consequences and there are things that happen based upon the results of elections.

And so voting is something that you can do. But voting doesn't need to control your life. It's basically you need a little bit of research, you need to understand why you would vote for somebody versus not vote for somebody, and then you go and perform the act of voting.

And that's pretty much it. So voting is fairly low-hanging fruit. In addition to voting, you could get involved in political activism, organization and activism in some way. Now if you're going to do that, I would beg of you, do that on the local area, as local as you possibly can.

I've had the problem and the disease in the past of getting involved in national politics and there is no more unwieldy game that you're guaranteed to lose than getting involved in national politics. But there are ways that you can make a difference at the edge, on the periphery, especially at local politics.

And so I think there are a lot of interesting models where in your local community you can get involved on an issue, you can organize other people to get involved on an issue, and you can make some change in the local community. And so that can lead to freedom, increasing levels of freedom.

You see that happening on many issues all around the United States and around the world, that local activism, there is still a place at which that works. And if I were going to talk about getting involved in politics, I would go over some of the interesting models of getting involved in your local community and talk about some ways that that could actually make a difference.

Probably more important than activism is just simply being a part of a local community and changing the culture of that local community. But again, that's a little bit beyond where I want to go today. So you can do those things. You can vote, you can organize for change, and you can make an impact on a periphery of an issue at the local level.

That is possible, and I don't think that's a fool's errand if that's something that you're interested in. However, that's probably only marginally going to affect your personal freedom. I believe those things are worth doing if you're interested, especially for the coming generations, but it's only going to make a small difference in your life.

If you're looking for the path of least resistance, the easiest thing that you can do to increase your freedom, it's going to be for you to simply move. Move from a place of less freedom to a place of more freedom. A geographic change is one of the most powerful things that you can do to increase freedom in your life.

And the easy way to do this is to change counties, change states, and then we'll talk in a little bit about changing countries. But if you'll change counties and change states, you'll accomplish a few things. See, governments are always going to be bound. Governments are generally going to be bound by some kind of geography.

It's an unusual government organization that can extend beyond the bounds of geography. And so the only person that most governments listen to is another government. Most governments don't listen to citizens. They don't pay much attention to what an individual wants. They do pay attention to voter bases and et cetera, but they don't pay attention to individuals.

About the only authority that a government respects is another government. And so if you're having problems with your local government, about the best thing that you can do is move yourself under the authority of another government. This strategy also has the benefit of being a peaceful strategy, nonviolent, where you're not trying to coerce somebody else to do what you want.

You're not taking up arms against the government. You're just simply removing yourself from one government to another. Now, chances are no one's going to pay attention to what you've done. But you can dramatically improve your life by moving from a place of less freedom to more freedom. If more people do what you're doing, in time a government will wake up and pay attention.

And the reason is the authority that a government gets comes from its citizens. It comes from the number of citizens that it controls. And the money that funds a government comes from its citizens based upon how much tax revenue the government is able to extract from its citizens. Well, when people start moving from one place to another place, then that government loses authority, it loses clout, and they lose money.

And they pay attention to losing money. And in the United States, you can see this happening all over the country. You can see the flows of people from one place in the country to another place in the country. Now, there are a number of trends. I'm not saying that there's a broad, massive trend from people moving from less freedom to more freedom.

Although I think there is that trend, but time will tell. People move for all kinds of different reasons. But they move, and when they move, it changes the makeup of government. You see cities becoming more and more powerful as the culture becomes more urbanized and more and more people want to move to big cities.

And that makes the country areas, the rural areas, less powerful because they represent fewer people. That's changing the economics of cities versus rural areas. You see this affecting states as states impose higher and higher taxes, and they lose taxpayers. And although I'm not sure that it's making a big impact, I notice it is making some impact.

You see states in the high tax, low freedom Northeast corridor paying attention to how many people they're losing to lower tax jurisdictions in the United States. And people do pay attention. Now, those flows aren't perfect. I'm not trying to say that it's all in the favor of what I would like.

Just simply that they do exist and that governments do pay attention to that. And if you simply pick up and move from one place that is controlling you and removing your freedoms and reducing your freedoms, and you move to another place that is not controlling you, that's giving you more freedoms, you will substantially improve your life.

You have the benefit of doing this in a way that really fits you. And let me give you a couple of examples. These will be a little bit of political hot button issues, but let me give you a couple of examples. Let's pretend that you smoke marijuana. And this is part of your life and your lifestyle.

You're a regular marijuana smoker. You enjoy smoking marijuana. And this is just something that you do. If you live in a state where smoking marijuana is illegal, you face tremendous personal risk, tremendous legal risk by living in that state. When you smoke marijuana, the only safe place to smoke marijuana is in your house.

And the only safe way for you to get marijuana is to grow it yourself. That's it. If you smoke marijuana and you're doing anything except growing it yourself and smoking it in your own house, you're taking a huge, huge legal risk. And I can't understand how it would possibly be worth it for you to do that.

But what you can do is you can move from your state to a state where smoking marijuana is entirely legal. And then you can smoke with relative ease. You can purchase your marijuana at a store. You don't have to grow it yourself. You don't have to engage in some back alley transaction that comes with significant personal risk and significant legal risk.

You can grow it yourself, probably legally. And you can just simply smoke it wherever you want, whenever you want, within the laws of that state. And that is a good example of just simply choosing to go somewhere where you have more personal freedom and making a simple choice. And I've got to imagine that if I smoked marijuana, that I would want to live in a place where it were legal.

It's just not worth the major legal risk to you and to your life. If you wind up with a felony to your name, your life will be destroyed. If you wind up even getting arrested, your life will be destroyed. Go back and listen to episode 456 of Radical Personal Finance called "Protect Your Money by Arrestproofing Yourself and Your Children." And I'll demonstrate to you in that show how big of a deal it is simply to be arrested for the possession of marijuana, for the transportation of marijuana, for the traffic of marijuana.

It's a huge deal to your life and to your lifestyle. And it's a risk that is foolish to take when you could eliminate that risk either by not smoking marijuana, or if it's important, you just move to a state where smoking marijuana is legal, or move to a country.

More on countries in a moment. So that's an example of something that is a major... You can improve your life and your legal situation significantly by moving. Another example would be something like firearms laws. The laws in some states over firearms are so nuts where they try to restrict the number of cartridges your magazines can hold.

And they say that a standard capacity magazine can't be more than... Because your gun comes with a standard 17-round magazine, that that's illegal in your state. And the punishment for that is so huge that it's just not worth living in those places. So either you say, "Well, it's not a big deal.

I'm going to suck it up and I'm going to follow the law." Or you make a change and talk all you want about, "We're going to stand up and do it." Talk all you want. I don't buy it. But hey, you can solve that by simply moving. Move from a state that dumps on you to a move to a state that supports your freedoms.

Similar things with taxes. You can gripe and complain all you want about taxes, but at the end of the day, you've got to pay your taxes. The legal risks are so significant to you if you don't pay taxes as owed. It's just simply not worth it. I can't see how any...

I shouldn't say I can't see. It's hard for me to see how any honest analysis of the subject would lead to any outcome other than simply saying, "They've got the guns. They'll throw me in prison. If I don't pay my taxes as agreed, I'm going to pay my taxes as agreed." But you can just simply move from a state that imposes heavy taxes to a state that doesn't.

And depending on your particular unique collection of issues that are important to you, you can make major changes. Something like homeschooling. I'll talk in a moment about the international perspective of homeschooling, but you can move from a state that makes things very difficult for you, and very expensive, and very invasive, to a state that doesn't.

And you'll experience a major improvement in your lifestyle if you do that. So you can just simply move to a state or to a place that has more freedom. And I think it's one of your most powerful, least difficult decisions that you can make. Now, I'm not minimizing that it can be difficult.

Obviously, you'll have family, friends, etc. But if you care about freedom, reward the states that are recognizing and supporting your personal freedoms. And penalize the states that are not, by simply withdrawing your consent and moving. It's one of the most important things, although I'm an anti-federalist, it's one of the most important things about federalism.

The idea that states will compete with one another for your business. They compete with one another for your residency and for your business. And so you should pay attention to what different states have to offer, and you should choose a state that provides for you the best combination of laws, of culture, of opportunity, etc.

based upon your personal convictions. The next thing that you can do is you can change your activities to move from an area where you're experiencing less freedom to an area where you're experiencing more freedom. So a good example here would be to move from a regulated industry to a less regulated industry.

This is something that I have done. Back when I was a professional financial advisor, I was in one of the most heavily regulated industries that I know of, where basically every word you say is on the record. Everything you say can and will be held against you. Everything you do is subject to myriad laws.

I was an unpaid spy for the US government. I have to analyze every transaction for money laundering and for anti-money laundering. I guess money laundering was a big thing. Oh, and I had to do cash reporting requirements. And if you receive cash, you have to report it in this way.

So you've got the laws of the national government. Then you've got the laws of each state. You're registered with every state. And if I move, I have to report my home address within, what was it, 30 days of moving. So the government has to know where I live at all times because I have a life insurance license.

And it just goes on and on and on. Every email has to be saved. Every text message has to be scraped and held so that any communication with a person has to be able to be produced in court. And so my firm would, again, hold every email, every text message, every one of my social media posts is archived and put into a system.

So if I ever say give bad investment advice to somebody on Facebook, then that's got to be listed there. I have to have notes on every conversation that I have with a client and contain these detailed client files so that I can defend myself in a court of law and everything.

And if you do all that stuff, I'm not saying you can't run a business in the middle of it. Obviously, you can. And most of that stuff is not bad. You probably should have some client notes and things like that to protect yourself. But it's just incredibly regulated and incredibly constraining.

And then when it comes to investments, one of the reasons why you always get the same, no matter what investment firm you go to, you get the same advice because everyone is run by the same system. And you don't get any creative ideas. You don't get any creative investments.

You have the same thing that everyone gets. So as the general economy goes and falls, you go and fall with it. And as the industry goes and falls, you go and fall with it. And everybody in the industry is engaged in covering your rear end operations to make sure that, well, if I did bad, at least if I don't do worse than everybody else, then I'm defensible.

It's a crazy industry. And there are so many industries like that where you're just subjected to these never-ending, onerous regulations and rules. Well, what can you do? About the best thing you can do is to leave that kind of industry and go to an industry where there are fewer rules and fewer regulations.

That's what I did when I got rid of all my licenses, walked away from all of that. I don't sell anything. They have no control over me. Now I'm just an independent media producer. That's it. And since there's theoretically some ability for me to speak freely, I can speak freely and my ideas can have their impact without being filtered by anybody.

I don't have to archive every--here's how it was. If you're ever going to do--for financial advisors to do a podcast, what you do is you have to create a script. Then you have to run that script by a team of lawyers before you record the script. If you're going to go on a TV presentation, let's say that you're watching your local news and the financial advisor from the local financial advice firm comes on the news.

The way that works is you create the idea of what you're going to talk about, you run your script by the attorneys, the attorneys read your script, make sure that everything is good, take out any juicy, sexy, tantalizing thing that you might have said and dumb it down to be the stupid pablum that everyone else says.

And then you go and you do the show, you do the spot, you do the interview, and then they take the tape and they archive it and transcribe it and put it in your permanent file so they can defend themselves in a lawsuit. It's crazy. It's a crazy system.

But that's how it is. And if I were running a firm, I would have to do it exactly the same way because there's no way to fight it. The only way to do it is to go and do something else, which is why the only place where you can come across interesting ideas in finance is from an independent newsletter publisher.

So somebody who publishes a newsletter with investment ideas, et cetera, because they are operating there under their ability to speak freely. And as long as they don't get involved in the regulated side, they can actually present interesting ideas and talk about sexy, tantalizing topics, like hopefully I do, like I'm doing here in this show.

And so you may have an opportunity like that too, to move from a regulated industry to a less regulated industry. Now, it's not always possible, but you will experience a massive increase in your freedom if you do so. And what's more important is you'll often experience a massive increase in your profits even.

One of the things that I've studied that I find so fascinating is how if you go from an industry that is heavily regulated and heavily subsidized and heavily insured to one that's less subsidized and less insured, you can make potentially far more profit. So like if I were a doctor, I wouldn't want to be a general practitioner who had to take insurance for everything.

I'd want to be a plastic surgeon, something like that, where you're in these interesting areas that are kind of on the fringe where they're not so regulated as everything else and insurance doesn't pay for it, but you have a broader idea to innovate. It's one of the reasons why it's such an exciting time to be involved in the IT space and in the online world and programming and coding, etc., and why you've had so much innovation, because the laws are all way, way behind the industry and nobody can figure out how to regulate it, so people just keep innovating and adapting and innovating and adapting.

It's an exciting place to work where you don't have to worry so much about all of the regulations. So arrange your affairs in such a way that you move to a place of less government control. That's another thing that you can do. Now, moving on, I'm going to pivot here at this point in the show and I'm going to talk about some ideas that are very uncommon but are also extremely effective, and largely these will come under the label of basically being a nomad, being a tourist, so that very few governments even touch you.

And the idea here, this is built upon a theory that was developed back in the 1970s or 80s and it has been built on over the last several decades by largely libertarians and libertarian thinkers and practitioners. But the original theory is called the PT theory, or flag theory is often what it's known as, but I see applications of it on a domestic basis as well as on an international basis.

So before I go to domestic, let me go ahead and just introduce the subject by talking to you about what flag theory is on an international basis. Then we'll talk about how you can apply this domestically and then go back to international options. If you were to go back to, again, to I think it was the 1980s, there was a financial advisor named Harry Schultz.

And Harry Schultz was working on these problems and he was trying to figure out, "How do I become, how do I live freely in an unfree world?" There was a club of people, Harry Brown was in that club, Harry Schultz was an investment advisor, and he was thinking about this problem.

And what he came up with was what he called flag theory, or the original three-flag theory. And his idea on an international basis was to establish three things. Number one, to be a resident of a country that does not tax foreign source income. So flag number one, to be a resident of a country that does not tax foreign source income.

That was the first thing. So you could do that by living in a country that doesn't impose any kind of income taxation. You could do it by living in a country that has territorial tax. But you want to make sure that you have a residency in one of those places, so that they don't tax foreign source income.

The second flag that he recommended was to have your business in a stable tax haven. So you would set up your business in a place that was either a low tax or a zero tax country, and make sure that all of the business was run through that place. And then number three is that you actually live as a tourist in another country or in a handful of countries for more freedom and for reduced taxes.

I was reading my notes, talking about flag theory. Reduced taxes. And so those were his original three flags. Now, these have been changed and expanded over the years. So there was an author back in the '90s, I think it was the '90s, named W.G. Hill, who wrote a book, great book, on perpetual called-- well, he wrote a couple of books, but he wrote a book called "The Perpetual Traveler," or PT.

But his book was called PT. And he expanded his three flags to five flags. And so he changed the five flags. Flag number one is you have citizenship in a country that doesn't tax non-resident income or control your actions. And you have a passport for that country. And so the idea is that you want to be a citizen of a country that's not going to tax you and is going to give you freedom.

The freedom thing is a bigger thing than it once was. It used to be the country would leave you alone if you weren't outside their borders. But, for example, for Americans, Americans have all these onerous laws that govern them all around the world, even if it's not just taxation.

Of course, taxation follows them all around the world as well. And so you have your passport or citizenship in a country that does not tax your non-resident income or control your actions. The second flag is that you have a legal residence in a tax haven. So you have a legal place that you live that's in a tax haven.

Then you make sure that you have your business or you earn money in a tax haven, a different place. Make sure that--flag number four is you establish your banking and your asset management in a different country that has stable banking and investment laws. And then number five is that you have the places where you spend most of your time.

You know, you could call them your playgrounds where you spend your money. And hopefully those are places that don't have a lot of other high taxes like sales taxes or VAT taxes, etc. And so there have been other things that have been added over time, other flags such as a flag for your digital assets.

And you can go and expand the list as much as you want. Everything from where do you register your vehicles to where do you register your boats, your airplanes, where do you--you know, you pick and choose. And the basic idea is that on an international basis, you can choose which country offers you the best of each world.

And there are tremendous ways to do it. I love this idea. I've done this. And this has become, for me, obsession is too strong but an area of significant interest over the last few years. And if I were going to--if I were wiped out today and I had to start all over again, I would--one of the things I would do is I would establish a boutique consulting firm as an international consultant on some of these issues.

It's just so fascinating. And the reason I love it is because you have your maximum levels of personal freedom and your least cost and you follow all the laws, which satisfies my moral problem of following the laws. I don't want to break the laws. I want to do everything legally.

And this allows you to do everything legally and yet to get world-class results by integrating flag theory. I'll come back to the international aspect in a moment and talk about it, some of its--how you do it and some of its benefits and some of its shortcomings. But before I do that, I want to talk about it on a domestic basis because the percentage of my audience that is actually going to leave their country, go and get a second passport, live in another place, set up their business all around the world is very, very low, extremely low.

But you can do this domestically to some degree if you will pay attention to what you're doing. And that's what's important. So on a domestic basis, let's say that you're in the United States of America and you're thinking, "How do I do this?" Well, you can change from one state to another and establish your residence in different states depending--move from a low-freedom state to a high-freedom state.

And one of the great things about this is that there's huge freedom of movement within these 50 United States. So you can actually very easily leave California and move to Texas or leave California and move to Nevada. And you need to follow a whole bunch of laws. You need to set everything up properly where you're actually going to leave the state and move to another state.

But once you do that, it's not like you can never go into California again. You can go back to California. You can visit California. You can spend time in California. You can't do business in California. You got to make sure you stay away from, for example, the things that would trigger taxation in California.

But for the vast majority of businesses, it's relatively easy to move your business legitimately to a place that treats you well. And so there are huge options for this inside the United States to move from one state to another state. And because of the ease at which you can cross state lines, you don't have to completely sever all of your ties with another state.

So you should consider what's important to you and then consider moving your residence. Now, just because you move your residence from one state to another doesn't mean you can't spend time in another state. So, for example, let's say that you wanted to live in a state that doesn't impose state income taxes, that has a high level of personal freedom.

For example, things like-- I'm just talking about things that are important to me-- homeschooling laws, gun laws, business laws, etc. But you also wanted to smoke marijuana. So there are all kinds of different places you could do this. You look first at the states where marijuana is legal. But I would look at a state--just an easy one that comes to mind-- it would be Wyoming and Colorado.

Possibly you could do Nevada and Colorado as well, but Wyoming and Colorado. So maybe you set up your residence in Wyoming where you could live just north of Denver. You live in Cheyenne, Wyoming. And you buy a house in Cheyenne, Wyoming. You live in Cheyenne, Wyoming. You run your business out of Cheyenne, Wyoming.

And that allows you to have tremendous levels of personal freedom. That allows you to have low taxes, no state income taxes, low property taxes, etc., a very affordable lifestyle and living. But then when you want to go skiing on the weekends, you just simply drive down to the Western Range, west of Denver.

And if you want to go and smoke marijuana, you go and smoke marijuana in Colorado. It's relatively simple to do. And so something like that is just an example of how you use the laws of each place and you position yourself so that you take advantage of the laws in both places.

And the opportunities here are endless depending on the specific things that you're concerned about. You can apply this at almost every level of your life. I've talked a lot about Florida as being a place of tremendous benefits from an asset protection standpoint. So you have the ability to move to Florida.

Well, you move to Florida and you set up all of your residence in Florida. But one of your frustrations is that you don't like the weather in Florida during the summertime. Well, welcome to the club. Lots of people don't like the weather in Florida in the summertime. You can set up your weather in Florida and still have a second house in another place, or set up your residence in Florida, get all the benefits of the Florida asset protection laws that I've discussed in detail on this show, but still have a summer house.

And your summer house is simply in the Hamptons or out in the Rockies or wherever you want to be for--or in Italy, wherever you want to be for the summer, you just simply set up your summer house. And there's a lot of planning involved, which is why I'm being a little bit slow on details because I don't want to get anything wrong.

You need to read the laws of every place that you're considering going. In some places, you would rent a place. Some places, you'd buy a house. A second house is no big deal. Some places, you'd have an RV. But you can set your life up, and there's no requirement that you be in Florida 365 days per year in order for you to be a resident of the state of Florida.

And so the opportunities all around the United States abound for this kind of planning. There's no reason why you should-- if you live in New York City, there's no reason why you should also bank in New York City necessarily. Yes, you might bank with a national firm, but you might go ahead and bank with a little small-town bank in the middle of Oklahoma if you believe that that gives you some benefit.

Now, you don't get many benefits in things that are federalized and things that are affected by federal law, such as banking. You used to get a lot more banking privacy when you banked with a little bank. These days, with all of the elimination of banking privacy, it's not nearly as compelling as it once was.

Now, using this thinking, you have a lot of opportunities. You can register your vehicles in Montana. There's a reason why you'll always see a lot of supercars and big, expensive RVs registered in Montana. And so you can just simply register your vehicles in Montana, even whether you are or are not a resident of Montana yourself.

You can have your vehicle reside there. You can look at almost every level of your life, and you can choose the jurisdiction that is best for you. And you can do it following every single law and experience major levels, major increases in personal freedom. So consider the specific issues that are important to you, the specific legal issues, the specific financial issues, and then do some research to see if there's a state that would serve you best in terms of providing freedom for you on the issues that matter most to you.

You're not going to find perfection. Some people will have issues that are important enough to them where they need to move to a state where those issues are protected, even if it comes with a higher cost. And that's perfectly reasonable. We all prioritize the specific things that are most important to us.

But pick and choose among the states, and pick and choose what offers you the best solution. And a lot of times you can align the financial issues in a way that really serves you. There's no reason at all--let's say that you're a resident of the state of Illinois. Oh, come on.

And you have a lot of money. Illinois has a state-level estate tax. Why should you sit in the state of Illinois with a state-level estate tax when you can leave the state of Illinois and move your residency to another state and then just come back and visit Illinois on occasion?

It's a big, big deal. So when you move, one of the things that is important is you need to make sure that you follow all the laws. And you need to think very carefully about the legal case that you would have to make if you were ever hauled in front of a judge or a jury to defend your actions.

This is especially important if you're moving for financial reasons, moving for tax reasons. I'll give you an example. The states of California--and because of this freedom that people have, people know that--the states know that people can come and go from their state very significantly. And if you're a big target, you will be targeted by some of the states that are incredibly aggressive.

Right now the states of California and New York are incredibly aggressive about pursuing people who have, in theory, ended their domicile in their state and moved to another state. But in reality, that state is not quite so sure. And so, especially if you're moving from California or New York, you need to make sure that you follow all of the rules and that you establish a very, very strong case because every single fact counts.

So let me give you just a couple minutes of advice. If you're pursuing this, especially from a financial perspective, let's assume that you want to do something like move from California to Nevada or to Texas, or you want to move from New York to Florida or to Tennessee or to, I don't know, New Hampshire, something like that.

You need to think carefully about the fact pattern and make sure that the fact pattern is bulletproof so that all of you moves out of your state. The first thing you want to do is you want to research the laws in your state to understand what that state considers to be a sign of your domicile in that state.

So all little things matter usually, like in California, whether you own or rent a home. And then the size of each home is going to determine whether you have a domicile, whether it's a residential address or an office address. You can--it is possible for you to own a home in California and not be considered to be domiciled in California.

But if you own a home in California, it would be a really good idea if you have a house outside of California that's at least of equivalent size and nature and use or that is a lot bigger. The price isn't going to be the big thing, but it's important that it be a lot bigger.

So let's say you're going to have a house in Las Vegas. You should have a nice house in Las Vegas and then maintain a smaller house in California, even if the California house is worth more. Then the California house would just be considered your vacation home. So you got to think carefully about all those little decisions.

You want to be careful about serving as an officer or an employee of a business. You want to think about where your children go to school. You want to count the number of days that you're in a certain state. So the domicile is one of the most compelling factors, the number of days that you're actually in California compared to the number of days that you're in other places.

In theory, you could arrange so that you could spend all your time in California and not be domiciled there, but that would be really dangerous. So you want to stay far away from that. Then one of the other things that you want to consider is even just things like tracking those kinds of things.

There'd be a big difference if you have a long history of electronic transactions, credit card purchases, et cetera, that show you being in California every single day versus no financial transactions showing you in California but numerous financial transactions showing you in another place. Things like driving records can be a big deal versus flying.

All of those kinds of things can be put into a court of law. So if you're trying to escape a place, you need to think carefully about all of the evidence and arrange your activities in such a way that you follow the law and are ending all of your connections and then move and make sure that all of the facts meet that as well.

So if you're going to move from California to end your California residency, you need to really move to another place. That's going to involve changing your driver's license, changing your voter registration, changing your vehicle registration, changing the billing addresses on all of your accounts. If you have any California-specific banks, you close your California banks and you move those to a Texas bank account or a national account and you change all your address information on your accounts.

You go and you end your relationship with your family doctor or dentist in California and you establish a new doctor or dentist in Texas. You change your professional membership association so that you're no longer a member of the California board of blah, blah, blah, but now you're in Texas.

Change your phone number, although this is, I think, less of a big deal in the world of cell phones, but you should have a phone number that's in Texas and change that on all your records. Change what community organizations you're involved in. Move your membership from the San Francisco Rotary to the Dallas Rotary, volunteer organizations, church memberships, et cetera, country club memberships.

Move and close all your safety deposit boxes or PO boxes. Just move everything to your new place. Then what will happen is you have now a long chain of evidence, and in California the way it is, you file your final non-resident tax return, and you have a long chain of evidence that shows that you're gone from the state.

Then make sure that if you ever set foot in the state again that there is minimal evidence of you ever being there and that you have minimal interaction with businesses or boards or anything in the state. That's the basic process of moving from one state to another, but if there's a big price tag on it and you stand to save substantial money, especially if you're moving from California and/or New York, things like that, you want to make sure that you do it all the way and that you're very, very careful.

Now, this leads me to, when I talk about spending time, this leads me to the concept of nomadism or basically continual travel, which is one of the most interesting ways to lower the authority and jurisdiction of a government on top of your affairs. So let's use a couple of examples.

Something that's important to me as an outspoken homeschooler is something like homeschooling. And so let's pretend that I live in Florida, but I live in an RV. I have a legal address in Florida that I live at. Florida allows for nomad residency. So pretend that I'm filed as a nomad resident of Florida or Texas, but I actually live in an RV and I travel around the United States continually.

And I'm spending significant amounts of time in different states. I'm three months in this state, three months in that state, etc., and I'm traveling on a continual basis. Think about something like homeschooling and interacting with the truant officer in the local county. How is it that I would come to the attention of somebody in that local county and have to interact with somebody where they try to take control of my children?

Now, this is not nearly as much of an issue as it once was, but it used to be a big, big deal. I still know many homeschoolers from some states, and especially people who homeschooled a decade or two decades ago, that would never let their children out of the house during the daytime because it had to face the government investigating them for why are your children not in a government school?

So they would never go shopping during the daytime. They would never go to the local park during the daytime. They would only do those things in the evening and make sure that all of their schooling activities were inside of their home because they were worried about coming to control of the government authorities.

Where would be the impact of that if you were traveling? Now let's move to taxation. Let's assume that you have your business set up in the state of Texas. You have a Texas LLC. You run your business through the state of Texas, but you as an individual are traveling.

And you like to spend a couple months in the state of New York taking some shows. You like to spend a couple months in the state of California, etc. You're traveling. But you just have a couple months here and there. How is it that the taxing authorities would ever be involved in your affairs?

The only way the taxing authorities would be involved in your affairs is if you opened a branch and started doing business in their state. There's no way, if you open a physical business, there's no way to avoid taxation in a state when you open a physical branch and start doing business in somebody's state.

But if you've chosen a business friendly climate, you now have the ability to spend time in a state without triggering taxation. And so if you're interested in freedom, one of the best ways that you can be free is by having, in some studies, a moving lifestyle. And it's one of the reasons why I tested living in an RV traveling around the United States.

Because I was interested to see what would be the level of freedom in that situation. Now you can make a fair argument that it's not perfect. You can make an argument that you're kind of sort of vulnerable as a traveler because you're not a local. And I think that's true.

If there's a hurricane coming through or there's a national crisis or a disaster, they're only going to let local residents in. So it's possible to say that as a traveler there are places and times that that's not advantageous. But in general, in my opinion, one of the very best ways to minimize the amount of control that governments have over your affairs is simply to be a traveler.

To be someone who's just passing through. Because as long as you're not breaking any laws, there's very little reason for government officials to have any contact with you. So for people who care about personal freedom, you should consider very seriously if some kind of traveling lifestyle is ideal for you.

Now one of the problems of course is income. But let's pretend that you're financially independent or you have an income or you have your own business. Pretend it's something very simple. You're a writer. You're a freelance writer. Well you can come and go with relative freedom and you have very little interaction with really anybody.

And so it's one of the best ways to increase your personal freedom. Now that lifestyle may or may not appeal to you. It does not appeal to most people. And I understand that. But if we're talking about the theoretical construct, I hope you see how moving around and just simply being a traveler who's just passing through dramatically increases your level of personal freedom.

Because you have no claws that anybody can get in. You have nothing that really anybody can get their claws into. Living in an RV, could your RV be impounded? Yeah. But if you follow the traffic laws and there's no reason to be brought to anybody's attention and you're a law-abiding citizen, there's no warrant out for your arrest.

You're not committing any heinous crimes. Where's the interaction? You're pretty much left alone to come and go as you please, to do as you like. You don't give the government those nexuses, nexi, nexi, those points of connection, points of control. If you buy real estate in a place, now all of a sudden you're subject to the local taxing authority.

If you open a business in a place that has a physical presence, well now you're subject to the local taxing authority and to the wage board and to the OSHA inspectors, etc. But if you're just passing through as a nomad living lightly, you have the ability to float through fairly freely.

And as long as you're not creating trouble, you're not causing problems with anybody, you're pretty much going to be left alone. Well now let's pivot to the international perspective. What I just described was largely from a domestic perspective, but the beauty of the theory of PT theory, or flag theory, is that the same exact thing can be applied on an international basis.

And this is also something that I've tested and I've been fascinated by. And I'm here to tell you that from a freedom perspective, I'm convinced that Schultz was correct. That the best way that I can come up with for those who want basically maximum levels of personal freedom is to do what Schultz originally outlined, what Hill talked about in PT, what other theorists have gone on and brought beyond that.

I'm going to talk about personal freedom for a moment, but then I'm also going to talk about finances, because both of these are important. Some people care more about freedom and taxation is not kind of a non-issue. But taxation really is a big issue for many people. And it's also something that is elegantly solved with the PT theory.

PT, I don't think I said it earlier, PT is some initials that are often used to apply to different things. It stands for perpetual traveler, or permanent tourist, or just passing through, or prior taxpayer. There's a bunch of things that that word PT goes for. It's kind of a little acronym that's used in the club of people who care about this, usually libertarian-oriented people.

And most people will know PT theory, but because of its unwieldiness and its difficulty to explain, then it often goes under the banner of flag theory as well. A little bit more of a common name and a little bit easier to explain. So let's talk about it from the perspective of a freedom thought.

Remember my example from the United States, where I talked about you want to do something that, you want to engage in an activity that is prohibited where you are, but you want to do it without risking legal trouble. So I used the example of marijuana. Another good example would be something like gambling, where it used to be that gambling was highly restricted in most states.

Today, now there's pretty much, in almost all the states, you can find a place to gamble. But the same basic principle occurs, that if you want to gamble legally, you know the old days, you go to Las Vegas, and gambling was legal in Las Vegas so you did it there.

Similar thing with marijuana, or perhaps prostitution. You want to engage a prostitute. Well, if you engage a prostitute in your hometown you run the risk of coming under a sting operation with the local vice squad and having your picture splashed across all the newspapers. Whereas if you want to engage a prostitute legally, you go to a place where prostitution is legal.

Only a few places in the United States, but internationally it's fairly easy to do. I can't for the life of me understand why somebody would hire a prostitute in Florida when they could just get on an airplane and go to Costa Rica. When I was in college, I used to in Costa Rica, when I was in college, I used to work in hotel lobbies and hotel bars because I could get good Wi-Fi and I enjoyed the atmosphere.

So I would go and just take my laptop and do my work there. You would see all day long, all night long men coming in with their Costa Rican escorts. They had a whole system for it. They sign them in and out of the hotel, a whole system structured for it.

But the point is that it's a legal activity in Costa Rica. It's not a legal activity in the United States. And so those men from a legal perspective were behaving very intelligently by going to a place where their desired activity is legal instead of trying to commit those acts illicitly in a place where that activity is illegal.

So if you look at the world and you think about anything that you want to do, you can usually find a jurisdiction in the world where that activity is legally sanctioned, almost anything. Perhaps you live in a dry country, a Muslim country where there's no drinking. Well, if you want to drink, you go to a place where there's not a dry country and you can drink legally.

A good example of this would have been back during the Prohibition era in the United States. You may have ran a significant risk if you stayed in the United States and you wanted to be a drinker. Well, Prohibition, that was a major legal risk and a personal risk. Whereas if you simply got on a boat and moved to almost any country in the world, but moved to France as some people did, you could live happily in Paris, France and enjoy your drinking lifestyle right in Paris, France.

If you want to drive fast, drive fast cars at extremely high rates of speed. You can of course go to a racetrack and do it on a racetrack or a race course, but it's not legal or safe to do in the United States. By safe, I'm not talking about physical safety, I just mean it's a major legal risk.

To get caught driving down the highway at 145 miles an hour is a big deal. But if you go to Germany and you are driving on the Autobahn, then you're engaging in that exact same activity that is illegal in the United States. If you want to homeschool your children, well, if you live in Germany or you live in Sweden, you can't.

And it's a major, major you can't do it. It's a major risk, but you can leave Germany and go to another place. You can leave Sweden and move to Finland, right? And be a next door neighbor, but you're moving under the jurisdiction of another place. And so this is, this whole concept of moving from one place to another is a really strong concept.

It really does have a lot of real life freedom associated with it. But if you want the actual best level of freedom, where you really want to be let alone, you want to go back to that model of being a tourist, just passing through, as Hill wrote about. Because most countries will treat tourists in their country far better than they treat citizens of their countries.

As a tourist, you're largely left alone. Now, it is possible that you might not be granted admission to a country. The basic benefit that you get from being a citizen of a country is that that country cannot refuse to let you in. If you're an American citizen, you can show up at a border of the United States of America.

You can show up without a passport. You can show up without any identification. And in time, you'll figure out a way to prove that you're a citizen. But if you can prove that you're a citizen, they'll let you in. That's the basic right of citizenship, is the right to live in a certain place.

So if you're an American citizen and you want to travel to Germany, the German government has no legal requirement to let you in. But as a matter of practice, of course, generally, most American citizens could easily get on a plane to Germany. And unless you are a wanted felon, an international criminal of some kind, or alleged to be an international criminal, you're generally going to be able to get into Germany.

And they'll give you a visa to come on in and spend your time in Germany and the rest of the Schengen area without a problem. Well, as a tourist, you get a lot of benefits that a lot of other people don't get. You get the benefit to come and go.

You can go largely wherever you want throughout the country. You'll get treated well. Generally, people will be hospitable towards you. Government officials are not going to get involved in your business. You can go and rent a house on Airbnb. You can go and you can stay in a hotel.

And the taxman's not going to come looking for you. The truant officers at the local government school are not going to come and try to pick up your kids. You're just largely ignored. You're largely left alone. Tourists in some places are granted even extra privileges where the police will look to sideways over some of the activities that are being engaged in, depending on the culture.

Sometimes tourists would be treated more harshly. But in some places, tourists get benefits that the locals would never get. They get treated with kid gloves versus a heavy iron fist in some places. And so as a tourist, you can largely come and go as you like. Sometimes even from a tax perspective.

No government's going to charge a tourist who is passing through. No government's going to charge that tourist income taxes. But even better, when you buy something in a country that has heavy VAT taxes, you can often apply to have those VAT taxes refunded when you're leaving. And they'll even give you the sales taxes, the VAT taxes, back when you leave their zone.

So you can often save money. And with the ability of, you know, with your ability to live as a tourist, it doesn't necessarily even mean that you have to stay in hotels all the time. For example, there are many places in the world, not all, some country, every country has different laws.

Some laws you have to be a citizen to own property, or you have to have a business deal with a local person. But there are many places around the world where you can own a house, but you still just come and go from that country on a tourist visa, and you're largely left alone.

Now, this opens up to you a tremendous level of personal freedom. And is really a neat option if you want to have minimal interface with government agents, because you'll largely be left alone. It also opens up some interesting options for you, back to the tax discussion. Now, I didn't lead with tax, because this series is not specifically related to tax.

It led with freedom. And I was curious about the levels of freedom. But as I've traveled internationally, I've done this for the last year, and I've become convinced that it is true. That as a tourist, you can live more freely than most people. You'll largely get ignored by the governments, you won't generally, no one's going to come after you for breaking the laws, and sometimes you'll get treated more lightly than a local resident would be.

Now, I need to emphasize, we're not talking about someone who's committing heinous crimes. We're not talking about somebody who is doing anything that's shady. We're just talking about honest, law-abiding, moral people, who are simply living their life. And if you're in that situation, you can really do well. And I use this, the most important one, the best example I can come up with is something like homeschooling.

Now, I understand that's not a big deal for many people, but it is a big deal legally, because as so many governments around the world have engaged in compulsory education laws, it's been a major restriction of freedom. And I consider that to be the right to educate your children and teach your children as you want to.

I consider it to be one of the most fundamental, inviolable human rights possible. But many governments around the world don't agree with me. And so, let's pretend that you're from one of those governments. You're from Germany. Well, you can leave Germany, and you can go and you can spend, let's say you went and you spent some time in Canada.

If you didn't want to just move to another place, you could go and you could spend three months in Canada in the summertime, move down, spend three months in the United States, spend three months in Mexico, fly back to Germany for three months, and in all that time, you could homeschool your children as you see fit.

Because you're basically removing yourself from the jurisdiction of that place. Now, that's not the lifestyle that most people will go for. If you go back to, what are they, the Rameke family, which was the family in Germany that fled Germany after the German government prosecuted them for homeschooling. And I think that they were granted political asylum in the United States where they were able to homeschool peacefully in the United States.

And their case went all the way to the German Supreme Court where they lost. But they were able to leave and go to another jurisdiction. So that's just an example of moving. But that family is probably never going to go back to Germany. At least not going to go back while they have minor children because their children would be stolen from them by the government again.

Whereas if they just go and travel as a tourist, they can still simply come and go and move. I hope that you see the freedom associated with that. And that's an important thing for some people. Not for most people. Most people wouldn't be willing to do the nomad lifestyle.

But it is possible. Now let's go to the tax planning perspective of this. Flag theory really truly is one of the ways you really truly can live a very lightly taxed life and lifestyle if you're willing to do this. And you can do this in many places from many different perspectives.

There are different planning wrinkles if you are a US citizen or permanent resident. What they call a US person. Versus if you're not a US citizen or a US resident. So let me give you a good example that I think would... a good example. Let's pretend that you are that German.

You're a German citizen. German national living in Germany. But you decide that number one you have a lot of money. You're going to make a lot of money. And you want a much more tax efficient lifestyle. And you want a tax efficient lifestyle. And you want a really good sorry I'm stumbling over my words.

You want a free and a low tax lifestyle. Well you could do something very simple. Such as purchasing a citizenship from St. Kitts and Nevis. So you go. You apply to purchase citizenship for St. Kitts and Nevis. St. Kitts and Nevis has the benefit of selling a passport. I think it's something like $100,000.

Usually most of the Caribbean countries are around $100,000. So they'll sell you a passport. Sell you a citizenship for St. Kitts and Nevis. That gives you the ability to legally move to St. Kitts and Nevis. Which is a beautiful tropical island. St. Kitts and Nevis also has the benefit of being an income tax free place.

So you can live in St. Kitts and Nevis and pay no income taxes on your business. Hopefully you have a business that is digital or that you can manage from afar. But because it's a lot harder to manage a factory if you got to be there every day. You can't do this kind of planning in that situation.

But you have that option. So you buy a passport from St. Kitts and Nevis. A citizenship. You move to St. Kitts and Nevis. You want a place to hold your money. So that by the way, that was step flag one of the five flag theory. You have a passport or citizenship in a country that does not tax non-resident income or control your actions.

Let me talk for a moment about controlling your actions. There are two basic levels of control that a government can enact on you. One is what the law says. The other is what the government can actually enforce. And so the law is one thing you want to read the law and as to my knowledge St.

Kitts and Nevis doesn't have any onerous laws where they try to control your actions, you know, excessively. But even if they did, the reality is St. Kitts and Nevis is a tiny little island nation that does not have a global reach. So there's a very big difference versus being a citizen of St.

Kitts and Nevis versus being a citizen of say these United States. The United States has a global reach as a global superpower. They basically control the entire world and force everyone to March to the beat of the drum. And if not, they impose sanctions on everybody. And so if you are a US citizen, you do have the ability of that country to largely follow you all around the world and control your actions.

They'll prosecute you for a law that you've broken the prosecute for noncompliance with all the banking disclosure laws, whatever you want. But if you are a citizen of St. Kitts and Nevis, then first there's the law and then there's also the effective control of that law. And then the other thing is with laws, just because the laws on the books doesn't mean that if you change your circumstances that you are somehow violating that law.

So example that I'm reason I use Germany would be something like homeschooling, which is important to me may not be important to you. Again, you choose what's important to you. It's important to me. However, if I were a German citizen who had money and or who had a business I could move to St.

Kitts and Nevis and though the law in Germany doesn't allow me to homeschool in Germany. I don't see how that law could possibly be applied just because I happen to be a German citizen nonresident in Germany. Now their jurisdiction over me fails because they have no jurisdiction over my personal body.

So I've moved to St. Kitts and Nevis. I set up a life on St. Kitts and Nevis. That was flag one passport or citizenship in a country that does not tax nonresident income or control your actions. I guess also sorry that was resident to flag to which is legal residents in a tax Haven.

You have a legal residence in a tax Haven. It's not a very well-known tax Haven, but is a tax Haven legal residence in a tax Haven passport or citizenship in a country that does not tax nonresident income or control your actions was number one. You're from Germany, but also you have a St.

Kitts citizenship. Now number three, you have a business base and a salary earning in a tax Haven. So in a situation like this, let's say that you run an online company and import export company and online company and Amazon business or writing business a podcast something like that. Well, you could set up your business in a place like Panama, right?

Panama is a tech tax Haven. You can set up a Panama IBC. There's many options around the world. You can do this in many places, but you could set it up in Panama and have a perfectly good place for you to set up your business banking set up your business operations and fairly close enough to St.

Kitts and Nevis for you to get back and forth to Panama. Then number four is you need an offshore bank account in a country with stable banking. Well in this situation for this scenario, one of your best solutions would be the United States. The United States is one of the world's biggest tax Havens in the world and one of the world's biggest banking tax Havens.

Most people especially those who live in the United States don't know about that. Don't think about that. But this is an example where a country treats tourists in its borders far better than it treats residents in its borders. The United States is a wonderful place to do business has very advanced pro business laws and regulations that make it easy to start a business form a company has state-of-the-art banking very dynamic diversified economy.

It offers foreigners a huge level of privacy. For example, the United States is one of the most important countries in the world that does not participate in the what's the not fat cut the global version. CRS the CRS reporting standards that most countries in the world participate in the United States doesn't participate.

The United States has a completely separate system called fat cut foreign account tax compliance Act that tells any business any bank anywhere in the world is going to do business with US citizens that they have to report to the United States government all of the actions of those banks are of those citizens, but the United States doesn't doesn't participate in CRS, which is the world's version of fat cut, but basically all the rest of the world economy is getting together and trying to impose similar banking bank information sharing laws.

So the United States has from offers foreigners tremendous privacy tremendous tax reduction and really advanced asset protection laws. And so you can set up in a couple different ways. You can set up a banking account bank accounts investment accounts Etc in the United States. Now you can also run your business through the United States.

You can set up a US LLC. You can do all of your business in the United States and you can structure that in a way as long as you don't have physical presence in the United States with your business operations. You can structure that in such a way that you pay no US income taxes on your business income and then on your banking and investments you pay no no taxes on those.

And so as long as you're not a resident of the United States, you're in good shape. But if you become a resident United States now all of a sudden all those benefits the United States go out the door. So that would be an example of using a country a very an excellent country for financial management to help you set things up for your for your business.

And so that would be your fourth flag and then number five. Let's is of Hills five flags. You have a playground where you spend your money preferably with no sales tax or VAT maybe you you know, you like spending time in St. Kitts and Nevis and it gives you a stable home base, but it's a little Island you get a little bit of Island fever.

And so you want to go and spend time elsewhere where you can go and spend time anywhere else in the world that will let you in here. It's a major benefit to have a strong passport. It's really tough to be a PT if you only have one passport and if it's from say Syria or Iraq or Afghanistan or Yemen, these are really difficult places because you got to have visas for the whole world and you're viewed very suspiciously.

But if you've got a German passport, you have one of the world's greatest passports and you pretty much come and go as you please with with very modest visa requirements. So perhaps you want to go to Canada and you really like Canada and so you go and you spend depending on whether you want to spend summers or winters you go and you spend your summers and your winter or your winters in Canada and you put together a little tour where you go and you spend several months in Canada.

Then you go and you spend winters in Mexico and then you go back to the island you spend time on the island and the reason for this moving the reason for kind of the moving around as a tourist is that you experience high levels of personal freedom, but you're spending partial amounts of time in countries where you are not a you're not a resident and this is important for taxation.

Now you can do this with residencies and here's where it does get a little complex because you got to deal with the laws of every of every place. You can do this with residencies. You can do it with houses. You could have a house in St. Kitts and Nevis if you wanted to or you could just have a St.

Kitts and Nevis passport and have a house in Bogota have a house in wherever you want. You could do this all around the world in different regions of the world, but you can set your life up in such a way that you have a stable life. You have legal protections and you can basically eliminate your income taxes on your life and on your business by becoming a non-resident of your high tax place and becoming a tax resident somewhere else.

Now you can do this with a lot of paperwork or you can do this with minimal paperwork and the requirements of paperwork depend upon your specific place. It's easier to become a non-resident of certain places, non-tax resident of certain places than others. Some citizenships continually want you to be able to demonstrate your tax resident status of another place and so sometimes you have to go through and officially set up a tax resident status.

Sometimes you don't. One of the simplest things in this regard is for US citizens. Now US citizens have the distinct disadvantage of never being free from the US tax authorities because US citizens are taxed based upon citizenship, not based upon residency. You have to pay taxes on your worldwide income no matter where in the world you live, but because that exists, you actually, if your income is lower you actually have the ability to do this strategy with more freedom than somebody say from Germany or from Canada because the German or the Canadian has to genuinely set up a residence in a tax haven and then they have to provide, basically end all of their contact with that home country.

So let's say the German were there. One of the things you want to do is you want to close any German bank accounts. You want to close German credit cards. You don't want to have connections to the country. The only connection you want to have to that country is a passport and a citizenship.

That allows you to come back if you ever want to, but you don't want to give the government any ammunition for saying, "No, look, you really are a resident even though you're not here most of the time." This goes back to, remember why I spent time talking about how to end your residency in California and move to another state.

Same thing applies on an international basis. Now the benefit for US Americans is that US Americans can keep everything in the United States. You can keep your bank accounts in the United States. You can keep your businesses in the United States. You can keep everything in the United States, but if you'll physically move your presence outside of the United States, then you can take advantage of the laws that will help you from a tax perspective.

Most importantly, the foreign earned income exclusion, the foreign housing deduction, and the foreign tax credit system. The first two, of course, are based upon your being outside of the United States most of the time. As long as you are following the strict days test for qualifying for the foreign earned income exclusion, you have the ability to do that whether you have a residency visa anywhere in the world or not.

So a US American can just simply keep everything in the United States, but leave the country physically, spend several months in Thailand, spend some time in Malaysia, spend some time in South America, etc., and just move around as they want, and largely sever much of the laws that apply to them and take advantage of the tax breaks they do get.

Now, that's not the ultimate solution, and if I could change the United States from being a citizenship based taxation system to a residence based taxation system, I would. I would certainly do that. But I just want to point out that there are some benefits to the US system that makes things a little bit cleaner for US Americans who want to travel and go abroad than the challenges that residents of other countries do face.

So, that's it. That's how you do it. And there are many, many ways to do it. Now, there are downsides to this system. Especially to the system of traveling a lot. Many people just simply don't want to travel a lot. Well, if you don't want to travel a lot, there are options.

But the most important thing is to choose a place to live that provides you with low taxes and high freedom. It's hard to come up with those places, but they do exist. So, the classic solution is if you were living in the United Kingdom and you wanted to move to a tax haven, well, you can go and set up residence in Monaco.

Tax free place. Now, you've got to spend time there, you've got to be there, but you could do that. And you could eliminate your taxes in England, or Jersey, or some other place that's close to home. Of course, the UK is a great tax haven for people from all around the world who move to the UK under their non-domiciled status.

So, the UK is a tremendous tax haven for people. So, you can, depending on where you're coming from, where you're going, and what you're doing, and what paperwork you have, and what you don't have, etc. There are ways to set this up all around the world. But you can just genuinely move to a place and stay there.

And that can be a very tax efficient thing to do if you choose the right jurisdiction. But here's where there will be a lot of benefits to a place with no income taxes, of which there are some, and/or a place with territorial taxes. So, today's classic option of no income tax of a modern city would be Dubai, the United Arab Emirates.

If you move to Dubai, no income taxes. And so, if you want to live in Dubai, you can just simply go from where you are, move to Dubai, and you won't have any income taxes. You don't have to trot around the world, moving all the time. You can just simply move there.

But Dubai comes with the disadvantages of some other laws that might affect you. And there aren't a lot of truly no income tax places. And so, many people want to spend time in other places. And so, the point is simply to say that you can do this with this nomad strategy as well.

Different countries have different laws of what triggers tax residency. But it's usually based upon the amount of time that you are there, and then your engagement with the country. So, if you have your business in a place that you don't spend any time, and if you have your assets in another place that you don't spend any time, then you're providing a very thin financial profile to the places where you actually go, and minimizing your exposure to the risks in that country.

But it's not perfect. And so, you've got to consider what strategy would work for you and what strategy would not work for you. I guess I would be remiss if I didn't also point out to you that there are tremendous benefits from, or potential benefits from the perspective of asset protection planning with this kind of lifestyle as well.

You can... Asset protection plan is a little tricky because you've got to figure out what risk am I actually worried about, and then what's my strategy to protect it. There are many strong strategies that you can implement inside of the United States, as I've talked about. And I think that sometimes asset protection planning is oversold.

It's very expensive and people just kind of got this exotic allure, and it's got to be worth it. But at the end of the day, just like the old pirates who stashed their gold on a forgotten desert island and then went somewhere else, at the end of the day, if you can get back to your gold on that desert island and make sure that nobody found it in the meantime, you protected your assets.

And the same thing is still possible in today's world. Because the only thing that a government really respects is another government, and by using the government, each of them, for what they're good at, you have the ability to position things in a place where they're protected. And so this is why they're a resident, their jurisdictions, that their point of competition is to protect money.

And they make their economy in some places based upon protecting money and protecting the trusts that have their situs there. There are a lot of other things that could be talked about. You could talk about this in terms of intergenerational trust planning, etc. These topics are complicated based upon your citizenship.

I'm very familiar with US-American laws, and US-American laws are pretty onerous on some of these things. But there are ways to get around it. So if you have a huge fortune, one of the things that you can do, if you have the right family structure, and if you have somebody in the family who's willing to become a non-American, is you can move a fortune offshore, move it to a tax haven where it'll be managed.

And if you have someone in the family who's willing to, either who originally is not a US citizen, or who's willing to renounce their US citizenship, that person could be the manager, the trustee of the family trust, and all the rest of the Americans can be beneficiaries of that trust.

And this is as bulletproof as it gets, from an asset protection standpoint, and from completely tax-free. You can have that trust sit in that tax haven, and instead of the intense trust taxation rates in the United States, it can have a trust taxation rate of zero. You just simply have your legal fees for the management, the attorneys, etc., who are involved, which with a large enough estate are relatively negligible.

So there are many ways to use these laws to structure things well. Internationalization is not always the best solution. Sometimes it adds more complication, and many people just say, "It's interesting, Joshua, from a theoretical perspective, but I'm not interested," which totally makes sense. But from a theoretical perspective, if you care about freedom, I don't know of any way to have more personal freedom than following the tenets of PT theory, of flag theory.

I've tested it, I've done it, I wasn't sure until I had done it, but I really do think it provides you with a maximum level of freedom, with major levels of privacy, with tremendous opportunities, and it can be tremendously fun as well while you're at it. I'm not sure if I've articulated it as clearly as I want to.

I feel like I've struggled a little bit to make it clear, so I hope that I've clearly communicated it. But if you want freedom from a government, one of the only ways that you can get that is to have a competing government, and to use that competing government. I really don't know of any other way to accomplish it.

At the risk of belaboring the point, let me just give one more thing to you from that scenario that I explained of the German citizen becoming a St. Kitts citizen, living on St. Kitts, which is a tax haven, and then spending time around the world. Let's say that that German citizen establishes an American credit card account, and so they have an American Amex, and maybe they have one, no foreign transaction fees, etc., and that's just what they use to run their financial life.

Now, if I, as a US citizen, have that same American Express card, and I live in the United States, etc., I basically have no financial privacy for that. Yeah, there are some financial privacy laws that protect me from other people, but I have no privacy from a government perspective.

Warrant, whatever, comes into play. All those transactions can be investigated. Now, as long as I, most people it's not a big deal. Obviously, I'm a law-abiding citizen. I started with that. I have no reason to come onto the radar of the government authorities, and so it should be fairly simple for me to maintain my privacy, and it's not that big of a deal.

But for the German, it might be more interesting, because since he doesn't live in the United States, he doesn't really have any connection with US laws or law enforcement officers, and so, for what reason, he's following all the laws, doesn't have to file any tax returns, doesn't have to interact with US people really at all, and so what reason would there be for a financial, for an officer of the government to be investigating his affairs in the United States?

Really, almost no reason. But now, let's say that that same German is spending time in Brazil, and for some reason, and he just simply pays with everything with his US credit card for all of his Brazilian transactions, but now the Brazilian government takes an interest in him and wants to investigate him for some reason.

We don't know why. Well, in order for them to do that, they would have to contact the United States of America and get the US government's participation in investigating that man's accounts, because everything's just through the US-based American Express, which, certainly, if he's an international fugitive or an international criminal, would happen, which is why I don't be a criminal.

But just for the day-to-day stuff that you might come across some corrupt government officer who's trying to look into your affairs, it brings in a level of privacy, a privacy shield that is really significant. And so, when you have governments that have different jurisdictions, and you choose a place like the United States for his asset haven, because it's got good privacy laws and a stable economy and a stable banking system, etc., he has much more personal privacy in his affairs.

And now, let's say that he gets sued by somebody in Brazil, well, how is that lawyer going to be able to smoke out all of his assets when they're hidden through his systems in the United States and around the world? It's just not possible, in the same way it is if everything were in Brazil.

So that's the basic point. I hope I'm not belaboring it too much, that when you look at it and you recognize that governments don't respect individuals, but they do respect other governments, then the way for you to attain freedom is not to become a freedom fighter against the government.

That's a good way to get locked up or shot. But the way is just simply go to another jurisdiction and use that other government jurisdiction for what works for you. And now, for that government to gain access to something that the other government has, they have to talk government to government.

And while that does happen, you've got to have done something at a pretty high level to make that happen. To be extradited requires you to have committed a pretty serious crime, which is not the area that you're involved in. I guess if you are involved in that, then you want to make sure that you're doing businesses with governments that hate each other, that aren't going to cooperate with one another.

It's one thing if you say, "I'm going to go and do something with Canada, but I'm a US citizen." Well, of course, Canada and the United States have a very tight relationship. But you can go to Russia, and the United States and Russia don't have nearly as tight of a relationship, or the United States and China.

And so depending on what you need, maybe that's where you choose to plant your flags. These ideas are not perfect. I wish the perfect utopia country existed, where you could just move there and everything would be great. I wish it existed. I haven't found it. Just like I wish the perfect state existed.

Well, I haven't found it. It's all a trade-off. And so you pick and choose based upon what's best for you. And I think the majority of people are not so dissatisfied with where they live, where they need to integrate any of these extreme ideas. But I like them, and I like the freedom that I have with it.

I enjoy it. Is it necessary? No. I could move back to Florida and I think be perfectly fine. I really could. I'm not doing anything that is illegal in Florida. I'm not engaging in anything. I'm a pretty boring guy. I like the ideas, but I don't do anything where any of this stuff really matters.

So I could probably move back to Florida and do perfectly fine. And you probably aren't going to move. But at least if you're aware of it, it is nice to know about the things that are possible. And if you are an intensely freedom-oriented person, I know of no better solution than this.

There are other solutions for freedom, and this is not perfect. You could take this idea and you could take it up a notch. For example, living on a sailboat. If you live on an ocean-going, blue-water sailboat, you have a huge degree of freedom. You've kind of put together this traveling thing with international mobility and you can move around the world.

But every one of these things comes with drawbacks. Just like the Nomad Strategy comes with the drawback of not making it as easy to be part of a local community, so does the sailing thing. You can be part of the sailing community, but you don't have quite as much of a local community as you do if you have houses in a certain place.

You certainly have far less interaction with the government. You can pick up anchor and go anytime you want, but it's not perfect. There isn't anything perfect. You could have more freedom if you engaged in a self-sufficient lifestyle, lived on a farm. But that's not perfect either. Everything has drawbacks.

So, what I would say to you is think about what you need. Think about some of the strategies that I've talked about. If you want to vote, vote. If you want to organize for change, do that. Consider moving to a place that has more freedom and has more of the freedom that you want.

Consider moving and just spending time in places that offer the things that you want without necessarily moving there. Consider doing that both nationally and internationally. I don't mean to sound like I'm backing off from the power of these ideas. They are truly powerful. So, I don't want to back off from them, but I do want to be practical and recognize that most people seem to be pretty well situated where they live and they're just not interested in pursuing these things.

But, if you want to have freedom from government control, this is one of the best ways to do it. So, what I would recommend to you is at the very least you consider the ideas, research them, and at the very least have a plan B. I think the plan B concept is one of the more powerful concepts for most people.

The idea being you're going to live where you want to live. You're going to keep a fairly normal life. But, if something really bad happened, you would have a plan. There's an apocryphal story told about a Chinese businessman. He was giving advice to his son. He said, "Son, always keep a fast junk," right, the Chinese boat, "keep a fast boat in the harbor ready to go and a stash of gold in another country." Basically, the modern version of it is always keep a way to escape, always keep a second set of identity papers ready to go, and always keep some money so that you can restart your life if you face something serious.

Much of my audience is from the United States, from Canada, and U.S. Americans don't usually think much about this stuff because U.S. Americans are generally trained to think that the United States, you know, land of the free, home of the brave, and the last bastion of freedom. If freedom dies here, then it's not to be found on Earth.

Well, I don't buy any of that stuff anymore, but it takes time to come to those realizations. I think that many people are waking up and saying, "Well, maybe it was true, but it seems less true now than it once did." Many U.S. Americans are coming to the realization that other people around the world have had for a long time.

I've talked to lots of people from other places, and they know their governments can collapse. They know that all of a sudden a war can break out, and then somebody tries to conscript them into an army. They know that their money can become worthless, and they take steps to plan accordingly.

An international lifestyle, dual citizenship, keeping money offshore, is much more common in many other cultures than it is in the U.S. American culture. In the U.S. American culture, some people think you're a traitor if you think that there's some other options in the world that work for you other than doing everything in the United States.

I don't buy that. I think that having a plan B really is powerful. I think you should have a fast junk waiting for you in the harbor, whether that's an actual boat, whether it's a credit card, a plane ticket, whether it's a way to get offshore. Who knows? I think you should have a second set of papers, another passport for another country.

One of the most egregious things that the United States has done now is a couple years ago they passed a new law where the United States government if they allege that you owe them more than $50,000 in unpaid taxes, they will contact the State Department and cancel your passport.

I find that utterly obnoxious and revolting. That is insane to me. But it's the "gotta get those tax evaders" law. I think that's crazy. But that's the law of the land now. It's not that hard for many people who were involved in significant business operations to get into a $50,000 dispute with the IRS.

Even if you're doing everything right. I had a client of mine who had his passport canceled. And the guy had done everything right. But for the United States to say that you can't travel because we think you owe us more than $50,000 and we think you might skip away to some foreign land.

I mean it's the utter antithesis of "land of the free". It's obnoxious. Even worse with child support. If you owe more than $2,500 in arrears on child support, they'll cancel your passport. And on the one hand, you can certainly understand why those laws exist and why they get political favor.

You want parents to pay for their children. You want people to pay their taxes as they're owed. I believe you should follow the law and pay your debts. That's the morally right thing to do. But to say that you're going to cancel my travel privileges, so-called "privileges", is insane.

The entire modern system is crazy. I don't even like the passport system. It's a very modern system. It was an invention of the socialists to say that we should have passports and identity papers and have these national borders. Well now it's been co-opted by the Republicans. We're going to build a wall.

It's crazy. But that's the world we live in. And so it does no good, in my opinion, to pine for the world that once was when you didn't need a stack of identity papers. As I see it, you've got to just deal with the world that is and figure out the best way through it and find the best places.

And so having a Plan B is, in my consideration, an incredibly valuable part of your planning. So that's my concept for you as I go. I'll tell you that I have an entire course called "How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis" and I cover a lot of this stuff in that course.

If you are interested in having a Plan B with a special focus on an economic crisis, I would really commend my course to you. I have had nothing but good feedback on it. I've had one return on that course. It's one of my most popular courses. I've had nothing but good feedback on it.

I've had tons of people who have said, just told me about the action that they took because of it. I've had tons of stories. People who've gone through it have talked to me about how this happened with my parents in Venezuela and this happened with my ancestors here and this other thing that happened there.

But basically having the ability to get out of the place that there's a crisis genuinely could save your life. I think of things like war and forced conscription, aka a draft, military drafts and things like that. Having an ability to just simply leave is one of the most important things that you could do.

So think carefully about it and make sure that you have a Plan B. What I teach in that course is a very simple Plan B. You don't need necessarily to go and to have all of the, you know, have a bunch of papers and second passports, etc. I teach one of the simplest versions of a Plan B, which is simply to have a handful of credit cards with high credit limits that you can use to buy a plane ticket and a passport.

And if you can show up at the airport with a passport and a handful of plane tickets, you can set your life up in many places and get through a crisis. Now, it helps a lot more if you have some money offshore. I go through how to do that.

There's a lot more to it, but really that's powerful. One of the things that I changed my mind on about actually testing this stuff for myself is I used to think that you needed to have a bunch of papers, you needed to have residence permits, you needed to have all kinds of stuff established.

I've come to believe that it's not strictly necessary. And I've actually had people that I've recommended, "No, don't bother." Because genuinely as a tourist in today's world, if you have a cell phone that'll work, you can show up in another country, you can catch an Uber from the airport, you can rent an apartment on Airbnb, everything can go to your credit cards.

You've got a great system that will generally work in the vast majority of situations. It's far easier to be a permanent tourist now than it was 20 years ago with the increasing interconnectedness of the world. But you still do need a plan. So I'd encourage you, if this is thought-provoking to you, go by RadicalPersonalFinance.com/store and take my "How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis" class.

It's the best bet of a really good foundation to set up a plan B. "How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis" at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/store. In addition, if you're interested in consulting with me, I'm probably not the world's best expert on this, but I've got a pretty darn good level of expertise at this point.

I'm kind of an obsessive researcher, and so I can at least point you in the right direction, and I'm not nearly as expensive as some of the fancy lawyers in this space as well. So if you're interested in personal consultations on any of the stuff that I've talked about here, how to eliminate your taxes legally, how to set any of this stuff up, even among different states, I've done a lot of consulting on some of these areas as well.

So email me, joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com, and I'll get you details on how to set up a consulting business with me. joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com, and I'll be back with you very soon for Ring #7. You're in winter's favorite town. The snow-covered mountains surround you. A historic main street charms you. And every day brings a new adventure.

Welcome to Park City, Utah. Naturally, winter's favorite town. Join the experience at visitparkcity.com.