“What do you suppose will satisfy the soul, except to walk free and own no superior? What do you suppose I would intimate to you in a hundred ways, but that man or woman is as good as God?”
—Walt Whitman
I am homeless.
And jobless.
–Two things which almost nobody wants to be. Yet, to me, the liberation from such attachments is priceless.
To be more accurate — I am a permanent traveler. I have taken this lifestyle on willingly.
It’s funny, every time I explain this to the people I meet, it tends to baffle nearly everyone. Particularly when it comes to my (attempt at a) dating life, the first or second question on most women’s minds is usually “how long have you lived here?” or “where do you live?”
To which I have to explain, “I don’t really live anywhere. But then again, I live everywhere. I live wherever I am.”
In the last six years, I’ve traveled to over 20 countries, lived in seven, met with multi-millionaires, politicians’ daughters, and mafia bosses, I’ve started a few companies, lectured on business in Asia and mentored young entrepreneurs in South America, I stood in the middle of a virtual civil war (which led to today’s military coup in Thailand), and I’ve stood in for Ewan McGregor in The Impossible.
My own personal brand of independence entails moving around a lot — I’m slowly exploring the world, wandering wherever opportunity and excitement take me, usually spending 3-6 months in a given place before relocating again.
But my life is not a perpetual vacation either. I work for myself. So, contrary to popular belief, and unlike most, I actually spend at least a couple hours working nearly every single day of the year, including weekends and holidays, rain or shine.
Most people have to bust their asses to earn this kind of freedom.
—
For my fellow Yankees, today is our national Independence Day.
238 years ago today, Thomas Jefferson and the Second Continental Congress unanimously declared the sovereignty of the thirteen united States of America from the British Empire and asserted an individual’s natural rights:
To life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
On the 4th of July, we celebrate freedom. I believe that no matter where you come from, you and I are entitled to the same natural rights the founding fathers described in the Declaration of Independence now more than ever.
I believe that genuine freedom means being able to make your own choices, without having to tolerate the intrusions of any “higher power” or authorities you haven’t invited into your life.
My personal taste for time- and location-freedom demands a tremendous amount of flexibility — to choose who I spend time with, and more importantly who I work with; to choose where I spend my time, and the hours I devote to my work.
And the longer I spend living this “location-independent” lifestyle, the further my thoughts on what real liberty is — and sovereignty over our own mind, body, and choices — expand. (In my perfect world, we would all have the unalienable right to actual free travel across borders… in fact borders would be a thing of the past, and we would all be allowed to share this planet as genuine world citizens… but I digress…)
—
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Unfortunately in the real world we inhabit today, the freedom we think we have is largely an illusion.
The truth is, every day the neo-fascistic, post-apocalyptic futures imagined by literary works like George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World look increasingly like accurate predictions as opposed to science fiction.
Our first amendment right to voice our opinions and beliefs freely is now limited to “free speech zones”.
We can no longer get on an airplane without a government-ordered cavity search. Every time I re-enter the United States (rarely these days, thankfully) I brace myself for the warm welcome of nude body scanners and/or getting sexually assaulted, as well as being pulled aside an questioned as to why I have a camera tripod in my bag, or why I have so many stamps in my passport. Apparently it’s suspicious to take advantage of our “freedoms” in the greatest nation in the world and actually travel extensively…
The “Patriot” Act suspended habeas corpus and means the military can hold anyone accused of “terrorism” under indefinite detention without ever officially charging them with any crime, and without informing any next of kin. More than five years after Barack Obama promised the American public that he would close Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, and signed an executive order to do so, hundreds of prisoners still rot, with little hope for due process in this sanctuary for inhumane torture and degrading abuse.
The administration may now order warrantless surveillance and searches, including forcing your internet and phone providers, financial institutions, communications and other companies to turn over your records, without probable cause — and ordering them not to reveal such disclosures to the suspects in question.
Edward Snowden confirmed to the world that the U.S. government collects communications data from the servers of nine leading U.S. internet companies including Google, Facebook, Microsoft, YouTube, Yahoo, Skype, and Apple, as well as telephone records from companies like Verizon, despite the fact that Obama had specifically told the public that this was not the case.
His leaks also led to the revelations that the NSA basically requires many software manufacturers to include a backdoor so they can circumvent VPNs and secure encryption, and that they can easily remote control many smart phones on the market today, turning on your camera, accessing your contacts, and tracking your GPS on your iPhone, Blackberry, or Android.
Unfortunately, shortly after assuming power, contrary to many of the promises he’d made on the campaign trail, about “transparency” and “hope” and “change”, Obama closed the door on investigating systemic violations of the law by the notoriously abusive Bush administration (including the Nuremberg principles that dictate war crimes), in fact expanding several abusive programs, and leading the federal government’s war on whistleblowers — now threatening to label journalists as terrorists if they report on government misdeeds.
In fact, the United States President now claims the inherent authority to order the extrajudicial assassination of any U.S. citizen whom he considers allied with terrorists. That means there is no warrant, no trial, no judge, no jury. No questions asked. Just unmanned Predator drones raining down Hellfire missiles from the sky. Just on the President’s hunch.
Contrary to the warnings of some of the Founding Fathers and early U.S. leaders, we have handed over control of the money supply to central bankers, who manipulate our economy in ways few people really understand, and have abused their responsibilities by printing trillions of dollars and debasing the currency.
Many states have gone bankrupt, the federal government is heavily in debt and virtually insolvent, leaving it hungry to plunder the wealth and productive capabilities of its citizens.
After the 2008 financial crisis, the administration basically crafted a $25 billion settlement which effectively absolved the banking cartels of any consequences for engaging in systemic mortgage fraud. Everyone at Goldman Sachs still took home multi-million dollar bonuses.
The government still wants to deprive women the right to make their own decisions about their bodies, to regulate what types of sexual relationships are acceptable and who can marry, whether we can collect the rainwater that falls on our own roofs, and it continues to deny adults sovereignty over their own consciousness.
And that’s only the tip of the iceberg. If none of this bothers you, it is only a matter of time before someone will abuse their powers in a way that you will find unacceptable. But chances are that by then it will be so accepted as status quo that it will take a revolution to change it.
“Being a patriot doesn’t mean prioritizing service to government above all else. Being a patriot means knowing when to protect your country, knowing when to protect your Constitution, knowing when to protect your countrymen, from the violations of and encroachments of adversaries. And those adversaries don’t have to be foreign countries.”
—Edward Snowden
From our earliest interactions inside the classroom, with the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, we have all been raised on a steady diet of American propaganda and brainwashing our entire lives — reinforcing myths like the idea that the United States is the greatest nation in the world, that the terrorists “hate us because of our freedom”, and that we are the anointed defenders and exporters of democracy across the globe.
But we are not the role models for freedom that we think we are.
According to the 2013 Economic Freedom of the World Annual Report — an index published jointly by the Wall Street Journal and the Heritage Foundation which focuses on 10 fundamental economic freedoms: business freedom, trade freedom, fiscal freedom, government size, monetary freedom, investment freedom, financial freedom, property rights, freedom from corruption, and labor freedom — the U.S. has dwindled to the 17th spot, behind the United Arab Emirates, Mauritius, Finland, Bahrain, Chile, Jordan, Taiwan, Estonia, and many more.
From 1980 to 2000, before the Bush and Obama administrations’ policies decimated that ranking, the United States was generally rated the third freest economy in the world, ranking behind only Hong Kong and Singapore.
Particularly in the area of “freedom from corruption” and “labor freedom”, we don’t rank that well.
According to the UN’s own 2013 Human Development Index report, we come in at a meager #16 on the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index — a “measure of the average level of human development of people in a society once inequality is taken into account” — below Ireland, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic, among many others.
Like Will McAvoy says in the opening episode of (one of the few decent shows on television) The Newsroom, the U.S. is not as “star-spangled awesome” as we were all raised to believe it is:
“…we lead the world in only three categories: number of incarcerated citizens per capita, number of adults who believe angels are real, and defense spending — where we spend more than the next 26 countries combined (25 of whom are allies)…”
Now taking away people’s freedom is one area we are the undisputed champion:
But at least we can pick who leads us, right? We can enact change through voting!
Well, if you believe that the two-party system and the unprecedented amounts of money required to run for any major office allow for a level playing field — if you believe anyone on that ballot that you could possibly cast your vote for hasn’t already been bought and paid for by special interests — then you really have been indoctrinated into believing the statist propaganda that it is the highest civic virtue to vote for those who want to rob you.
“Would I willingly enter into a relationship with the U.S. government for any reason other than if someone pointed a gun at me? No way.
The sales pitch that goes with democracy is people can vote to choose the government they want, but that’s a lie. We might get to tinker around the margins, but the central organism of states — which is murder, robbery, rape — continues on.”
—Mike Gogulski
Though it’s tough literature to digest, even as a rather libertarian-leaning freedom-lover, the philosopher Stefan Molyneux, in his rational case for voluntaryism and anarchic society Everyday Anarchy, breaks down how the very concept of the state, and democratic society, are underpinned by contrary values that should cause cognitive dissonance for anyone who takes a step back to think critically:
“…we are told that free-market monopolies are dangerous and exploitive. Companies that wish to voluntarily do business with us, and must appeal to our self-interest, to mutual advantage, are considered grave threats to our personal freedoms.
And — the solution that is proposed by almost everyone to the ‘problem’ of voluntary economic interaction?
Well, since voluntary and peaceful ‘monopolies’ are so terribly evil, the solution that is always proposed is to create an involuntary, coercive, and violent monopoly in the form of a government.
Thus voluntary and peaceful ‘monopolies’ are a great evil — but the involuntary and violent monopoly of the state is the greatest good!?”
—Stefan Molyneux
At the end of the day, all of the State’s authority rests on the fact that they have the guns. If you don’t like their rules, they will use the threat of force, and violence if necessary, to make you comply. This is how taxes continue to get paid, it is how wars are funded, and it means we continue to add bodies to the mountain of dead, and continue to plunder the wealth of the people to pay for it.
Otherwise they will come to your door, with guns, and they will lock you up in a cage.
And yet, they have us believing we are born in the greatest, freest nation in the world.
It is not overt, but much like in the film The Matrix, in many ways the freedom you think you enjoy is actually slavery. You are born into a prison you cannot smell or taste or touch, a prison for your mind.
If you want to start cracking the mysteries of the logic we’ve inherited, I highly suggest giving Molyneux’s book and it’s sequels a read.
But, let’s take a step back. Our society has not always been like this.
And more importantly, your life doesn’t have to remain this way. In the extreme case, there are people who have renounced their U.S. citizenship in exchange for another, or completely opted out of the state. I don’t recommend going that far. But you can escape the Matrix.
Unless you’re satisfied with your juicy steak — knowing that ignorance is bliss.
Do you remember the crazy dreams and hopes you had as a child? Your optimism and imaginative sense of adventure?
Do you remember a time when the world seemed full of possibilities — how you used to dream of what you could become, what you could achieve?
It is amusing how we still tell children that they can be anything they really want to be when they grow up — they can do anything they put their minds to — yet when I try to explain to adults how they can drastically change their lives for the better, that they don’t have to play by the traditional “rules” or do the same things everybody else is doing, or what people expect of you in general, they can often be completely cynical at such “naive” optimism.
If we all chase our dreams, who will do the shit jobs? they asked when I released my recent video.
Some of us have bills to pay… mouths to feed.
It must be nice to be “privileged” enough to be able to travel and try adventure sports.
This is only for trust-fund kids who don’t have to work or contribute anything to society.
Well I never had a trust fund. And I have responsibilities, and bills, and debts, and I’ve worked 17 jobs…
But the point is that these are all excuses.
It is surprising from some of the responses to this video how thoroughly brainwashed we are from a lifetime of propaganda.
Yes, I was there for a long time myself.
At some point or another in our lives, most of us give up on our big dreams. More often than not, we lose the belief that anything extraordinary is possible in this life.
You probably don’t remember precisely when it happened — when your lofty dreams and aspirations finally got stamped out of you.
That’s not surprising. The process of being made compliant and transformed into an obedient cog in the machine starts early and gradually — with all the social conditioning we endure in our re-education camps we call schools, all the times you were told you were being “unrealistic” and to settle for a “normal” life.
They put out the fire inside you. They hooked you up to be a little battery in their human farm — while they distract you with the trappings of your average career — the big screen TVs, the fancy cars, the mindless TV shows, the Rolex watch, the wedding ring, the white picket fence.
Even the way you work, fighting traffic on your commute to the office, sitting in a box all day, 9-to-5 like all the other drones, save your money and your dreams for “retirement”, postponing your goals until you’re too old to really make them a reality, and be a good worker bee, it’s all by their design:
“The ultimate tool for corporations to sustain a culture of this sort is to develop the 40-hour workweek as the normal lifestyle. Under these working conditions people have to build a life in the evenings and on weekends. This arrangement makes us naturally more inclined to spend heavily on entertainment and conveniences because our free time is so scarce.”
We are still working in a way that was designed for factory workers during the Industrial Revolution times in Britain.
And you think this is “normal”.
But it’s all a lie!
This template life we’re all expected to accept is in fact a prison. The Matrix has you, Neo.
You see, this “reality” you’ve been brought up and educated into is, in fact, a fraud — built on the institutionalized initiation of force which is the foundation of State power, backed up by violence, and reliant on the eternal taxation and exploitation of the labor force, and where you have been near completely robbed of your personal power and sovereignty.
This is what the Founding Fathers warned us about. These are the reasons they fought to free themselves from King George III and the British Empire!
Your choices are not your own; your money is not your own, but manipulated and controlled by exempt plutocrats; you are taxed more than a medieval serf, and effectively without representation; you are a number in a database, recorded and monitored; you are instructed what you can and cannot do in your personal life — subject to the whims of an ever-expanding autocratic elite.
“There is no art which government sooner learns than that of draining money from the pockets of the people.”
—Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations
Where you thought you were free, the truth is you are plugged in to a vast machine — a matrix of control and indoctrination.
But it doesn’t have to be this way!
In order to achieve true freedom, you have to be able to make money, control your time, and eliminate the mindset that you are subject to any higher authority.
The truth is, you don’t have to be a slave to geography anymore — you can live where you want, how you want. You can take control of your time and spend it how you want, not how others tell you.
You can declare your sovereignty and assert your right to freedom and happiness. You see, there is a real alternative to “normal” life, and if you’ve got the determination and the ambition, then there is a way to break out — permanently.
There is another world out there where hope is reborn and where opportunity is plentiful. Where power is returned to the individual. It’s the world of the permanent travelers, the location-independent, and the digital nomads — those of us who have moved beyond the concept of belonging to any one nation-state anymore.
“Where liberty is, there is my country.”
—Benjamin Franklin
Do you remember when politicians and government workers were called “public servants”? Today, bureaucrats pay cheap lip service to the idea of being at the service of the people. But in reality, the government really just manipulates us and takes advantage of us for our productivity and potential tax revenue instead.
But the rules are all different for the wealthy elite and major corporations. They invest in and influence national economies, and for that they are often welcomed with red carpets. Nation-states know that if the perks in another jurisdiction are sexier, these high rollers can pack up and go where the conditions are more attractive.
Multinational corporations have long taken advantage of geo-arbitrage to get the best that each country has to offer:
Manufacturing in China
Outsourcing knowledge work to India
Call centers in the Philippines
Incorporating offshore in the Caribbean or Ireland or Singapore
Banking in Luxembourg or Switzerland
You get the point.
But, you see, this is also what’s known as Multiple Flag Theory… and today, location-independent entrepreneurs and permanent travelers can take advantage of these principles just like the large multinationals!
To the multinationals, to the super-rich, and to permanent travelers, we look at governments as service providers. If they offer a good product at a reasonable price, and make you feel welcome and prosperous, you stay with them.
But if a competitor offers a better deal, or if your hosts get too greedy, you get the heck out of dodge. Business opportunities, financial privacy, taxes, social values, economic and political stability, freedom of travel, medical standards, property rights, safety, and much more are all taken into consideration when choosing where to plant our “flags”.
This ability to look for opportunities and take advantage of the most competitive offers on the market is a major benefit of being location-independent.
Our relationship with governments can be a matter of choice.
Now we get to take our sovereignty back. And we get to create our own micro-multinational businesses, easier than ever.
No government can be trusted to control your freedom and spend your money better than you could. They will not take your best interests to heart.
All too often, politicians try to redistribute wealth (largely to themselves for pet projects and to fund perpetual wars — using social causes as the fallacious excuse for raising your taxes). In the end, they will only succeed in redistributing taxpayers. But people will do what is in their own personal interest, and wealth will flow where it is most protected.
As my friend Dan Andrews wrote earlier in the week — the traditional “retirement” wager we’ve been sold is a huge risk anyways, and digital nomads are writing a new wealth script to compete with the old ones.
You can live a luxurious lifestyle overseas at a fraction of the cost you would pay in your home country. You can make money anywhere — whether it’s Thailand, China, Costa Rica, Chile, New Zealand, Ecuador, or online… and you can break into any network of peers you wish, to mix and mingle with the elite if you desire.
And that SCARES. THE. SHIT. out of governments.
It’s a whole other world — one where you can pay significantly less tax, where you can better protect your assets, and where your business and financial affairs can remain much more private. It’s a lifestyle and a worldview that allows personal freedom to flourish, where you can make your own choices — a world where much more opportunity exists.
It’s a world outside the Matrix. However, it’s early days, and it’s a world that is still only known to very few.
For some people, corporate life and the pursuit of the white picket fence are enough.
But for others, this template lifestyle can become an oppressive system that breeds complacency — it tells you to “be realistic” about your dreams, what you want to do, be, and have in life — and it can begin to feel like a prison cell.
If you’re reading my site, my guess is you fall into the latter camp.
You dream big.
I’ll bet you want to grab life by the horns, find your passion, chase after wild goals, and reach your full potential, don’t you?
And you’re interested in creating more freedom for yourself, aren’t you? More financial independence, more free time, more liberty to choose what projects you work on (and to develop your own creative projects!), and more freedom of location.
Doesn’t that sound like the kind of freedom you want in your life?
Well, what are you doing to declare your own independence?
Before you read on, stop, and imagine having the ability to choose when and where you work. Imagine being able to choose what projects you work on, based on what you’re passionate about and what gets you excited.
Imagine being able to partner with fun, interesting people…
Imagine creating your own business — something that gets you excited to wake up in the morning, something you’re proud and excited to create and offer to the world.
What does your own business look like in your head? What value do you want to offer to the people around you?
Imagine having the ability to live anywhere in the world you choose. Being able to pack up a few bags and spend a month in Mexico, a month in Bali, a month in Europe…
Imagine traveling anywhere in the world and instantly being able to connect with new friends, have incredible experiences like you only see in the movies, and feeling like a local…
Wouldn’t it be great if you were in control of creating your own financial freedom, time freedom, and location freedom? Doesn’t that sound like something you’d love to be able to do?
What does this kind of individual liberty mean for you? The freedom to do what you want to… to be what you want to be… to go where you want to go… and to live the way you want to. What would it feel like to have that independence? Where would you go? What would you build?
I think you’ll agree that liberating your mind from the shackles of conventional thinking, of traditional work and the template lifestyle, is the first step in bending the rules of reality to your will — envisioning and creating the lifestyle that you truly want — not the one your parents, your boss, your teachers, your politicians, or the TV tell you that you should want.
This Matrix has rules. And just like Morpheus said, some of these invisible rules can be bent. Some of them can be broken. But first you need to learn to see the Matrix, you need to learn the rules before you can change them.
To understand this emerging world, you need to understand how the current power structures of nation-states are crumbling, and why. Like my friend Ron Davison describes in his book The Fourth Economy, you need to understand how power is shifting from governments to the entrepreneur and the individual — resulting in the slow extinction of the nation-state, and their last violent gasps for air as the internet and globalization give the individual more sovereignty.
And you need to learn how, with the right insight, you can participate and benefit from the epic changes that will be happening over the coming decades.
You are at a crossroads. The choices you make will have a dramatic impact on the rest of your life.
Will you choose to Live your Life like a Hero? To take back control and take responsibility for yourself — to build something of your own and create your own destiny?
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This IS the thrillingly heroic lifestyle… the freedom lifestyle. Most people think it’s SO much harder than it is. SO much more expensive than it is.
But once you learn that the rules can be broken… that what you’ve been told all along — how hard it is, how expensive it is, that what you want is impossible — once you learn that these things aren’t necessarily true… it will become much easier to pursue your ideal lifestyle…
You’ll learn you can do the “impossible”.
A lot of my friends and I have broken the rules. We’ve built startups that bring in hundreds of thousands of dollars a month, we’ve published books, we’ve created blogs that attract thousands of visitors and subscribers, created web-based businesses that allow us to work when and where we want, made friends around the globe, gone vagabonding around the world, taken month-long mini-retirements in tropical jetset destinations, and much much more.
What are YOU doing to declare your own independence?
If you’re someone who wants a life free from the tyrannical oppression of the office, the corporate life, of being enslaved to work for someone else, on their terms, of being beholden to external power structures that dictate what you can and can’t do with your life, then join me on an epic Hero’s Journey toward freedom.
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I’ll share more with you next week about Multiple Flag Theory and some expert tips on how you can incorporate offshore to take advantage of some of the benefits I’ve shared above.
Read the original article on Thrilling Heroics here: 238 Years Later: Is the United States Still the Land of the Free?