The World Isn’t Free, But YOU Can Be: A Personal Message From IMI’s Founder

If you’re a regular IMI reader, chances are good you place a high value on personal liberty.

You’re probably a free thinker, maybe even a bit cantankerous and disagreeable: The kind of person that would pass the Milgram experiment.

You likely think taxes are too high, the state is too big, and the restrictions on our movements are too many.

Many of us have been that one person at the dinner party who everyone thinks is a bit extreme because we championed the sale of citizenship, Austrian school economics, or ending the war on drugs. Most of us have spent a lot of time advocating for more individual liberty and smaller government with friends and relatives.

But if we’re being honest, were those efforts usually successful?

I think not. At least not in my case.

And there’s a lesson in there, as we shall see.

Why convincing your fellow humans to want freedom is so difficult

In my late teens and early 20s, I spent an inordinate amount of time engaged in fruitless political arguments.

I was convinced that if only I could present people with rational arguments in the right order, they too would eventually come around to understanding that more liberty leads to better outcomes for society.

So, I would be patient with people and take the time to explain the non-aggression principle to my aunt who worked in the public sector, or write carefully crafted Facebook posts and respond at length when people inevitably asked who would build the roads in a free society.

Practically never was I able to change people’s minds. It didn’t matter how sound my arguments were. It didn’t matter that all the evidence pointed in the same direction. 

People’s minds were made up, and no amount of well-articulated reasoning was going to change that. 

This could be because most people have tied their identities to certain ideological positions, and changing their minds is too painful. Too much cognitive dissonance, perhaps. Or the social disapproval of espousing such views may be too much for them.

But, more importantly, I think the reason it’s so hard to change people’s minds on political issues through argumentation is that most people have not arrived at their ideological positions through a dispassionate consideration of the facts.

Instead, they’ve adopted their positions based on their feelings and the feelings of their tribes. Their positions are rooted in their subconscious and emotions, not logical reasoning. They only use logical reasoning post hoc to justify and rationalize the beliefs they already hold.

For this reason, many people around the world continue to believe that the state is a benevolent force, that tax is necessary for a civilized society, and that democracy leads to freedom.

My mistake was thinking I could reason people out of beliefs they had not been reasoned into to begin with. It’s a bit like trying to talk to creationists about evolution: The facts don’t matter.

And even if they agree with you in principle, in the abstract, that liberty works better, all it takes to make them yearn for authoritarianism again is some manufactured “hobgoblin or boogeyman,” as Mencken put it, that instills fear in people.

Like a pandemic. 

So, I concluded that talking people into wanting freedom was largely ineffective.

Next, I tried voting for freedom. In both local and national elections, I would hand in my ballot where I had ticked the box for whatever party had the most liberty-focused platform.

But invariably, when the votes were counted, the party I had voted for ended up with – at best – one percent of the votes.

My vote had done nothing to move the needle in the direction of liberty. What it had done, of course, was to legitimize a system that lets us pick our rulers from a selection of state-approved rulers every four years. 

But whoever wins the election, we’ll still have high taxes, inflation, and byzantine regulations. Busybody bureaucrats will still tell us how we must behave and constantly monitor us to ensure compliance.

Most people value safety more than freedom and don’t understand that you can’t have safety without freedom. People who want true freedom will always be in the minority. 

Political action, therefore, in almost all cases, is a waste of time and energy. And so is arguing with your aunt at Thanksgiving dinner. 

First, you must become a good ambassador for freedom

So, virtually nothing we say or argue seems to have any effect on bringing about a freer world. The world isn’t free, and I’ve come to terms with the observation that much of the world doesn’t even want to be free. 

So, if that’s the case, what can we do to gain freedom and make others want it, too?

For starters, we need to become good ambassadors for freedom. Let me explain: 

Back when I was still trying to gain freedom by voting and arguing with people (and getting nowhere), I became extremely frustrated.

I was annoyed at the world, at my parents, at my teachers, at my friends, and at the news for their willful blindness to all the logic and empirical data that showed, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that individual liberty leads to better outcomes.

It made me bitter and world-weary. It made me a misanthrope.

In brief, it made me a terrible ambassador for freedom.

People would look at me and think, “Well, Christian is always saying that taxation is theft and that the government does more harm than good, but he looks miserable and resentful, so why would I listen to him?”

It’s a valid question: Why should people listen to you?

What types of people do we listen to? Who are the individuals in society on whose every word we hang?

The answer is happy and successful people. People who have what we want or who are what we want to be.

Does Warren Buffett need to convince people that his investment principles are valid? Does Cristiano Ronaldo need to persuade people that his exercise regimen will make them better football players?

Of course not. Because they have already demonstrated through their results that they know what they’re talking about.

Successful people don’t have to strive to get people to take their advice. People line up to solicit their advice because they can see with their own eyes that their judgment is sound.

By the same token, each of us needs to show that freedom works for us as individuals. Only then will people listen to us when we advocate for liberty on a society-wide scale.

We have to be happy and successful. We have to prosper financially, mentally, physically, and emotionally.

We have to lead by example.

And to do that, we must find freedom in our own lives, irrespective of what’s going on in the rest of society. 

We need to position ourselves in such a way that, when the proverbial fecal matter hits the fan, we, along with our assets and the people we care about, are shielded from the fallout. 

When broad segments of society are pummeled by hyperinflation, empty social security coffers, crushing tax burdens, lockdowns, political violence, or war, we need to be out of dodge, thriving, and with our lives and assets insulated from all that. 

And then the people who once dismissed you as a nut will come asking for your advice or help. You’ll have credibility. People will finally listen.

But even if they don’t, even if they persist in their wicked ways, well, at least you and those important to you will be free and prosperous.

And the purpose of IMI, in a nutshell, is to help people find freedom in an unfree world.

The pragmatist’s path to personal liberty

While we have lost countless freedoms over the last century, IMI focuses on the freedom that underpins many others: Freedom of movement and settlement.

It’s a fundamental freedom because as long as you have it, you can use it to regain the others: Freedom from confiscation (taxation), monetary freedom, freedom of association, freedom of religion, and so on. As long as you have your choice in jurisdiction, you can use it to attain the other liberties.

But more importantly, freedom of movement and settlement is one of the few freedoms that are entirely within the power of the individual to gain.

As an individual living in a democracy, you typically can’t choose which freedoms your society has without convincing the majority of voters to agree with you, which is more or less impossible. But you can choose where to live as long as you have freedom of movement and settlement.

Many don’t realize how recently we took freedom of movement and settlement for granted. At least in the West, before WWI, you didn’t generally need a passport to travel. In most countries, you could just show up. And nobody checked how long you were staying.

Today, freedom of movement and settlement is unavailable to most of us. But it’s within our power as individuals to regain it, by building a diversified portfolio of residencies and citizenships that grant you admission and settlement rights in the places that interest you.

Once you have the freedom to change jurisdictions, you effectively also have the freedom to change your tax rate, to use the currency you wish, to follow your preferred religion, to avoid censorship or information restrictions, and so on.

So, to find freedom for yourself and your loved ones, you need to start by regaining mobility and settlement freedom.

If you have only one citizenship and one residency, you are essentially giving a single government a monopoly over you.

And if there’s anything we know about monopolies, it’s that they inevitably lead to two things: Lower quality services – and at a higher price.

With monopolies, you get things like the post office or the DMV. They don’t need to provide good service because, well, where else are you going to go?

It’s no different with countries. If you have only one country, you have all your eggs in one basket. You are under the thumb of a single government, and it has little incentive to treat you better.

If you have only one country, that country has all the leverage. You need to start shifting the leverage away from the country and toward yourself.

You need to start looking at countries through the lens of a consumer: What do I get, and what do I pay? Ask not what you can do for your country; ask what your next country can do for you.

As a group, we need to start subjecting countries to the forces of competition for talent and capital so that we can encourage them to provide a better service at a lower price.

You can’t fight the state, but you can marginalize it in your own life

I’m originally from Norway, but over the last 18 years, I’ve lived in 8 different countries. Right now, I live in Portugal because it’s a nice place that offers me decent terms with regard to taxation.

But I don’t pay much attention to or worry about Portuguese politics.

The last time they had an election, I didn’t even notice until after the fact.

I am not tremendously concerned about the outcome of Portuguese elections because: 

• my assets are not in Portugal, and 
• if Portugal’s terms are no longer to my liking, I have half a dozen other places around the world I can go to at the drop of a hat. 

I would simply pack up my things and take my family, my income, and my capital somewhere else. I would, as my friend Andrew Henderson says, go where I’m treated best.

Until recently, barriers to exit – i.e., relocating – were prohibitive. Most people couldn’t earn a living remotely, and most assets were physical and difficult or impossible to bring with you.

But now, millions of people are taking up remote work every month. And assets are increasingly virtual rather than physical, which means they are mobile, too.    

Now that so many of us are location-independent, more and more people are realizing they needn’t content themselves with their geographic circumstances. 

“Voting with your feet,” for the first time in history, is now a viable option for the masses.

If we can liberate the 1%, the other 99% will come easy

Can you imagine how well governments would treat us if we all had multiple citizenships? If we all had options? If we all had homes on multiple continents, friends around the world, and assets domiciled in dozens of jurisdictions?

In other words, can you imagine how countries would treat us if they were subject to competition?

Do you really think we’d have things like inheritance tax, social credit scores, or mandatory military service? Certainly not!

At this point, you might say, “Yes, but Christian, most people are not in a position to get multiple citizenships and residencies.”

This is true. But we don’t actually need most people to have multiple citizenships to enjoy these effects. We only need the people who can make the state feel enough pain to motivate change.

In most developed countries, the top 1% of income earners account for roughly half of income tax payments. So, this small group has considerable leverage.

If enough of them leave, the government will feel it. It will be forced to treat citizens like businesses treat customers: Improve conditions or lose their biggest cash cows.

And when the government improves conditions, such as by cutting taxes or removing regulations, they make the terms better for everyone, not just the one percent. 

The rich always get the nice things first, but their willingness to pay top dollar for them ends up making the nice things available to everyone in the long run (see: The Problem Isn’t That the Rich Can Buy Citizenships But That Everyone Else Can’t).

And in that sense, this one percent – the clientele that investment migration serves – will be the thin end of the wedge that brings about a kind of freedom our forebears, who didn’t have the technology and speed of travel we do, could only dream of.

Investor migrants and the people who serve them, therefore, are freedom fighters in the most practical, feasible sense.

They will not give you freedom. You have to take it.

The messages I’d like you to leave with are essentially these:

Attempting to convince people that freedom works best is, in 9 out of 10 cases, a futile endeavor and always an uphill battle. Instead, show them how freedom has worked for you, and you’ll find people listening to your advice in no time.

Instead of trying to resist government edicts you disagree with – like going to prison for taking a principled stance and refusing to pay income tax – you should make government largely irrelevant in your life.

Instead of hoping that your vote will give you freedom, remove yourself, your skills, and your capital from the offending jurisdiction and take your freedom.

And finally, dedicating efforts to bringing freedom to a society that has already made it abundantly clear it doesn’t want to be free will just make you jaded and resentful. 

So, instead of trying to change the world, just change your world.

The world isn’t free. But you can be.