The Promised Land
My thoughts on Paraguay
I’m probably going to offend, or at the very least, trample on the beliefs of just about everyone in this article. It’s not my goal to do so. My goal is to tell you my most accurate understanding of the truth. Having a more accurate understanding of reality is what will enable you to make better decisions, and therefore live a life with the highest likelihood of success. For whatever reason, I’m particularly drawn to such truths where the public perception, or what is acceptable to believe, is very far from reality. I think this is because such circumstances almost always present the greatest opportunities.
So please, before getting pissed off, or dismissing me as mean/rude, ask yourself, is what I’m saying true? and think about the consequences of that.
Why leave?
Unless you have been living under a rock, the west is falling apart. Their populations do not believe in private property, voluntary trade, equal treatment under the rule of law, freedom of speech isn’t even valued; the foundations of prosperity have been demolished and that’s why things are crumbling (most people wouldn’t even be able to recognize how these things have been destroyed as they are basically fast asleep NPCs). The decline of these once great nations will continue, their governments are bankrupt, and no one has any appetite or even a basic understanding of the kind of solutions which will fix the problem. Things will continue to get worse.
You already know this though. You are not retarded.
This is not the focus of this article though. The focus is on what to do about it.
One of the main responsibilities of a capable, thinking man in the 21st century is to not feed any governments. You see, governments are by their very nature parasitic entities, like leeches. They do not produce wealth, they survive off of the stolen blood of others. The biggest mistake governments have made though, is becoming such ginormous parasitic beasts, that they cannot survive without a huge amount of feeding. Now that all of the intelligent among us have started to recognize what’s going on, and begun the task of taking all of our resources and productive talents out of the reach of governments, they will die under the weight of themselves without their host - your mind.
With this in consideration, one of the primary focuses of where we must go, is somewhere in which our private property rights are respected. They are not being syphoned off to feed the enemy. This is what drew me to Paraguay.
Paraguay
Paraguay operates under a territorial tax system, which means all of your assets and income earned inside Paraguay, are taxed in Paraguay (at a fairly low rate). However, all of your assets and income earned outside Paraguay, are not subject to taxation in Paraguay, meaning you can become a tax resident in Paraguay and live tax free on all your investments outside the country. This is an absolute game changer for returns when investing.
To put it into context, this is what happens if you start with $1 and double your money for 20 years. In the middle column, you’re untaxed, on the right, you’re taxed at 40%.
Anyone who allows themselves to be taxed will be utterly crushed, and those who don’t will outperform to a degree which those stuck in the system will find difficult to comprehend.
Anyway, life isn’t just about money, what else is there to Paraguay?
The Good
The Other expats
I’m going to start with my favorite one. The other expats I meet there are absolutely amazing. None of them are retarded. None of them are backpackers. They’re all professional, driven, goal-orientated, focused individuals intent on making themselves more successful in all walks of life. It really is a pleasure to be around, and helps you become a more honest version of yourself.
On the contrary, I recently went to England, where you have to spend the first 5 minutes of talking to most people, working out to what level you can be honest with them before they’d self-combust because you’re racist/sexist/homophobic/a Tory. It’s exhausting, and even if you can resist that utterly foolish mentality, being in that environment will prevent you from fully developing your thoughts. I don’t want to be too disparaging of England though, because I do have lots of very good friends there with whom this isn’t an issue, and if you’re reading this you are most likely one of them. This is definitely an issue with the general populous though.
Supermarkets
By Latin American standards, they’re very high quality, well designed, great variety, inexpensive. However, I must admit they are nowhere near UK or Asian standards. No organic fruit and veg so we’ll probably all die of cancer in a few years because of the pesticides, meat packaged in 1kg lumps instead of individual portions, and if you want some fancy products they’re often difficult to find.
Restaurants
This is where Paraguay really shines. ^When we arrived you could get this 600g Tomahawk steak in a very nice restaurant for £10, I think it’s about £11 now. The restaurant scene is pretty high quality, incredibly priced, big portions. It’s one of my favorite places to go out and eat, and you can do it almost every day as it’s healthy, real foods like big steaks, and it doesn’t cost much more than cooking it yourself.
Feel like a King
There’s a few other tax havens around the world: Dubai, Monaco, Cayman Islands. I went to Dubai last year, and the biggest problem I had with it was that I felt like a peasant for not owning a Ferrari. Everyone there’s a multi-millionaire.
It’s very important, as a man, to be outcompeting the other men in your locale. We’re biologically driven to do this, and it’s for good reason.
Cost of living
I mentioned the territorial tax above, which is really a gamechanger for wealth building. Another thing to consider is the cost of living here is very low. If you were starting out, I’d suggest getting an online job in sales ($3k-$10k/m), keeping your expenses as low as possible, renting an apartment for $600/m, and then you could live off another $600, and you just invest the rest and compound grow it.
Cheap Energy
As the west continues committing economic suicide by investing in wind and solar, all of Paraguay’s electricity is supplied by a hydroelectric damn which provides cheap and abundant power. Your heating bill does not exist anymore. An advantage now, but I think gas and oil prices are going much higher so this will begin to be an even bigger advantage, not just for you individually, but for businesses to thrive within the country.
Residency
Applying for residency is relatively cheap ($2000), you can then get your tax residency there and you don’t even have to stay. You can travel the rest of the world whilst being a tax resident of Paraguay.
The Bad
It’s very far away from anywhere - Both a plus and a minus as it means you don’t get lots of tourists, but it is a long journey there.
Heat - In their summer (Dec - March) it’s about 38°C everyday, too much.
Shops - While the shopping is reasonable now, it’s not as good as elsewhere in the world, and it is a bit annoying to have to ship in a lot of things from Amazon US.
The Big Mistake
In the year 1814, Paraguayan Ruler José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia wrote into law that it was illegal for 2 Ethnic Europeans to marry. They must instead mix with the local culture and interbreed with the aboriginals. The goal of this was to become the most “Mestizo” (mixed-race) culture in Latin America. This was such a success that Paraguay became the only country on the continent to adopt the local language “Guarani” as a national language.
What a beautiful idea!
This all sounds lovely, and in a lot of ways it really is. But… The result has also been an unmitigated disaster for the average IQ of the country.
There’s something fundamental to human progress about intelligence. Going from European ethnicity, where the average IQ is roughly 100, to an average IQ of 80 is really going to hamper the potential of nation.
Alternatively, you have neighboring Uruguay and Argentina, which both opted for a policy of wiping out the native populations. Although brutal, this led to their average IQs being the highest in the region (88.56 and 87.28 respectively). You can implement all the free-market policies you want, but when the average IQ is so low that most have difficulty learning to read, it will be basically impossible for Paraguay to ever become a really great nation.
I have a feeling this last section may be a bit controversial with some people. If you are one of those people: it’s possible I’m wrong (and there is reasonable evidence to suggest at least part of the problem is due to poor nutrition rather than genetics), please do say why you think so in the comments below, but I think its far more likely you’re putting being ‘nice’ and what’s socially acceptable above trying to accurately see what is true, regardless of how ugly it is. I would suggest you have a deep conversation with yourself about your values as this type of thinking is a recipe for disaster. However, I would also add, what I discussed above is an average. Intelligence varies significantly within populations and most of the Paraguayans I meet are actually pretty smart (& definitely better at learning a 2nd language than me), so please don’t feel personally offended by these statistics.
Closing Thoughts
The average Paraguayan is Economically illiterate. As in the west, most have no idea what the foundations of prosperity are. However, the current government still does not infringe on your rights too much relative to other nation states. The idea this has come about from a well educated “conservative” population, propelled forward by a democratic system in which they have, and will continue to, demand smaller government is dangerously naive in my opinion. The current state of things has come about because they only switched from dictatorship to democracy in 1989. The parasitic government blob, has had a much shorter time to metastasize. Furthermore, it has also had a much smaller host to feed off, and it isn’t really even a democracy, the main party is run by 1 family who wants to maintain good conditions for their businesses to run in. All of this presents an opportunity. Whilst the cancerous tumor that is government is small and weak, you can base yourself there. You will be more free than in any big western nation to make yourself a prosperous individual. However, make no mistake about it, Paraguay suffers from all the same underlying problems which all western democratic nation states suffer from. Given enough time, the economically illiterate population, as they have in every other country, will vote themselves into much lower living standards than would otherwise have been attainable.
Paraguay is not the promised land. There is no physical location which is - It is a stepping stone. We must accept, that to maintain our freedom and grow our wealth during the era of the collapse of the democratic nation state as the dominant global power, we must always live on the frontiers, as far out of their reach as possible. This is until they collapse under the weight of themselves, and something new, foundationally different, which encourages prosperity and respects our rights, re-emerges.
That is when we return.
