Forbidden Knowledge
Information They Don’t Want You to Know
Sixth Edition
Robert E. Bauman JD
Editor
SOVEREIGN OFFSHORE SERVICES LLC. (The Sovereign Society)
98 S.E. Federal Highway, Suite 2 Delray Beach, FL 33483
TEL: 561-272-0413
Internet: http://www.sovereignsociety.com Email: [email protected]
and domestic rights reserved, protected by copyright laws of the United States and international treaties. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, printed or electronic or on the worldwide web, without written permission from the publisher, Sovereign Offshore Services, LLC., 98 SE 6th Ave., Suite 2, Delray Beach, FL 33483. Notice: This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold and distributed with the understanding that the authors, publisher and seller are not engaged in rendering legal, accounting or other professional advice or service. If legal or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional advisor should be sought.
The information and recommendations contained in this book have been compiled from sources considered reliable. Employees, officers and directors of The Sovereign Society do not receive fees or commissions for any recommendations of services or products in this book. Investment and other recommendations carry inherent risks. As no investment recommendation can be guaranteed, The Society takes no responsibility for any loss or inconvenience if one chooses to accept them.
The Sovereign Society advocates full compliance with applicable tax and financial reporting laws. U.S. law requires income taxes to be paid on all worldwide income wherever a U.S. person (citizen or resident alien) may live or have a residence. Each U.S. person who has a financial interest in, or signature authority over bank, securities, or other financial accounts in a foreign country that exceeds $10,000 in aggregate
value, must report that fact on his or her federal income tax return. An additional report must be filed by June 30th of each year on an information return (Form TDF 90 22.1) with the U.S. Treasury. Willful noncompliance may result in criminal prosecution. You should consult a qualified attorney or accountant to ensure that you know, understand and comply with these and any other reporting requirements.
Mr. Bauman, legal counsel to The Sovereign Society, served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1973 to 1981. He is an author and lecturer on many aspects of wealth protection. A member of the Dis-trict of Columbia Bar, he received his juris doctor degree from the Law Center of Georgetown University in 1964 and a degree in international relations from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service in 1959. He was honored with GU’s Distinguished Alumni Award in 1975. He is the author of The Gentleman from Maryland (Hearst Book Publish-ing, 1985), and of the following publications of The Sovereign Society:
The Complete Guide to Offshore Residency, Dual Citizenship & Second Pass-ports (7th ed. 2009), Where to Stash Your Cash Legally: Offshore Financial Centers of the World (4th ed. 2009), Swiss Money Secrets (2008), Panama Money Secrets (2005), Forbidden Knowledge (2004), and The Offshore Money Manual (Society, 2000). He also served for nine years as founding editor
of The Sovereign Society Offshore A-Letter, an Internet e-letter received daily by more than 225,000 readers worldwide. His writings have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, National Review and many other publications.
Forbidden Knowledge
Information They Don’t Want You to Know
Sixth Edition
Robert E. Bauman JD
Editor
Table of Contents
Preface ... 11
One: The Meaning of Natural Liberty ...15
Two: Second Passports & Dual Nationality ...65
Three: Offshore Banking: Privacy & Asset Protection ....123
Four: The Matter of Cash ...191
Five: Investments . ...227
Six: Your Finances & Estate Planning ...301
Seven: Taxes & How to Avoid Them Legally ...371
Eight: Offshore Tax Havens ...445
Nine: Very Special Places ...481
Ten: Personal Privacy ...592
Eleven: Personal Security ...655
Appendix I: Author Biography ...679
Preface
“Just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own. All the power it has society gives it, plus what it confiscates from time to time on one pretext or another; there is no other source from which State power can be drawn. Therefore every assumption of State power, whether by gift or seizure, leaves society with so much less power; there is never, nor can be, any strengthening of State power without a corresponding and equivalent depletion of social power.”
— Albert J. Nock (1935)
“Knowledge itself is power.”
— Francis Bacon, Meditationes Sacrae (1597) In the age-old struggle for individual liberty against the power of the state, there can be no question which side has triumphed throughout most of the twentieth century.
The one interest the state willingly sacrifices to the “common good” is personal liberty “the freedom to produce and create, to buy and sell, to speak and publish, to travel, to live freely.”
By diminishing liberty, government systematically subverts people’s responsibility for their own lives. It robs those who produce in order to placate those who only consume. The result is economic stagnation, ret-rogression and political corruption.
Since the seventeenth century, in England, France and America, and more recently in Russia and Eastern Europe, revolutions against this tyranny of the state were fought on behalf of an alternative we can call “natural liberty.”
At first successful, over time these revolutions cooled to complacency and hard-won freedom came to mean guaranteed entitlement to govern-ment largess.
True natural liberty means that each of us is the sole legitimate owner of our own life and destiny, free to act as we wish so long as we use no violence, fraud or other aggression against others.
That same freedom dictates a free-market economy enjoying peace-ful production and trade. It opposes government control by self-serving politicians.
No activity of statist government has diminished personal liberty more than the unchecked power to tax. In the United States, the United King-dom and Germany the effective rate of personal taxes far exceeds 50 percent of earnings. In some nations, such as France and Sweden, it is higher still. Business is taxed at even greater levels.
And everyone pays the ultimate price.
When government takes wealth from some and gives it to others, this forced redistribution diminishes the rights and well-being of the former, and often destroys the independence of the latter.
The issue of taxation involves nothing less than the human and natural right to own, use and enjoy private property, a “civil right” of the most basic kind.
Property and wealth determine personal power to control our own lives, to make decisions, to raise a family, to live free.
As Albert Jay Nock noted, every additional tax imposed diminishes our freedom. In an economic history of the Middle Ages, Paul Craig Roberts, the economist and columnist, showed that medieval serfs bound to the land and their masters rarely paid more than one-third of the value of their labors in taxes. For good reason: with very low productivity, serfs could not survive if forced to pay more taxes. With nothing to lose, they would revolt and kill the tax collectors.
Yet a half-millennium later, with capitalism’s enormously increased productivity, we have even less right to our earnings than did those enslaved serfs. Says Roberts: “You are not free when you do not own the product of your own labor.”
This book, Forbidden Knowledge, is a compendium of the acts and ideas of dynamic men and women who have exalted natural liberty in their own lives — and many do so to this day.
Albert Camus said, “Revolutionaries are men who say no!”
These authors have said an emphatic “NO” to Big Brother government. These practical people refuse to bow down to government, to submit to bureaucratic demands for ever higher taxes, greater controls and increased regulation.
mov-ing to countries that still believe in and practice natural liberty. There are such places, as you will see.
Some individuals you will meet in these pages call no single nation “home,” spending the changing seasons of each year in many places where they do business, and enjoy the new experiences and the pleasures life has to give.
Drawing on their experience, you too can have a life of natural liberty. You too can live, work, invest and do business without having to pay taxes to any government anywhere. And you can do this legally and with maximum personal security and financial privacy.
To knowledgeable people, true financial security means: • the maximum possible legal tax avoidance
• the strongest possible financial privacy • the greatest degree of asset protection • the most profitable investments
These goals, and how to achieve them, are spelled out in Forbidden
Knowledge.
Robert E. Bauman JD, Editor Delray Beach, Florida January 2010
Chapter One
The Meaning of
Natural Liberty
On Becoming a Sovereign Individual ... 17
Founding of The Sovereign Society ... 18
What We May Be ... 19
The “PT” Life...Is It For YOU? ... 21
The PT’s Five Flags ... 23
Is it Un-American to Go Offshore?. ... 27
Are You a Libertarian? ... 29
Atlas Shrugged: From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years ... 32
The New Cold War: Wealth is the Target ... 35
It All Starts With Property Rights ... 37
A Declaration of Independence for Sovereign Individuals ... 40
Security? What Security? ... 42
The War on Terror; Surrender of Civil Liberties? ... 43
The Roots of Terrorism ... 47
Where’s the Freest Land of All? ... 49
What’s Wrong with the U.S. Constitution ... 52
Revise the PATRIOT Act ... 58 Big Brother Lives ... 61
Editor’s Note
We live in one of those times when civilization becomes “a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.”
Unrecognized by most, the Old Order is dying, replaced by a new world economic structure built on free markets, massive technological change, instant communications, interlinked databases, electronic commerce and digital cash. These emerging systems inevitably weaken the power of traditional govern-ments, even as they have the very real potential to increase individual freedom, financial choice and personal privacy.
Today’s politicians saw what was coming and have been clawing desperately to stay ahead of the inevitable tide towards freedom. They’ll fail, as did the corrupt leaders of a dying Soviet Union, brazenly trying to stop the spread of free ideas by outlawing fax and copying machines. And just as myopic nine-teenth century Luddite workers failed to thwart the Industrial Revolution by destroying new labor saving machinery.
As evidence, consider how shared, instantaneous information contributes to the spread of economic collapse of national economies. The worst economic recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s may have been engendered by stupid government policies, mass irresponsibility in the part of American and European banks and greed in Wall Street and the City. But every nervous wave rippled hourly across time zones and stock markets as cable news covered the panic live and Internet trading went wild — yet another example of ir-resistible techno-advances forcing a totally new financial and banking reality, whether good or bad.
Consider the impact of the global recession. Stock of corporations whose billions in wealth existed only on paper or as future concepts that had rocketed up in price, even more quickly disappeared.
A select few people long ago anticipated the revolution now at hand. These are the Sovereign Individuals, voluntary citizens of the world-at-large, who seek freedom and fortune wherever they judge best.
Weary of oppressive governments and onerous taxes, of constant surveil-lance, they search the globe for greater personal liberty, for safe havens for their families, themselves and their wealth.
Now the rest of the world is coming to realize the successful strategies that the Sovereign Individual has known all along.
This first chapter highlights the basic principles of the freedom philosophy. This begins your guide to natural liberty.
On Becoming a Sovereign Individual
John Pugsley, The Sovereign Individual, June 1999
The Chairman of The Sovereign Society traces the evolution of freedom from serfdom to democracy, and now to a modern slavery by government in the name of democracy.
Since emerging from the caves and jungles of antiquity, mankind has been engaged in an epic struggle to discover the ultimate design for social organization, one that would allow civilization to progress in peace and ever-increasing prosperity.
For thousands of years, the idea of monarchy reigned. The overwhelm-ing majority accepted rule by an all-powerful government headed by a king appointed by God.
Then, about 200 years ago, an idea emerged that was to change the nature of government...the idea that all men and women were born with equal rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. In short, individuals were sovereign and had both the right and the responsibil-ity to rule themselves.
The concept of the divine right of kings was cast aside and in its place democracy was born; citizens were free to elect their rulers. It was believed the era of oppressive government was over.
When democracy was embryonic, it seemed to work. Individual free-dom from oppression led to a flourishing new world. Over the past few decades, however, there has been a steady growth of government as the masses of voters have learned that they can manipulate government to their advantage. They have found they can enrich themselves at the expense of the successful and thrifty.
such as the United States, Canada, Germany and the United Kingdom has had the same effect as the repressive policies of King George III had in the eighteenth century. It has led to a rising exodus of society’s most productive people as they migrate to political environments that offer greater asset protection, privacy and lower taxation.
Many are moving only their assets offshore to countries that offer more financial privacy and low or no taxation. A smaller but rising number are electing to move themselves and their families offshore as well.
While a few officially disconnect from their nation of birth by renounc-ing their citizenship, others merely reside offshore while retainrenounc-ing their original citizenship. Still others acquire dual nationality by ancestral right or through financial citizenship programs offered by many countries.
A few adopt the so-called “PT” lifestyle and become nomads, never staying long enough in one place to become subject to its taxes, thus becoming “Perpetual Travelers” or “Prior Taxpayers.” But all are united in seeking privacy, freedom of movement, low or no taxes, safety of capital and minimal connection with big government, and in being Prepared Thoroughly for the unexpected.
Founding of The Sovereign Society
John Pugsley, The Sovereign Individual, June 1999
Over the years, my study and writings on the subjects of political co-ercion, freedom and free markets have led to correspondence, affiliations and friendships with like-minded individuals from many disciplines and many countries.
In the past few months a group of us have formed The Sovereign Society, a group of the most creative thinkers on the subjects of personal and financial freedom, as well as individuals who are motivated to achieve personal independence for themselves. The aim of The Society is to create a network for developing strategies that individuals can use to wrest control of their lives and assets away from the menace of Big Brother.
I don’t think of The Society as a club or organization but as a virtual society, an extra-national community existing all over the world in the hearts and minds of its citizen members. Essentially, it will offer members a
new “passport,” a whole new concept of citizenship in a country that takes its shape not on the basis of geography, but on the basis of ideology.
Through borderless cyberspace and with the security of encryption, members will be taught to carry on intellectual and financial commerce worldwide, 24 hours a day. Most importantly, citizen members will work with one another in their quest to find sanctuary from private and state snoops, bugs, swat teams, property seizures and other incursions on civil and economic liberties.
Our aim is to find free market alternatives to the services that govern-ments today promise but fail to provide: security from crime and violence, education, old age security, health care, just enforcement of contracts.
We welcome all who share our views. For further information, contact The Sovereign Society, 98 S.E. Federal Highway, Suite 2, Delray Beach, FL 33483 TEL: 561-272-0413; Website: http://www.sovereignsociety. com; Email: [email protected].
What We May Be
Robert E. Bauman JD, December 2008
In “Hamlet” (circa 1601) William Shakespeare sagely noted: “Lord! We know what we are, but we know not what we may be.”
Nevertheless, each New Year’s the world media engages in a mild form of entertainment by attempting to predict events for the next 365 days.
I don’t intend to join their prognostications except to say we are likely to suffer more of the same, based on all the current sad indications — more and bigger government, more and bigger taxes, spending, debt and deficits, more and greater depredations against our remaining, but rapidly, diminishing liberties.
How’s that for a cheery 2009 look ahead?
The Chairman’s Wisdom
I am indebted in many ways to my good friend, the Chairman of The Sovereign Society, the noted author, Jack Pugsley, but also for the following
wisdom which he shared with us on New Year’s Eve a few years ago: “The Sovereign Society was conceived by a group of individuals who shared the conviction that peace and prosperity would be optimized when every individual’s property is rightfully his or hers to keep, control, and dispose of.
“Having witnessed over our lifetimes the relentless expansion of gov-ernment and the concomitant erosion of individual liberties, it was clear to us that the preponderance of aggression against private property did not come from criminals or from foreign nations, but from citizens’ own governments and judicial systems.”
As Voltaire summed up the process 240 years ago: “The art of govern-ment consists in taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.”
“Most still believe government is a protector, and it grows because people believe it will cure the social ills that plague us. In fact, it is the source of our problems. By restricting individual liberty, by preventing individuals from freely producing and exchanging goods and services, and by taxing and inflating, government has become the source of social conflict.”
Sovereign Society Credo
Now in its 11th year, The Sovereign Society has grown to a member-ship of nearly 30,000 in many countries around the world. The principles around which The Society was conceived are built into its credo are even more relevant today:
THAT individual liberty is the highest good in any society; •
THAT every individual has the natural right to keep, control, and •
dispose of his or her justly acquired property;
THAT individuals are not the property of the government of the •
political jurisdiction in which they are born or reside; THAT individuals are sovereign unto themselves; •
THAT to whatever extent government interferes with the free ex-•
change of goods or confiscates the property of citizens, it reduces the wealth of the nation;
THAT when government takes from one to bestow on another, it •
diminishes the incentive of the first, the integrity of the second, and its own moral authority;
THAT it is the right and responsibility of each individual to defend •
justly acquired property from unjust and arbitrary seizure, expropria-tion, and taxation;
THAT the goal of The Sovereign Society is to encourage and help •
individuals achieve and maintain individual sovereignty over their own lives and fortunes.
Join Us
The new year is one more chance for you and I to fight this oppression and show others the way to a freer, more moral society. We invite you to join us in the struggle for liberty.
The “PT” Life...Is It For YOU?
John Pugsley, The Sovereign Individual, February 2002
More than a decade ago, an interesting character with the nom de plume of “Bill Hill” penned a popular escape manual for freedom advo-cates titled PT—The Perpetual Traveler. Hill had spent much of his life traveling the world, visiting the continents, regions, countries, and cities that interested him, while carefully avoiding staying in each place long enough to be considered a permanent resident and therefore subject to such unpleasantries as taxes, military service, and other local rules and regulations.
Hill argued that in a world in which every spot on the globe is under the forcible control of one gang of politicians or another, the answer for individual sovereignty is to avoid their control by becoming a “PT,” an acronym for a Perpetual Traveler, Prior Taxpayer, or Permanent Tourist.
The ability to become a full-fledged Bill Hill-style PT — i.e., living a life absolutely free of taxation, restrictions and obligations imposed by most governments — depends to a great extent on your citizenship. U.S. citizens, for example, are liable for taxes on their worldwide income, wherever they travel or live.
haven’t relinquished my U.S. citizenship (yet), living an expat lifestyle has provided very minimal tax advantages.
Most countries, however, impose tax on the basis of residency, not citi-zenship. Move abroad for at least a year or two and thereafter, the mother country ignores you, at least in reference to income tax. Therefore, for citizens of most countries, the PT lifestyle could legally eliminate income (and with proper planning, estate) taxes, along with achieving many other goals of individual sovereignty.
A dozen years ago I became friends with Paul and Vicki Terhorst, who could be considered a poster couple for the PT concept. Paul began his career as an accountant. After working his way up to a partnership in Peat Marwick, he and Vicki decided that what they really wanted in life was freedom from routine and the opportunity to travel. Paul retired at age 35, and for the past 18 years Paul and Vicki have made do on a modest income from their investments, while leisurely wandering the world.
After retirement they spent eight years in Argentina, then lived in Mexico, London, Thailand, Bali, Australia, Paris, and even had a couple short stints in the United States. Often they just hit the road for several months, revisiting their favorite countries or exploring new ones.
Since they’ve chosen to remain U.S. citizens, there are no significant tax advantages to their PT lifestyle. They file tax returns every year and meticulously declare all investment income, in spite of the fact that their investment accounts are offshore. And they are careful not to do anything that would constitute legal residence in any state with a personal income tax. Thus, they carry Nevada driver’s licenses, and keep their financial records and mailing address in the state of Washington (several states including Nevada, Texas, Florida and Washington do not tax personal incomes).
To Paul and Vicki, the allure of the PT life has less to do with keeping out from under the scrutiny of Big Brother and minimizing taxes than with being free of the routines. Travel and exploration is their idea of the sovereign life.
If the PT life sounds attractive, it’s probably more achievable than you might imagine. The communications revolution has dissolved the chains that bound many professions to urban offices. However, Paul and Vicki have demonstrated that if you’re willing to trade the security of roots
and possessions for travel and leisure, it can be done on a very modest income.
While not everyone will find being a perpetual traveler fulfilling, it still makes sense to increase our personal sovereignty by adopting any of the elements of the PT concept that fit. The full PT plan includes holding citizenship in one country; maintaining official residence in a second; if not retired, domiciling your business in a third; and keeping investment accounts in one or more others.
In each case, the country chosen should provide the best and most advanced laws for minimizing taxes, optimizing business and investment opportunities, and providing maximum privacy and legal protection from lawsuits. Then, if your business permits and you enjoy travel, you can live the PT life by spending your time in the most interesting places around the world in their prime seasons — London or Aspen in July and August, January and February in The Bahamas or New Zealand, April and May in Paris, and so on.
The goal of every Sovereign Individual is to maintain control of his or her life and property, which coincides nicely with the PT concept. These are goals for which members of The Sovereign Society can strive for and which we can help you to achieve.
The PT’s Five Flags
PT, 1996, Scope Books
A five-point plan for those with courage enough to pursue freedom. Today, millions of the wealthiest and most productive people on the planet take advantage of the best that each country has to offer.
Governments are viewed as providers of facilities and services, like hotel keepers. If they offer good accommodations and make you feel comfortable and prosperous, you stay. If your government becomes too demanding or too nosey, or if a competitor offers you a better deal, you can move on.
Economic opportunities, financial privacy, taxes, extradition treaties, social values, military obligations, quality of passport, stability of govern-ment, medical standards, respect for property rights, personal safety and
freedom of travel, thought and action are all taken into consideration when choosing legal residence and citizenship.
People of intelligence and wealth owe it to themselves and their de-scendants to have more than one flag. No one with common sense should give all their assets or allegiance to just one.
Why?
No country or government has ever survived more than a few genera-tions without annihilating itself or its own middle and upper classes. Even in that last bastion of capitalism, the U.S., people of property have been thrice pushed out of the country. In 1780, the entire middle and ruling class was forced to move to Canada; these were the Tories who supported England in the American Revolution or War of Independence.
In 1865, it happened again. All large landowners who supported the Confederacy in the Civil War migrated to Mexico, Europe or South Amer-ica. In the post-1917 period, prohibition, compulsory military service, confiscatory income taxes and suffocating government regulations once again caused many independent-minded Americans and their European counterparts to seek new flags.
They made the amazing discovery that, as expatriates or tax-exiles abroad, they need not belong to any particular country nor participate in its senseless policies.
The PT’s relationship with government is a matter of choice, an op-tion. The passport you hold and the country where you live should not be a burden that you were born to and must be saddled with forever. No one government can be trusted to control all your money. Government does not have your best interests at heart. Politicians are interested in redistributing wealth. In the end, they will only succeed in redistribut-ing taxpayers. The major portion of all liquid private wealth, the smart money, has already been anonymously registered offshore. It has been re-flagged.
Individuals can remove themselves from the control and jurisdiction of any government by acquiring dual-citizenship, investing internationally and becoming human multinationals.
Departing physically and permanently is not required. A PT can live where he wants, when he wants. The secret is to effect a change of legal
status. Many wondrous benefits can be achieved by merely wrapping yourself and your assets in a new flag.
In order to accomplish this redistribution, you merely have to arrange your assets according to the following simple outline. Your five flags:
Flag 1: Passport and Citizenship. These should be from a country un-concerned about its offshore citizens and what they do outside its borders. There must also be no tax or military requirement for non-residents. Pass-ports must be available to foreigners. Dual or multiple nationality is one of the cornerstones of the PT philosophy. The PT should strive to have several passports regardless of original nationality. A second passport always comes in handy and has often saved the skin of many an individual during times of war, persecution and political upheaval.
Flag 2: Business Base. These are the places where you make your money. They must be different from the place where you legally reside, meaning your personal fiscal domicile. They should also be places that give free land, grant interest-free loans or offer a tax holiday to your business without subjecting you to over-regulation. Good access to contacts, labor markets or materials are also important. London, Tokyo and New York are the big apples for finance and insurance. Zurich, Milan, Singapore and Frankfurt are among the good second-rank contenders.
Flag 3: Residence and Domicile: These should generally be in a tax haven with good communication systems. A place where wealthy, productive people can be creative, live, relax, prosper and enjoy themselves, preferably with bank secrecy and no threat of war or revolution. Monaco, Panama, Andorra and Switzerland are all recommended.
Flag 4: Asset Management: This should be a place from which assets, securities and business affairs can be managed by proxy. Requirements are the availability of highly competent financial managers, confiden-tial banking and the lack of taxation of non-residents or non-citizens. Possibilities include Austria, Luxembourg, Switzerland, New York and London.
Flag 5: Playgrounds: These are the places where you actually physically spend your time. Quality of life is top priority. Normally, because of legal restrictions on how long one may stay without being considered resident for tax purposes, it is necessary to have two to four playgrounds, although other arrangements can be made if you want to spend all of your time in
one playground. However, for the most part, the PT should try to avoid spending more than 90 days per year in any particular country.
My personal recommendations; for good fishing: New Zealand; for the most interesting sex life imaginable: Thailand, Costa Rica or the Philip-pines; for a superb year-round climate: California or Queensland, Australia; for the gourmet in you: the French Riviera or Hong Kong. For stimulating parties and an active social life: Paris, London or San Francisco; for the best things at the cheapest prices: Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong (for consumer goods), Denmark (for cars), Ireland (a summer home), Buenos Aires (a winter home).
For now, consider the following possible scenarios:
Flag 1: A second passport from Canada, Ireland, Brazil, Italy or Australia.
Flag 2: A business or source of income in New York, Zurich, London or Singapore.
Flag 3: A legal or fiscal address in Monaco, Panama or Andorra.
Flag 4: Bank accounts or other assets registered in Austria or Luxembourg through holding companies, trusts or foundations.
Flag 5: Friends and fun in Paris, Bangkok, Manila, Buenos Aires, Sydney, Cape Town and San Francisco.
Every PT should know and understand that governments only have power (i.e., jurisdiction) over citizens within their home territory or colo-nies. For this reason, the PT should generally stay out of the country on whose passport he travels. His major assets should be invisible and far away from the country in which he actually lives. His lifestyle should be as humble as possible.
By using the PT strategy, you too can get the most out of life. Once you have at least your emergency passport and enough money to survive at your destination, you can feel secure and prepare for a plunge into previously uncharted areas that will enrich your life. Five flags are better than two. Two are better than one.
Is It Un-American to “Go Offshore?”
Robert E. Bauman JD, December 2009
You would think so — if you believed 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama — or if you believe U.S. Senator Carl Levin, far left Democrat from Michigan, a “soak the rich” politician obsessed with the belief that any American with foreign financial business is somehow dodging taxes.
For an extreme example of this offshore phobia, take the case of White House National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers. When good old Larry was President Bill Clinton's Secretary of the Treasury in 1994, he went off the deep end referring to American expatriates as “tax traitors.” He was subsequently made to apologize by his boss for that over the top comment.
This idea that it is unpatriotic for otherwise good Americans to have foreign bank accounts, own foreign investments and real estate and live in foreign lands has long been the unspoken policy of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and other government agencies.
Presumed Guilty
I once heard an assistant U.S. Attorney General publicly state to a conference of several hundred lawyers and bankers in Miami that at the Department of Justice anytime an individual had offshore accounts he or she was assumed to be engaged in something that was probably illegal.
So much for the rule of law and the presumption of innocence. But, as they say, “Old habits die hard.”
Despite the occasional financial excursion abroad, human nature dictates that most folks prefer to make and save money at home. We tend to be comfortable with the familiar and less threatening domestic economy of our home nation, even if the government is near bankrupt as in America.
another million Americans living near the Mexican and Canadian borders had “passport cards”) — yet this was an historically high percentage.
Buy American or Bye-Bye America?
As one who believes in the principle of free international trade and its decided benefits for all parties, the political resurgence of "Buy America" under Obama and the Democrats should concern Americans.
The anti-offshore arguments of the America Left seem to fit into this "America First" theme, and both are wrong headed. I love my country too much to believe such nonsense.
Harry Binswanger, Ph.D. of the Ayn Rand Institute writes: “According to a recent poll, 80% of Americans think it their patriotic duty to give preference to American-made products. But ‘Buy American’ is wholly un-American in both its economics and its philosophy.
“America’s distinction among all the nations of the world is that it enshrined political and economic freedom. Although we have depart-ed greatly from our original laissez-faire principles, to the whole world America still symbolizes capitalism. Americanism means understanding that a free market, domestically and internationally, is the only path to general prosperity.”
Practical Reasons
But beyond the principles involved, there are good and sufficient prac-tical reasons why aware Americans now should “go offshore” financially — simple financial survival first among them.
At a time when the United States government is deeply in debt (nearly $13 trillion), with Obama’s pending plans for higher income, capital gains and estate taxes looming, and with major and minor banks teetering on the brink, prudence dictates offshore planning and activity.
So-called “patriotism” does not require us to commit financial suicide when there are reasonable escape exits to better places.
Why go offshore?
The multi-faceted answer includes greater asset protection, stronger financial privacy, higher returns in carefully selected markets, more di-versification of investments and among currencies, increased safety and
security, both personal and financial, and deferred taxes on annuities and life insurance.
In contrast to Bank of America, CitiBank and AIG, the offshore banks and insurance companies The Sovereign Society recommends aren’t exposed to the risky investments of third-world debt and Wall Street’s esoteric derivatives.
These banks are located in politically neutral countries that don't em-ploy interventionist foreign policy, making them much less likely to be terror targets.
Act Now
Unfortunately, too few Americans are taking advantage of the fruits of global diversification. I think you owe it to yourself and to your family to benefit from offshore advantages.
At the very least, you should hold a portion of your assets offshore — just in case.
Are You a Libertarian?
Vincent H. Miller, 1998
One of its American leaders recalls the history and growth of the Lib-ertarian movement — and asks you to examine your own political con-science.
What is a libertarian?
The catch phrase, “Fiscally conservative; socially liberal,” explains it — sort of. But simplifications often lose the essence of what they describe. Basically a libertarian is a person who believes in individual liberty, an unregulated market economy and social tolerance for diverse lifestyles. It’s a “live and let live” philosophy.
The foundation of libertarianism is the Non-Aggression Principle, which states that no one may initiate force or fraud against others. This is sometimes stated as, “First, do no harm,” or in the biblical turn of phrase, “Thou shalt not agress.”
Many libertarians trace their roots back to the eighteenth and nine-teenth century classical free trade liberals to England’s Adam Smith, John Locke, John Cobden, Richard Bright, French philosopher Frederic Bastiat and others. Others look to nineteenth century American individualist anarchists such as William Lloyd Garrison, Lysander Spooner, and Henry David Thoreau.
The modern libertarian movement, however, has been most strongly influenced by the late Austrian economist Ludwig Von Mises, and by Mises’ protégé and Nobel Laureate, F. A. Hayek, and Nobel Laureate Milton Friedman of the University of Chicago.
Perhaps the most influential of all was the novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand, whose novels, plays, and essays strongly influenced the new wave of libertarians. The message of her epic novel Atlas Shrugged has been so power-ful that a joint survey by the Book of the Month Club and the Library of Congress ranked Atlas Shrugged second only to the Bible as the book that had most influenced people’s lives.
Although there have been pockets of libertarian influence throughout history, the modern movement began to gain momentum in the 1940s. With the founding of Leonard Read’s Foundation for Economic Edu-cation at Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, and the near-simultaneous publication of Rand’s The Fountainhead, Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, Isabel Paterson’s The God of the Machine, Rose Wilder Lane’s The Discovery
of Freedom and Mises’ Human Action, the modern libertarian movement
took its first steps. It wasn’t until the publication of Atlas Shrugged in 1957 that the Libertarian movement as we know it today regained its stride.
During those earliest years, a whole generation was inspired by Rand’s libertarian message of individualism and uncompromising free-market cap-italism. It was all the more amazing given that libertarianism began evolving during the era of President Roosevelt’s socialist/fascist New Deal.
Libertarian pioneers such as author Rose Wilder Lane and H. L. Mencken, columnist for the Baltimore Evening Sun, vigorously attacked the socialism and collectivism of the New Deal and paved the way for a much larger and more influential movement which later developed.
A seminal moment of the modern libertarian movement was the 1969 convention of the pioneer young conservative group, Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) in St Louis, Missouri. Since the founding in 1960 of
this association of young Barry Goldwater conservatives, there had been an uneasy peace between YAF’s traditionalist conservative wing and the libertarian-Randian wing. Libertarian opposition to the Vietnam War, the military draft and other human rights issues finally erupted into full-scale political war. This confrontation resulted in a purge of the libertarians, who left en masse and met under St. Louis Gateway Arch to found a new movement.
Luminaries such as Karl Hess, author of the 1960 Republican platform and a former Goldwater-Nixon-Ford speech writer, Leonard Liggio, who would later become president of the Institute for Humane Studies, and most of the International Society for Individual Liberty’s (ISIL) current board members were there. At this time ISIL’s sister organization the Society for Individual Liberty (SIL) was formed as an umbrella group for disenfranchised libertarians. From this new beginning the movement grew. SIL produced a comprehensive series of educational pamphlets which sold in the millions. They organized tax protest days, and created a network of activist student chapters in colleges and universities across the nation. In the years following the historic 1969 conservative/libertarian split, many of the movement’s intellectual institutions formed: Laissez Faire Books, Reason magazine and the Reason Foundation, the Cato Institute, the Institute for Humane Stud-ies, the Ludwig von Mises Institute and more.
Today libertarianism in America, if not a major success at the ballot box, is an intellectual force to be reckoned with.
One of the key contributions of the libertarian movement has been its critical examination and analysis of the proper role of government. This is a subject libertarians take very seriously. For many years the standard line was that since governments enjoy a monopoly on the use of force, its proper role should be limited to those agencies in which such powers seem appropriate (i.e., police, military and courts). Nothing else.
An impressive body of literature has arisen from the pens of libertarian scholars challenging the role of government in today’s society. They have observed that it is difficult to find anything that government touches that is not eventually turned into a cesspool of corruption, patronage and mindboggling waste.
Competitive markets in a free economy, they assert, can provide most if not all the essential services currently provided by government.
Many in the movement, including David Friedman, son of Milton Friedman and author of a seminal book entitled The Machinery of Freedom, explain that virtually every function currently provided by governments can be provided better and more inexpensively — not to mention more compassionately — by competitive market institutions.
There are interesting arguments of great merit from both sides of this debate. How much better would it be, for example, if organizations like the United Way, churches or other charitable organizations handled welfare instead of government?
For example, in America the government wastes over 80 percent of its welfare dollars on mammoth bureaucracies and their palatial offices, whereas private charities reverse these figures. The Social Security system is bankrupt and inflicts a terrible tax burden on the younger generation. Why not take it out of the hands of corrupt politicians and privatize it? There is a vast library of literature on the privatization of most govern-mental functions by the world’s leading scholars. For those interested, Laissez Faire Books can provide the proper research material. Their book service and informative catalogue is one of the treasures of the libertarian movement.
We believe that the world is in for a rough ride over the next decade, but that the twenty-first century holds the promise of a renaissance of freedom. Libertarians will remain on the front lines of the battle for free markets and free minds. We invite you to join us.
A
tlAss
hrugged:
From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years
Robert E. Bauman JD, February 2009
"Many of us who know Ayn Rand's work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that Atlas Shrugged parodied in 1957, when this 1,000-page novel was first published and became an instant hit."
So writes Stephen Moore, formerly of the libertarian Cato Institute and now the senior economics writer for The Wall Street Journal.
Rampant Do-Goodism
As Moore notes about Rand's magnum opus: “...the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises — that in most cases they themselves created — by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs...and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.”
Having read Rand’s book (long ago), I agree that the United States government and its self-styled political saviors in Washington have by now surpassed the worst case scenario Rand spelled out in her best-selling book. The similarities of the plot to the present are uncanny — and dis-turbing.
Traditionalist vs. Objectivist
In politically turbulent 1960s America, Rand spawned a cadre of young followers (not including me), brash and headstrong "objectivists" who were a part of the driving force in conservative organizations such as Young Americans for Freedom (YAF — which I headed from 1962 to 1965), the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI), and the Young Republicans.
Our passion was real, and our commitment to liberty genuine. But in those ancient days, most of us were firmly in the anti-Rand “traditional-ist” conservative camp. We agreed with the objectivists in the need for a revived capitalism, but not without what Randians called the “sentimen-tality” of religion.
Witness a Turning Point
The publication of Whitaker Chambers’ Witness in 1952, and its phenom-enal popularity, decisively shaped the conservative movement in America at a time when the movement could well have taken a different turn.
After Witness, American conservatism gained a religious dimension. I was a student at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service when I devoured the book. Its astringent treatment of capitalism, communism and faith clarified and solidified my nascent conservative philosophy.
Chambers was a man who recognized the absolute necessity of faith in God, and who argued that the collapse of such faith on all sides had
brought about a crisis of civilization. His piety and sincerity spoke to Protestant, Catholic, and Jew alike.
A Masterpiece
Understanding this difference of attitude explains the famous contro-versy that followed the 1957 review of Rand’s Atlas Shrugged that Whitaker Chambers wrote for my friend, William F. Buckley’s National Review.
As Prof. Joseph S. Salemi, a poet and critic at Hunter College observed: “A masterpiece of polemical deflation, [Chamber's] review precipitated a major split in the conservative movement between traditional conservatives and their objectivist allies of expedience. A good number of the magazine’s readers canceled their subscription to the journal, and both Chambers and Buckley became unmentionable pariahs in certain libertarian circles where Rand was seen as a bulwark of intellectual freedom and anti-collectivist energies.”
Back to the Future
Never the less, the non-believer Rand was prescient in much of the plot of Atlas Shrugged.
As Stephen Moore notes, Obama's current economic strategy is right out of Atlas Shrugged: The more incompetent you are in business, the more handouts the politicians will bestow on you...With each successive bailout to ‘calm the markets,’ another trillion of national wealth is subsequently lost. Yet, as Atlas grimly foretold, we now treat the incompetent who wreck their companies as victims, while those resourceful business owners who manage to make a profit are portrayed as recipients of illegitimate ‘windfalls.’”
Deadly Combination
“Ultimately, Atlas Shrugged is a celebration of the entrepreneur, the risk taker and the cultivator of wealth through human intellect. Critics dismissed the novel as simple-minded, and even some of Rand's political admirers complained that she lacked compassion. Yet one pertinent warning resounds throughout the book: When profits and wealth and creativity are denigrated in society, they start to disappear — leaving everyone the poorer.”
Based on current events, one might venture the opinion that an even greater threat to personal and collective liberty results from a deadly
com-bination of the stupidity and greed of entrepreneurs with the incompetence and idiocy of Big Brother government and its slavish advocates.
The New Cold War: Wealth is the Target
Robert E. Bauman, JD, 1998
Knowledgeable U.S. lawyers, accountants and tax consultants will admit that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has declared war on Americans engaged in traditional offshore financial activity of nearly every kind.
It’s a favorite IRS public relations tactic to issue dire “crack down” warnings and enforcement threats to keep taxpayers honest. In 1997, the IRS theme was to stop “abusive trusts,” both domestic and foreign, and those who sell them.
The IRS believes there is a host of alleged tax evaders and money laun-derers whom they presume guilty based on the financial tools the accused taxpayer uses. High on the prime IRS target list are those who set up and use international business corporations (IBCs), offshore trusts, and bank accounts in known “tax haven” nations, especially where financial privacy laws are strict.
This anti-wealth attack is coordinated with other federal agencies in-cluding the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the Federal Reserve Board, the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Bureau of In-vestigation, other appropriate police agencies, and sympathetic foreign governments like the U.K.
J. Richard Duke, Esq., a leading U.S. asset protection attorney from Birmingham, Alabama, sees the IRS agenda as “an indiscriminate attack on anyone who dares to shield wealth in ways that until now have been considered entirely legitimate.”
Mr. Duke’s view was echoed by Charles A. Cain of the U.K., editor of
Offshore Investment, in a 1998 editorial (“The New Cold War”) in which
he charged “the line between tax avoidance and tax evasion” is purposely being blurred by governments, with honest people (and their tax advisors) being jailed for “failed attempts at tax avoidance,” while “tax evasion is put down on a moral level with heroin and cocaine pushing.”
This is all part of a new international “Cold War,” waged by govern-ment bureaucrats against anyone who seeks lower taxes and less financial regulation, especially those who choose to go offshore.
The IRS battle plan is a desperate grasp by Big Brother aimed at stop-ping those who rebel against heavy taxation and the transfer of wealth from productive citizens to unworthy tax consumers. The tax collectors know the most talented citizens of the U.S., U.K. and other welfare states are deserting, setting up financial shop where they and their capital are treated best.
This trend is intensified by the developing worldwide “cyber-economy” based on Internet technology and free communications unmediated by governments. What has been called the “permeability of financial frontiers” now empowers investors instantly to shift vast sums of money from one nation to another and from one currency to another. The 1998-99 “Asian crisis” demonstrated this heretofore unparalleled economic force.
Myopic liberals welcome these trends as the potential “collapse of na-tionhood,” the chance to establish one-world government and control by institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the European Union.
Lovers of liberty with an acute sense of history see instead the potential for liberation of “the sovereign individual,” the courageous person who declares independence from “decrepit and debilitating welfare states” as the
Wall Street Journal described them. (For more on this debate, read The Sov-ereign Individual, by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg,
Simon & Schuster, 1997, an excellent book that explains the coming mass exodus of wealthy people from high tax nations.)
No wonder the U.K. Inland Revenue, the IRS and other tax hounds are worried.
The Economist notes that “undeclared” (untaxed) work now exceeds 15
percent of Europe’s combined gross domestic product (GDP), up from five percent in the 1970s. In the somewhat freer U.S., the underground “black market” economy accounts for nearly 10 percent of GDP. That means bil-lions of dollars are slipping through the eager hands of the tax man.
Why the growing black market? Confiscatory taxes, exorbitant labor costs, overregulation — all failures of big government. All things bureau-crats love.
This coordinated assault on wealth has a strong international dimension as well. The U.S., using its considerable powers, and the U.K., using old colonial ties, are turning the screws on national governments who fail or refuse to go along with the concerted anti-offshore wealth attack.
Even greater pressure is being applied to international banks that do business in the U.S. or U.K., as well as in known tax and wealth “haven nations,” which means nearly every international bank.
As that firebrand of the American Revolution, Patrick Henry of Virginia said, “I am willing to know the whole truth, to know the worst, and to prepare for it. You have been forewarned and should act accordingly.”
It All Starts With Property Rights
John Pugsley, The Sovereign Individual, January 2003
“To be controlled in our economic pursuits, means to be...con-trolled in everything.” — F. A. Hayek
The feelings that drive us to defend ourselves against government op-pression are an exop-pression of our innate compulsion to control our own property. Each of us shares the feeling that it is unjust and an outrage for our hard-earned wealth to be taken from us without our consent.
The drive to control our own property is not unique to modern man. Studies of animal species, observations of hunter-gatherer groups still in existence, and the written history of civilization leave no question that territorialism is a biological imperative. As socio-biologist E. O. Wilson argues, “The biological formula of territorialism translates easily into the ritual of modern property ownership.”
By the time our early hominid ancestors were wandering the African savannah millions of years ago, the genes that expressed the “property” instinct were firmly wired into mammalian DNA.
The Declaration of Independence suggests that the Founding Fathers understood this aspect of human nature. It argued that all men “are en-dowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, of course, are all aspects of property.
The long train of abuses and usurpations that drove the Founding Fathers to rebel was triggered by the same genes that give rise to your rage when someone burglarizes your home, steals your car or defrauds you. Those genes are equally activated when that attack comes from government.
Most would agree that the function of government is to safeguard the property and freedom of citizens. Yet, it must be clear by now that the single greatest threat to any citizen’s property is its own government. In the United States, the combined burden of local, state and federal tax immediately confiscates between 30% and 60% of our annual incomes, and hits anything a person saves again at the point of death. And that’s just the beginning.
Governments also hold monopolies on licenses and permits which, in many countries, prohibit rather than encourage business enterprise and wealth creation. Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto in his brilliant book The Mystery of Capital provides numerous examples of how govern-ments around the world discourage private ownership and enterprise. “An Egyptian who wants to acquire and legally register a lot on state-owned desert land (which means, most land) must wend his way through at least 77 bureaucratic procedures at 31 public and private agencies,” which can take from 5 to 14 years. “To build a legal dwelling on former agricultural land would require 6 to 11 years of bureaucratic wrangling.”
“In Haiti,” writes De Soto, “one way an ordinary person can settle legally on government land is first to lease it from the government for five years and then buy it. Working with associates in Haiti, our researchers found that to obtain such a lease took 65 bureaucratic steps requiring, on average, a little more than two years. All for the privilege of merely leasing the land for five years.”
Of course such government restrictions have given rise to tremendous amounts of underground activity, but people are seldom able to do as well as they could if the activity was legal. “Extralegal businesses,” De Soto explains, “are taxed by the lack of good property law and continu-ally have to hide their operations from the authorities. Because they are not incorporated, extralegal entrepreneurs cannot lure investors by selling shares; they cannot get low-interest formal credit because they do not have legal addresses. They cannot reduce risks by declaring limited liability or obtaining insurance coverage...moreover, because extralegal entrepreneurs live in constant fear of government detection and extortion from corrupt officials, they are forced to split and compartmentalize their
production facilities between many locations, thereby rarely achieving economies of scale.”
Moreover, because illegal businesses are always on the lookout for police, they can forget about openly advertising to build their customer base or making less costly bulk deliveries. Underground businesses are also easy prey for local Mafias who know they don’t have to fear official police protection of the illegal operation.
Failure to comply with the myriad laws, regulations, rules, codes and policies levies an additional cost. Fail to pay your taxes, allow a permit or license to expire, find your property in the way of a new public project, have any illegal drug found on your premises, violate a building code, deposit an unusual amount of cash into your bank account, have inadequate toilet facilities for handicapped employees, or paint your building a shocking color, and you may be fined, arrested, and have your property taken away by city, county, state, or federal authorities.
Attempt to resist and they’ll take your “primordial property” (you). They will throw you in prison or even kill you.
Ultimately, protection of your property rests on protecting yourself from all threats, the biggest of which is government itself. The United States is considered by many the freest nation on earth and one in which private property is held in the highest regard. In fact, there are many nations in the Western world, the Pacific Basin, and elsewhere which recognize and respect private property to a much higher degree than the United States.
Prudent individuals diversify their financial portfolios to protect against market fluctuations, inflation, deflation, recession, depression, currency devaluation and even war. In the same way, they diversify internationally to protect against the abuses of government.
The function of The Sovereign Society is to help identify those politi-cal jurisdictions that offer the most cost-effective and efficient methods of property protection. Using offshore bank accounts, trusts, and real estate, as well as spreading business holdings among different countries, are practical ways to accomplish your primal need to defend and protect your property.
A Declaration of Independence for
Sovereign Individuals
John Pugsley, The Sovereign Individual, July 2002
For Americans, July 4, 2002, will be a particularly emotion-filled In-dependence Day. The first one since last September’s terrorist attack, it strums an intensely patriotic chord in most citizens.
That makes this an especially appropriate time to reflect on the prin-ciples of independence.
Revolts against despotic governments are a familiar motif of history. Almost all modern nations from Mexico to the Philippines and from Zaire to the Ukraine have their own national “independence” days, marking their emergence from under one group of tyrants and usually into the grip of another.
Throughout history, independence and subjugation have chased each other around a revolving door. In light of the destruction of freedom in America since 9/11, it seems assured that the hopes of the Founding Fathers that their sacrifices could end this cyclical process are being dashed.
Understanding why the struggle for independence must be waged again and again requires us to step back and examine the social contract in the light of human nature. The rising specter of devastation from weapons of mass destruction make it clear that man had better solve this conundrum, and quickly, or risk annihilation.
Homo sapiens is a mewling infant on the evolutionary scene, arriving a mere 100,000 to 200,000 years ago. Our species is not physically imposing and would have been at a serious disadvantage in the struggle for survival except for a single evolutionary difference that catapulted it to dominance: a powerful forebrain. A single species was equipped with cognitive powers immensely greater than those available to all other life forms. With this formidable weapon, our forebears quickly spread around the globe, repro-ducing and expanding until we colonized every continent, adapted to every climate, and overwhelmed every physical and biological obstacle.
They did it by using their new cognitive powers for discovery and invention. Somewhere in the prehistoric dawn early humans invented language, captured fire, learned to make spears, fabricated the wheel, conceived agriculture, developed metallurgy, domesticated animals, and originated writing.
Progress accelerated as they recorded instructions for making gunpow-der, the catapult, the steam engine, electromagnetism, atomic energy, and the computer. Human “progress” has been built upon science and technol-ogy. We are the inheritors. But we are also faced with a terrible obstacle. Our species has overcome all but one threat to long-term survival. As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy and he is us!” The urgent problem is to discover the social contract that will end the perpetual cycle of subjugation followed by independence once again leading to subjugation.
Man is, by nature, a social animal. Each individual is bound to his community, but is simultaneously bound by his genes to pursue individual survival and the well-being of his immediate kin. In the hunter-gatherer environment in which our ancestors evolved, the social contract was much simpler. In a tribal village of a few dozen members, everyone was kin, and although there were disputes over food and mates and other property, the resolution was simple. Everyone understood fairness. Everyone participated in the decisions.
In modern nations with millions of inhabitants, kin altruism does not extend even to the other side of the town, let alone to strangers across the country and certainly not to “foreigners.” At the primal level of our brains, and in spite of all indoctrination to the contrary, strangers are non-kin, and are thus viewed either as potentially dangerous or to be exploited.
When political power is handed to distant persons, those individuals instinctively tend to use it to benefit themselves, their immediate kin, and those who support their power. Simply declaring independence from a distant tyrant, however, does not solve the problem of despo-tism if the political system remains intact. It merely leaves the seat of political power open to be grabbed by a new despot. Thus, man’s natural bias toward self-interest, programmed into his brain by eons of natural selection, eliminates the possibility of creating a workable, enduring social contract that is founded on investing power in unrelated individuals or groups.
All individuals, by the authority of the nature of man, should sign a personal Declaration of Independence.
It should state that they are, and of right ought to be free, independent individuals, absolved from all allegiance to any of the arbitrary rules and restrictions forcefully imposed on them by politicians and bureaucrats who claim to be working selflessly in the public interest. Certainly, this is the right of Americans under the Declaration of Independence, although in the cycle of subjugation in which the United States is now mired, exercis-ing our rights as “sovereign individuals” may brexercis-ing retribution from an increasingly despotic government.
While nations will continue to pass in and out of the revolving door of independence and subjugation, the personal declaration of independence is for all time. It is the statement that you consider yourself a sovereign individual.
The day you sign your personal Declaration of Independence should become the most important holiday in your life.
Security? What Security?
Mark Nestmann, The Sovereign Individual, January 2003 “If the government always knows where you are, what job you are seeking, what doctor you’re seeing, where you travel, how you spend your money, how you defend yourself, and what arguably unhealthy behavior you en-gage in, what do the rest of your rights really mean?”
— Former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga. What civil liberties restrictions are you willing to accept to curtail “ter-rorism” and achieve “security?”
The question has more than an academic importance as governments in supposedly “free” countries enact measures that are unprecedented in peacetime: In the United States, the Homeland Security Act gives the gov-ernment authority to collect and analyze data on individuals and groups, including databases that combine personal, governmental, and corporate records, including e-mails and web sites viewed.
In the European Union, a proposal that would require Internet service providers and phone companies to save the records of all phone calls and e-mails for a year or more seems almost certain to become law in 2003.
Do you want to live in a world where, to quote commentator William Safire, “...every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend...will go into what the Defense Department describes as ‘a virtual, centralized grand database?’”
Fortunately, this hellish vision is nowhere near fruition. Indeed, experts we have polled tell us it will take an effort comparable to the development of an anti-ballistic missile system to make surveillance this intensive a reality.
But this vision does show the shape of “things to come.” It also makes the stakes for persons seeking greater freedom and sovereignty higher than ever as we enter 2003. In this environment, the international wealth build-ing, wealth preservation and privacy preservation techniques outlined by The Sovereign Society have never been more important. Pay them heed, while you still can.
The “War on Terror”—
Surrender of Civil Liberties?
Mark Nestmann, The Sovereign Individual, September 2002
Terrorism has been part of daily life in many parts of the world for decades. On September 11, 2001, Americans discovered that they are not immune to such attacks, which are virtually certain to recur. It is only prudent to adjust your portfolio and the way you live to deal with their anticipated effects.
“Freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. gov-ernment will lead the American people and the West in general into an unbearable hell and a choking life.” — Osama bin Laden