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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   33970 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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There's a contingent of '5 Flags' location independent types out there that believe that the decline of the West is practically inevitable over the next couple of decades. I'm a bit worried and looking to hedge my bets with emerging markets.

If Vietnam stopped being communist at any point I would eagerly invest there as long as AI hasn't made human intelligence mostly pointless, they have really good PISA scores for their current level of income/education investment and a good rank in math olympiads.

Lynn's data on Vietnam gave it a low IQ score but it was also noted by him that it didn't match up with the academical achievements, there's something weird about the data, perhaps it's the case of heterogenous population like in Latin America. I've read that there's an ethnical difference between North and South Vietnam but I'm not knowledgeable about the topic.

Argentina is also an interesting option if they can stop being so socialistic for a long period of time. Eastern europe also seems like it may shine if it can keep avoiding mass immigration there.

What does "5 Flags" mean in this context?

5 Flags is the idea that there are 5 different aspects of your life and you need to choose which jurisdiction to put each of them into separately for different reasons. Four of the five flags are citizenship, primary residence, country of incorporation of your business, and country where you keep your high-balance bank accounts. What the fifth is depends on whether the person selling the idea is focussing on the digital nomad lifestyle (divide "residence" into the country where you do business and the country where you spend money), aggressive tax avoidance (game residency rules to separate tax residence from physical residence) or protection from instability (in which case the country where your non-financial assets are physically located becomes the fifth flag).

In all cases, an important part of the scheme is that each flag should go in a jurisdiction which offers hosting of that particular flag as a service to rich foreigners without any associated civic obligations. Another point is that putting too many flags in the same country is risky in case that country decides it doesn't want you any more, and that the best case is to have a second jurisdiction as a ready backup for each flag as well.

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