Break free of the Matrix and learn how to thrive and prosper as a free world citizen.
I am writing this blog as an introduction to this channel, but more because I intend to voice my opinion on life, freedom and economics via the Steem blockchain and in other corners of the Internet. I know many won't agree with my opinions. I get that we all have different life experiences. But I am giving my background so that you, the reader, can have some context as to why I have the opinions I have, and how they emerged and grew over the years. We all have a story to tell, so I hope you enjoy mine.
I am an immigrant to the USA. I grew up and spent the first 25 years of my life in Australia. I left there to migrate in 1989 and eventually become a dual citizen of the USA about 15 years later. I loved Australia (still do). It's beauty and culture is amazing, and we Australians are embracing people that welcome anyone into our homes and our land. If you can brace the long airplane trip to our country on the other side of the world, you are a welcome guest. But with all things, there are flaws. Australia really lacked a true free market and for me that was "mission critical". You see, I'm a business person. I like money. Not to roll around in it like some monocle wearing Billionaire , but because I see it as the lifeblood of freedom. Money determines the need for wars, security & happiness and I believe everyone should have the option to participate in that world. You can define your future by making money and anything that would be a pointless obstruction in that process, inhibits freedom. I started in business in Australia at a very young age and it is in my blood. My goal was to create win-win enterprises, and for the most part I have been lucky enough to do that. But when I lived there, Australia had such draconian tax and compliance laws that it was impossible for any small business to last more than 12 months without taking the founders into debt and despair. The problem also was that Australia has no bankruptcy laws that can allow someone to fail and try again. You fail, you lose. Game over.
When I first arrived, I remember driving down the Pacific Coast Highway in California and feeling just how free it was. I mean you could taste it. Tom Petty's "Free Fallin" playing on my car stereo. A country that would allow a 24 yr old to become a millionaire. Where I could learn and thrive.
So I did. I lived between California and Washington state for 6 years, and I became wealthy. I was one of the early employees of a small start up in Thousand Oaks, California that was called Amgen. I joined there in 1990 as a contractor when there was less than 250 of us working there. I eventually accepted employment and a big swag of stock options, and was employee 636. I left there in 1995, and that corporation went from no income, to making $3.5 billion a year, with 3,800 employees. Those stock options came to me for free, and yet were the most valuable thing I had to my name. But I was far more interested in what I had learned in skills, than what I had been given for no real effort.
I spent much of my time in California honing my software engineering and architecture craft to the point where I became a master. I also dabbled in music, joining a band that had some notoriety within the local scene and eventually learning the art of music production and sound engineering. I was lucky enough to work with some great Hollywood artists through an association with Capitol Records that I found due to the many friends that I made in the music world. Meanwhile working a full time job at Amgen as it went from strength to strength.
In 1995, I received word that my mother had a major car accident and flew back to Australia to help her. When I got there, I realized that I had to return back permanently to care for her. This not only broke the momentum of what I had achieved in the USA, but also my marriage. With that, the divorce pretty much destroyed any financial holdings I had built up, so I found myself in Australia, no job, some money (not much) and memories of life back in the USA. I realized after some time back in Australia just how different living in a free society that I had enjoyed in America was compared with the locals. I couldn't relate to anyone any more. I couldn't speak about the same things because they were at totally different planes of existence. I didn't consider myself any better off or worse off than my friends in Australia - just different. Living in the USA for 6 years did that to me.
I eventually re-married in Australia to my awesome wife, had a beautiful and wonderful daughter, and as it happened one of my good friends that I worked with at Amgen called me one day to try and entice me to return to California as a consultant. I accepted the offer, after realizing that my mother was back on her feet again and moved my family back to the USA. I ended rejoining Amgen as a contractor for 2 years, before realizing just how the USA had changed in my 4 year absence.
This was at the heart of the Dot Com boom too. Money was flowing everywhere, but the costs were just going up and up. The taxes were out of control. Because I was living in rental accommodation and had little or no expenses to deduct, I was paying $5,000 a month in taxes to Uncle Sam. All my money was going to re-establish my life again. I couldn't get a car loan because I'd been away for so long, so I had to put down 50% of the price of a car in cash to get financing. I had to buy furniture cash for a full house. I had to find medical insurance that was affordable. It literally took me 12 months of work to just get re-established.
Finally we were able to buy a house and get ourselves back on our feet. The future looked bright.
Then the bubble burst. First the Dot Com crash happened in 2001. Then I was called into my manager's office at Amgen to be told that my contract was being terminated because the CFO had elected to send all the work to an Indian outsourcing company.
Now with a massive mortgage payment, little or no funds in the bank to cover me, what was I to do? Return back to Australia again? I mean I was still bruised from doing that 6 years prior. I knew that my ability to provide for my wife & daughter had to come from the USA, so we decided to sell our house, pack up our belongings and move to Arizona. The lure of the sun and cheaper real estate & costs meant that I could pursue my own software company as I had originally done when I was in my early 20s. We bought a nice house with a mortgage payment equal to about what we were paying in property taxes in California, and settled. Through years of hard work we eventually thrived again, and with surplus capital we purchased other real estate for rental income. Eventually we were managing 20 "doors" in Arizona.
Through stubborn determination, a supportive wife and family, we eventually returned back to wealth again. The early 2000s were good to us, and real estate prices went through the roof.
We went (on paper) from being millionaires to being broke. But I've been on this roller coaster ride before. I realize that if you just give up, it takes years to recover. Thankfully we had a couple of houses we invested in, in Australia. Their market was active and buoyant because they were going through a minerals boom and housing prices had doubled there and were still high. We sold two houses, took the proceeds back to the USA, and set ourselves back on solid footing. And with the surplus capital we started to buy other's foreclosures. For pennies on the dollar. We acquired more and more property, with the intention to rent & hold for a long time.
But with all this came governments getting into your business. Thankfully in Australia, we filed as "Non-Residents" and were not subject to taxes on US earned income. But in the US that isn't the case. The laws were changing and more and more regulations, compliance restrictions, taxation, etc. was creeping into our lives. After 9/11 we had found ourselves in a "surveillance state" and it just didn't look good. Things were not right. Stories portrayed in the media just were wrong. People ran around buying Hummers to drive their kids to school with. This was not the "free" USA I had remembered from my drives along Pacific Coast Highway. It just didn't feel free anymore.
It was like George Orwell's 1984 was playing out before my eyes, but 20+ years later. I didn't blame any one political party for this though. I blamed the banks. The same players that had walked away without penalty for creating the 2008 crisis and yet we all paid. I hated the banks.
In 2011, I started to follow a fellow ex-pat Australian by the name of Julian Assange. His website, Wikileaks, started to expose corruption in government, private banks, power brokers, etc. and I thought that shining the light of transparency on these institutions might force them to come clean about what was going on. But as it happened, he was eventually shackled by the very same organizations for exposing them. This happened incrementally. One of the first things I saw was that the very same banking cartel that had created the 2008 crisis were the first to go after him. They shut down the payment rails to Wikileaks at all levels - PayPal, Credit cards, Banks, etc. They thought that by financially starving Wikileaks, they could kill it. What they actually did (at least for me) is to awaken the beast.
While watching this unfold, I remember reading a post Assange had made on his website about a thing called "Bitcoin". I had heard of this while dabbling in the MMORPG world and learning about virtual currencies there. I knew that Assange was a member of a group known as "Cypher-Punks" and that they were experts in cryptography. It was highly likely that members of that fraternity were behind this thing called Bitcoin. I was curious and had to learn about it.
What I discovered was amazing. I saw a way to send money across international borders without any third party in the way. I saw a way that I could pay outsourced labor that I was using to help my own business grow, without the subcontractor losing 30% of their earnings to the very banksters that created the 2008 crisis. I was so committed to ensuring that those that were behind that evil would not benefit. Bitcoin spoke to me as a free and decentralized weapon against big banks. It was the perfect technology.
So I bought some. Back in those days it was super cheap. I didn't buy it as an asset to grow. I bought it as a weapon. I wanted to move all of my spending off Fiat currencies and to the digital sphere. But I held a decent amount of it as my "savings account".
The rest is history. That speculation paid off. It paid off in spite of the banksters. It paid off in spite of government. It paid off because people could actually hold their money. I got it. I saw the light. I was one of those annoying Bitcoin evangelists. Some of my friends put up with my constant cheering along Bitcoin and even invested some of their hard earned money in it. Even my accountant got on board with it. They saw 1000x returns on their earnings because they put up with the annoying Australian. Maybe they got the message; maybe they didn't. But they won financially.
Governments didn't like it. They couldn't control it. Banks hated it. The amount of Bitcoin-bashing that was going on in 2016 & 2017 was intense. I knew that some over zealous congress member would enact some sweeping legislation that would black-list Bitcoin from the world. But somehow they didn't. In fact, the promise I saw back in 2011 started to be seen by them as well. The price shot to the moon. There were way too many dumb "experts" that had made money on crypto-currences. All with their own YouTube channels, preaching to the masses on how smart they were to buy this and you could too. They didn't get it. They didn't understand why it existed. Only a few of the early die-hards that I was a member of got it. It is that way to this very day. Only the die-hards are still in there, pitching the power of money for the people.
So after seeing that the message was lost, and it was at unsustainable high pricing, I sold. In retrospect, it was an excellent decision.
In 2016, I was acquiring more Bitcoin to add to my savings. One method that you could use to buy it was these new "Bitcoin ATM" machines. These machines would take your US dollars and give you back Bitcoin which was transferred to your Bitcoin wallet in your phone.
I found a website that gave me a map of where such machines were located in Phoenix. The closest one to me was at a Western Union money exchange company. So on a Friday afternoon, I drove out there to use it.
What I found was a parking lot full of Hispanic immigrants. They were gathered in small groups. And then a long line into the facility where the machine lived. Were they trying to all use it?
Nope. As I found out, they were all there to be paid for their week's earnings. Many were undocumented illegal immigrants who worked on building construction sites, and their team boss was dishing out the $US to them for a week's work. When I went into the money exchange store, I started to use the Bitcoin ATM and it was surprisingly easy. But what I noticed was that the lines were not for that machine. They were for the teller window, and then I realized these people were losing on average 27% of the meager wages that they had earned to the banksters so they could send money back home. This was immoral and unethical. To steal from those that could least protect themselves was really low. But that's banksters for you.
I couldn't speak Spanish. I couldn't tell them there was a better way. The answer was 4 feet from them in line - the Bitcoin ATM. They could just setup their family members in their home country and have them exchange it for local goods & services, or even local currency. Certainly not for 27% arbitrage.
I knew I had a calling here. I had to get the word out. My experience with Mexico was to visit some border town resorts by the ocean, which I loved. But never to really understand the culture of the place or how I could help. The news media would just tell lies all the time about drug cartels, crime, etc. and yet having worked with these very "criminals" who helped me build and fix our residential real estate, my experiences were very different. In fact, I had hired a US worker who turned out to be an ex-felon with a long criminal history, who in turn hired his inmate buddies for work and eventually stole all of the tools on the building site from me, while hiding his drug addictions and alcohol dependency. My fault for assuming that he would be better than some "criminal illegal Mexican". In fact, after we fired him and his crew, who cleaned up the mess and put it right? A team of Mexican workers.
Being an immigrant, I didn't judge anyone other than their actions. I clearly started to see the light. And living in a part of the country that had been Mexico before, it made a lot of sense. The border was an illusion - created by those that wanted to control money.
To continue to thread the needle, I eventually awoke to what really lies on the other side of that artificial border with Mexico, despite all the lies and scare tactics. It started with dentistry.
My wife has had her challenges with dentists. She hates them. It all stemmed from a bad experience as a child with a dentist in Papua New Guinea. Her family were educators and were employed by the Australian Education Department to build schools in the emerging PNG area. We're talking rainforests, high in the volcanic mountains. The places you probably think still have cannibals. Tribal regions.
She grew up exposed to people in those areas as her friends and peers. She sees a side of the world that I don't have that vision, because living with and working with the natives creates a sense of empathy that you can't get watching National Geographic channel.
But after decades of dental problems from "bush fix" dentistry as a child, we had to get it fixed. One day I was getting my hair cut at my local barbers. He's from Kazakhstan. An immigrant like me. We got talking and he told me about this little town on the border of Arizona, California and Mexico called Los Aldogones. It is a medical tourism center for dental, optical and pharmaceutical.
It was a bit scary - the concept of going to Mexico to get dental work done. I thought my wife would never sign up for that. So I decided to go there and check it out. I found some YouTube videos from retirees who went there, and followed in their footsteps. I got a basic exam and teeth cleaning to A-B compare with my US dentist. What I found was jaw dropping.
It was a 3 hour drive from Phoenix to get there - easy. The cost was 25% of what the US charges. The quality of care was 2x better. They had better medical imaging technology, 3D X-Ray machines, and you got multiple dentists and medical hygienists working on you. For a quarter of the cost. I was sold. But I had to return home and tell my wife.
I did that, but she had more reservations. However each day she had more dental problems. Finally she agreed to at least go there with me and get an exam and a quote to fix it. To my surprise she did, sat in the chair and I remember being called into the room after the dentists had all the images up on screens on the wall showing the problems, with a $4K quote to fix. It was a lot of work. I didn't have a problem with the money. It seemed very reasonable to me. But I thought my wife would want to run out of there and never look back.
To my surprise, she looked at me and said, "Let's get this done right now". I said fine. The next 8 hours, I sat in the waiting room while she underwent the first day of work and groggy, I escorted her across the border through the US immigration line and eventually to the car and drove home. One week later, we returned again for the final work and it was done. A perfect job. Better than any dental experience we had in the USA.
About a year later, my daughter had some cavities discovered by a local dentist in Arizona. They wanted $4K to fix them. Thinking that since it was my daughter and that I didn't have the time or opportunity to take her to Los Aldogones, we'd do that. My mistake. They did the work and happily took my money. Only to find that 6 months later, they were no better. I got ripped off.
So off we went to Los Aldogones again, and this time she got the correct exam. We were treated like family members of our dentists. They knew us from our previous work there and they took such great care of my daughter. Not only did we get the cavities fixed, but they also removed her wisdom teeth. Total cost was 25% of the US price (again). A year later we returned again and the work is perfect - no issues, no complications, nothing.
Why is this important? Because I learned that the US media and dental industry have it out for Mexico. They are threatened and rightly so. They do everything they can to manipulate the hearts & minds of Americans to not take advantage of our southern neighbor by demonizing them at any opportunity. They call them unhealthy. They spread fake information that if you go there you will be beheaded by some drug cartel. That you could be thrown in Mexican prison and never seen the sun again for the rest of your lives.
I am awakening. I am learning that what you get told on the media is lies. And what people believe is fiction. That the only way to really see the truth is to go to it. You don't run from the unknown. You embrace the opportunity to learn from it. Mexico taught me how interests in the USA just don't want you to know the truth about a place. To the extent that they will slander it, just to shackle its citizenry to its borders. It isn't that they want to keep the Mexicans out - it is that they want to keep the citizenry in.
I still see the world from an outsider's perspective. I have my stories to tell and I realize that most of what is in the mainstream is lies. That to devote 24 hour TV channels to a political sporting event, where the channels follow the "team" you support, is just wrong. True news telling is lost. To think that the world is good or bad, up or down, etc. is because of the political party in power is just plain ignorant and demonstrates a lack of willingness on the individual to seek out the truth for themselves. Maybe it is laziness, but from my experience I see it as keeping the population dumbed down.
But I also see the nefarious and evil side to all of this. I've since spent time in Mexico City, Guadalajara, Ajijic, San Carlos, etc. and I start to understand the culture better. I see with my own eyes how embracing and warm the people are. How they treat me and my family as part of their family. And how trading with them is a great way to create the win-win business enterprises I sought out as a younger man.
However I realize being a US citizen that this comes with a huge burden. While we were not paying attention, the US government created a debt burden (at the time of writing) of $21 trillion that it can barely pay off. And that it obligated itself to funding social security & Medicare for the senior members of society at unsustainable levels. Each political party is kicking that can down the road and avoiding dealing with it, meanwhile they are spending $1 trillion per year on military spending for a force that is 10x bigger than anyone else.
I also see an out of control medical system where the costs of healthcare have risen 10x what they were since 1966, yet our life expectancy has only risen 4 years on average. And that people can't afford to go to hospital, or even pay their insurance premiums. They are slaves to employment because they can be shackled by the company paying the healthcare and can never leave, unless to another slave owner who offers similar healthcare for their family. God forbid anyone uses the term "healthcare for all" as a political vision, because with the current debt load, it would burst the bubble and unveil the US economy for the Ponzi scheme it has become.
There is no free market. There are winners & losers based on how well you line the pockets of the politicians that create legislation to your benefit. This Chrony Capitalism is repulsive to any hard working person that wants to go out and make a name for themselves in the world. Yet few call this out. Those that do are either black-listed or slandered because you care to question the populist beliefs of a society that is hypnotized that bigger is better, over-consumption is the solution and you can have anything you want even though you can't afford it - just get a bank credit card, mortgage, loan, etc. It will be ok. Trust us.
It won't. We spit out kids lumbered with 20 years of student loan debt who can't buy a house. We have an over inflated stock market teetering on collapse, meanwhile a President that wants to extol the virtues of his economic vision that only benefits the entrenched rich. Trade tariffs being targeted at countries as a way to "get back at them for treating us so bad" is an illusion of more taxes on the American people, to help pay the interest payments on the debt burden without using the word "tax". It is all lies.
Meanwhile the opportunities for those that travel or relocate themselves to foreign lands are weighed down with compliance reporting, FBAR statements, FATCA banking laws, having to file taxes until the day you die regardless of where are you domiciled.... If you are a senior person looking at where in the world you can afford to retire, it sure is going to be hard in the USA. Particularly after the next big financial collapse. It is coming.
Want some proof? Try watching this video:
I warn you - it is pretty dry, but you will quickly get the sense of just what sort of paperwork, compliance and tax filing obligations follow you everywhere on this planet that you go. And "offshore" includes Mexico. While only a small number of other countries in the world (you can count on the fingers of one had) use "citizen based taxation", the US has never repealed this to allow its citizens the freedom to travel, without being financially tethered to mother 'Murica. Hence the freedom of movement is stifled by overly zealous compliance and filing requirements. Further making it less and less attractive to venture internationally. With this government policy mixed with media lies on the dangers of leaving US shores, it is no wonder that people feel shackled.
My eyes are wide open to all of this. I love being an Australian and an American. But I can't stand the constraints that have grown. Like a creeper vine over our legs. Further stopping us from experiencing life, creating things, doing business, etc. Meanwhile the populace sit on the couch getting fatter, needing more healthcare they can't afford, watching the TV telling them that they should focus on the reality TV show that is the US White House. Mixed with pharmaceutical ads and then the audacity to have enticing fast food ads, requiring further pharmaceuticals to overcome the obesity epidemic. The downward spiral continues.
Is this freedom? No - not at all. Freedom is an ability to travel. An ability to trade. An ability to GO WHERE YOU ARE TREATED BEST. (to quote the brilliant Andrew Henderson, from Nomadcapitalist.com).
To be UNCONSTRAINED.
I hope you benefit from the information I want to share. I hope you question the doctrine being given to you by the media, the banksters, and the government. I hope you realize that your choice of a "team" to support in politics shouldn't define you or your freedom. That you are not truly free until you are truly UNCONSTRAINED.
I want to find ways that you can regain your freedom. Legal and ethical ways. Ways that finds holes in systems that have been built up over the years. "Life Hacks" for the lack of a better term. A way that you can work within the system and yet have the freedom that you used to have. The USA can promise to be the "Land of the Free", but it needs some tweaking to get it back to delivering on that promise.
I want to share other people's stories too. If we can learn from other's experiences, we can either avoid calamity or follow in their footsteps to find solutions. There are so many out of the box methods that can be adopted, but it often means being your own fiscal contrarian. Those of us that have the stomach for this, can prosper.
I'll share what I have learned that has helped me and my family out. How about you do the same. Together we can create a community of like minded people that all want one thing - To BE UNCONSTRAINED.
