Hacker News Reader

Comment by sneak | Hacker News Reader

> This isn't some web-app whose terms of service you don't like, it's a nation state. People throughout history took to the streets to win freedom/voting right/etc.

Historically, it was much harder and more expensive to move your entire life to another country (and maintain your social and economic ties). People were vastly better off staying put.

Today, that's simply not the case. I moved across an ocean to avoid participating in the US economy in a positive way (insofar as that is practically possible being a denizen of the Internet) for under $1500 and all while maintaining my personal and professional connections to those still resident there.

Perhaps this antique notion of "taking to the streets to win freedom" was the appropriate choice, then.

I know for a fact that today it is not only demonstrably ineffective, but also entirely unnecessary.

View on HN

The problem is that after a while you'll notice that every country's government is partly corrupt and every country has ridiculous laws that, at some point, are going to affect you.

It might be less bad in Luxembourg than it is in the US, but it is a common trend that if a small group of countries move their laws and regulations in a particular direction, other countries with a comparable culture and standard of living are prone to follow sooner or later.

You can keep fleeing to the next non-sucky country, but in theory, you're going to run out of countries at some point. Maybe not in your lifetime, so your solution is practical, but if it becomes widely adopted, I think we're going to get a problem.

Afaik, there's no indication that countries whose people leave en masse change their laws, regulations and institutions to try and fix it. Thus, I doubt that "voting with your feet" like you can do in a market economy works with countries. Try and find a Macedonian with a university degree in Macedonia, for example.

> You can keep fleeing to the next non-sucky country, but in theory, you're going to run out of countries at some point. Maybe not in your lifetime, so your solution is practical, but if it becomes widely adopted, I think we're going to get a problem.

Eventually, some countries are likely to decide they want to suck less, or get changed by revolutions etc, and then you can switch to one of those.

It's complicated, of course. The smaller the ruling elite, the less prosperous the whole country will be, but the ruling elite itself is just fine with that.

> is a common trend that if a small group of countries move their laws and regulations in a particular direction, other countries with a comparable culture and standard of living are prone to follow sooner or later.

You can move to a country with a different culture, or at least different enough. Some of them are in the East, like Hong Kong and Singapore, but there are some in the West too, like Iceland. According to Transparency International they are less corrupt than the US.

> I moved across an ocean to avoid participating in the US economy in a positive way (insofar as that is practically possible being a denizen of the Internet) for under $1500 and all while maintaining my personal and professional connections to those still resident there.

The education that gives you the skills that allow you entry to another country cost significantly more than $1,500.

Don't you still need to file tax returns in the US?

I dropped out of high school.

And yes, but I get to claim the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion. I pay zero US personal income tax.

Where did you move to?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com