Patrick Hiebert | The Cost of Staying Put

Timothy Allen: I want to start though because I want to know about Atenas because all I see at the moment is like you gallivanting around the hills on a horse on a white horse trying to be a cowboy right no it looked cool it's a good way to to talk about it now correct me if I'm wrong but like there were there were two things that that I found out recently one was that um your beachside property is sold out is that right.

Patrick Hiebert: Uh the beachside one is not but the coronado coronado sorry coronado sold out coronado is another I'm sorry there's a hill highlands one yeah completely sold out yeah well we fortunately had the foresight or just luck because we weren't sure how popular it was going to be. Well, backing up, usually when we buy land for a Veritas Village, all the land around us goes up in value quite a bit, right? Because people think, oh, there's other stuff we can do with this land. And so we had the foresight to get an option to buy, basically double the size of the Coronado property, which we executed that option a couple months ago. So now we're permitting the next half, I guess you could say. So it's got, you know, it will be double in size. And based on how fast the first part sold out, I think we'll do all right on the second.

Timothy Allen: That's amazing do you know when I went to serbia a couple of weeks ago um to a liberlands festival and I met someone who's bought properties in three of your places.

Patrick Hiebert: Oh nice.

Timothy Allen: Because I got I did a talk and I mentioned Veritas Villages in my talk because you've got you're an interesting use case well you are an interesting sort of you're an intermediary between somewhere like Próspera and somewhere that's a proper ideological independent community online community or something like that No, but I mean, you're doing it as a business. Like if you go down to the kind of intentional community end of the spectrum, you get a lot of people just coming together and doing it. Whereas you are also doing it as a business which is a so I would call it a little bit further this way down the spectrum.

Patrick Hiebert: Yeah I mean it is definitely a business We actually a publicly traded company You can invest online and you know with any exchange or any brokerage.

Timothy Allen: So, yeah, it's not a not-for-profit. We have shareholders to answer to, and we're constantly trying to raise more money to expand faster. And so it's definitely, I mean, I get asked this kind of stuff all the time, especially at places like this at a Free Cities conference, like, you know, what is your version of freedom? And we still do, well, first of all, we're in jurisdictions that are very freedom-oriented anyway. You take a look at Panama and they've got the non-jurisdictional tax. So if you're doing work outside the country, you could basically have a 0% tax. Being Canadian, that was super attractive for me, considering my tax rate was about 70% when I was living in Canada. And it's just, you know, importing things is great for us. You know, we do a lot of solar systems and stuff. And so there's a lot of, you know, there's freedom of movement, freedom of speech. It's not the woke nonsense, really, that hasn't really hit Latin America. A little bit, maybe, in some of the South American countries like Brazil and Argentina have a bit more of that. But most, the Latin culture, the Latino culture is very family oriented. And you know the concept of you know not having kids or whatever those sorts of things that the the woke is you know and over obsession of climate change and things like that it's just not a thing down here so it it actually creates a lot of freedom not to ramble on about that but I mean I so there was this thing called bill c9 in canada I don't know if you'd heard about it it's a couple years ago they did a whole bunch of censorship censorship stuff where like facebook people looking at Facebook in Canada don't see the same stuff that you see elsewhere in the world they've censored out you know things from the U.S. And stuff like that but and then they added this C9 which went from a bill to a law in July and it's basically well they call it a hate speech law which you know that's the disguise for you know basically more censorship and and and it's so the Canadian government's just getting more and more authoritarian but what I found really interesting about that, not only that it was passed, was that it's the first law in Canadian history that has a component of it, where you have to prove your innocence, you're guilty out of the gate, and you have to prove your innocence instead of being innocent until proven guilty. And so you, somebody could say, 11 years ago, Tim, you, if you were in Canada, you posted something that I consider hate speech, just me, it doesn't have to be, you didn't maybe mean it as hate speech, you, like if you said something about Islamic culture or something, throwing people off the roofs, that could be considered hate speech, right? And you literally can go to jail until you can prove to a court that you didn't mean it that way, right? And it's just like, I never thought that kind of stuff was going to be happening in Canada. So that kind of, just back to the point is, I mean, Latin America already has so many of those kinds of cultural freedoms that we get a lot of the freedom. And of course, you know, our first acronym there with freedom, independence, resilience, sustainability, and transparency that they just kind of all work really well in this part of the world so I mean not don't not underplaying the fact that you've sold out a huge property as well which is quite impressive I mean I how's the sort of building situation going on in coronado.

Patrick Hiebert: Um finishing home so people are getting their finished homes now and starting to move into the community that's always a kind of another phase where you know now you get the reality of what building a town is like people have different opinions they might be 99.9 percent libertarian but that doesn't mean they agree on everything but uh.

Timothy Allen: Oh sure I mean I'd say that's.

Patrick Hiebert: Actually a function of being a libertarian yeah the non-agreement principle mate that's what it's not the non-aggression principle yeah exactly I mean but as long as it doesn't hurt anybody you can agree to disagree right and I kind of like that because that was sort of more society a few years ago or decades ago maybe than nowadays it's so divisive right you're either on the left or the right politically or you are super against climate change or you don't really believe that it's such a thing and or climate's always changing and you know whatever the different things are but they're.

Timothy Allen: So divisive that it splits families and friends apart you know you know at coronado how many people how much of the infrastructure are you are you responsible before I I watched a video recently where you were talking about what you're building and the plans for sort of like you know um fitness and uh this that and the other how much do you do and how much do people do who buy a bit of land.

Patrick Hiebert: There and well out of the gate we basically make a master plan that has certain things like the music studio the the gym restaurant that sort of different things on there some of this stuff becomes commercial entities that we actually keep and lease out the property to the restaurant for instance we might not run the restaurants we do have we do run a restaurant in one of our communities, but in other places we might just lease it out to a restaurateur that's better at it than we are or whatever. But yeah so all the things that are on the master plan we have to create And then as it turned over to the to the community the homeowners association they might say well like okay you guys built two tennis courts but we have avid tennis players so we want a third one and and that'll just the HOA decides whether they want to build a third one and we've done it with kind of a type of DAO it's on the blockchain and I talked to you about that before I think it's very unique because you know we've said before that it's just almost impossible to be the president of an HOA and have people happy with you.

Timothy Allen: It's a terrible job. Sure, yeah. I don't think anyone wants that.

Patrick Hiebert: Well, actually, some people do want that job.

Timothy Allen: Until they do it, probably.

Patrick Hiebert: No, no, they just love telling people what to do.

Timothy Allen: Yeah, I guess they're not confrontation adverse. And so the second part that you've just pulled your option on, how many new places are on that?

Patrick Hiebert: We're still working on the master plan, but probably between 50 and 100 more properties. And because it'll be kind of a, well, it's a part of the first property, a lot of the amenities are in the first property that we don't have to remake. So we may be able to get more home sites than we think at this point, but we're working on it. It's a mountain, basically, so it's a little more challenging. The first one had more of a plateau feel and more rolling hill, and this is, you know, we eyed it for a long time. It's beautiful views from it. You're literally looking over the first phase and out to the ocean. So it's going to have some spectacular views and probably have a little bit larger lots. You know, it's just because of some parts of, you know, each lot aren't very buildable. You've got kind of a steep cliff on one half of your property or something. Then, you know, we have to give you enough space to be able to build a home and enjoy it.

Timothy Allen: And Atenas the new one in Costa Rica. And I found this out from the guy I met in Serbia. He said that was the first phase of that was selling very very fast indeed.

Patrick Hiebert: Yeah well it's a good segue into what we're talking about the heat here Atenas was ranked by national geographic as having the best climate in the world.

Timothy Allen: Which is always nice to have when you're selling what like.

Patrick Hiebert: Well it's it's always between 19 and 27 ish degrees all year round like in celsius so high 60s to low 80s in fahrenheit and it's just super comfortable and most of the homes don't even have air conditioners or, or heaters. Like they have nothing for temperature control because the temperature is so consistent. So a few decades ago, I guess some national geographic article came out and said, this is the best climate in the world. And of course the town of Atenas there has got that, you know, big concrete letters in front of the town, but, but we were very lucky through, uh, one of our guys, Mario, he, uh, knew the family that owned it. It was the last large land tract in, in that area. So it's hard to find that. I've probably went to Costa Rica over 50 times looking for the right spot and always checking all the boxes that we can. And like I said all the time, the last box to check is would I live there? And this place I would definitely live there and probably will. If I ever get to retire, that's probably where it'll be. But it's pretty spectacular. It's got like two rivers in it, waterfalls. You probably might have seen in some of the video there. Horseback riding around there is great.

Timothy Allen: And you put the first part up for...

Patrick Hiebert: Yeah, so it's pretty large. It's 140, 138 hectares, so 340 plus acres. We've actually reserved a relatively small piece of it, but if you've been to Panama, for instance, and you've gone to Casco Viejo, the old part of the city, it's the same size of that. It's 30 hectares that we've reserved for building our own city this time. So working with the Tipolis architecture guys and saying, okay, like let's design a European town in this one. A little more density, but a lot more businesses and stuff like that. But I've always wanted to kind of take that next step. We've never really had the space in the earlier communities to say, okay, here's the thing that we do best, which is the residential communities and all the amenities and the fun things to do. But I want to reserve this space for the town. And then we're lucky enough, too, that this property is close enough to Atenas that is already zoned as an urban property, even though it was a cattle ranch before. So we have very little zoning, much less permitting to do. And we recently had our water rights permit, which is hard to get in Costa Rica. They're very retentive about their water, even though they have more water than pretty much anywhere on the planet. But I suppose it's a good thing. So, yeah, it's going really well. And we just released a few weeks ago the first phase. The first phase has 45 home sites in it and I think we're probably over 20 of them sold. So we're closing in on half within a few weeks.

Timothy Allen: And is that first phase anywhere near the bit that's going to be the city centre type?

Patrick Hiebert: It's actually kind of on a plateau that looks right over what's going to be the little city. So it's a great place. And we purposely picked that spot because it has some of the nicest views and the whole property has amazing views. You have to come and visit it sometime and we'll ride the horses around. Yeah. And, but, uh, we picked a spot that was very, very nice views. You can actually see the city of San Jose in the distance at night and the lights kind of twinkling over there. And then you're looking right over the part that's going to be our little town or city and then, um, you know, great access. Um, we have, you know, the, the roads are creating a new, a new road right past us, so that's nice to have as well. So it's, yeah, it's spent, it's, I mean, we're probably going to be opening up phase two very soon because you know when you get close to the end the five lots left or whatever then you know people are like well I think I'm just going to wait till your next phase and see and what you're going to have there so you can't really completely sell to phase before you open the next one but.

Timothy Allen: But you're going for european style buildings.

Patrick Hiebert: I much prefer the curves and lines and narrow walkways and cobblestone streets and like coffee shops on the ground floor and you know residential above that like a I think my closest image of it is Avignon in in france oh yeah if you've been there I have been there and that kind of the walled city that was kind of like going to be another vatican or something like that at one point I think the whole history it is interesting when one of the popes left rome and decided to put up shop there but but it's it's very cool so it much like that you know where you're the roads don't necessarily make a lot of sense they were just as you built something they kind of went this direction and that direction and it's just makes for that like even any of you know the small british towns from the past too with the narrow walkable streets and and it just because of this climate here too it's like you can actually do that and and it would be very difficult to well even casco viejo in panama city is awfully hot all right so you know they they purposely built and at that time hundreds of years ago the the road system or the sidewalk system so that the wind channels down these these alleys so that a little bit cooler but here in Atenas we don't really need to do that we can so you know I'm looking forward to it because we've never personally never designed a town before like a you know actual higher density town the buildings will be kind of three to five stories tall much like you know if you're walking down Avignon or something that.

Timothy Allen: What about what about the lots if I if I buy a lot can I do I have to build a european style house.

Patrick Hiebert: No no you can I mean it's a freedom oriented community. We do have a bit of an architectural committee internally that goes, Hey, it's kind of like a libertarian pact. Don't build something ugly, right? You can design your own home. Most people I'd say it's almost all of them. We have one or two guys that have done something unique on their own. Most of them pick one of our, our plans and either modify it or just go with the way it is. Cause, and we've, we've got another, I don't know, I want to say 10 or 12 new designs for this community. So some of them, I don't know if you saw my presentation yesterday would show on one of them and as soon as Mikkel thorup saw that one he's oh that's the house I'm gonna have he loves it of course he keeps having babies so he's gonna need some more.

Timothy Allen: Bedrooms six bedroom one now right that's amazing I mean that is a that's a really interesting that that's the kind of thing that when you sit around dreaming about what you really want to do yeah that's what you think about isn't it it's quite amazing you're doing it I'm kind of hoping.

Patrick Hiebert: That before I die, we have that totally functional little city of a European town inside of Costa.

Timothy Allen: Rica. Bloody hell.

Patrick Hiebert: And I think it'll be super popular because it's 30, less than 30 minutes from the airport, less than 30 minutes from San Jose city, uh, less than, oh, about 30, 40 minutes from the beaches up in the best climate. So there's going to be a lot of people that want to live there even without the freedom oriented nature. Right. So it'll be an interesting mix because it won't necessarily I think we're going to be having the libertarian type people that move into our communities preaching to the new people that are moving in so maybe we'll convert a few more people to libertarian and an cap or something but and um.

Timothy Allen: Well I just thought of something what was I going to say no I'm just I'm just I'm impressed that someone's actually doing it like that because the temptation of course is just to build build buildings but to actually think it through like that and come up with something that is a european vernacular or whatever that's amazing that seems like a little dream project actually because you get there sit.

Patrick Hiebert: Down and exercise all your deep your deepest desires yeah exactly no it's it's a fun position to be in too and it's like it's like starting a european singapore right and and doing it in central america so I mean I'm really looking forward to to how that's shaping up.

Timothy Allen: Can I ask about aspirations of sovereignty on a place like that.

Patrick Hiebert: Yeah I mean as you and I have talked before I mean I look at Tipolis and Tipolis sort of comes from the top down right like here's the purity of governance that we would like to have and that's a hugely hard sell in most countries whether we are regardless of where in the world but I think especially in latin america where you know they've gone through the socialist nonsense and and communist kind of governments and just they like really want their sovereignty and not affected so when you go in and say here I want 300 hectares of space and I kind of want to make it my own country in a way if you can get and you know I gone with alex and titus to different governments and talk to them and if you can get them to the table to even talk about it their first question is always okay well show me an example of where you've done this before I don't want to be the first guy because if this doesn't work um you know it's my political career on the line so So that was happening five or six years ago already. And so we just said, I want to do it anyway. So we created the Veritas Villages as kind of examples of what a libertarian type of self-governance can be. And it's been interesting because in Panama, we had those conversations. It was just like, I don't get what you guys are talking about. Forget it. You're not going to get it. Now they have some special economic zones like Panamá Pacífico and a few other free zones, they call them. But they've got a lot of rules along the way, but it's all economic for businesses mostly. And so what not too long ago, one of the ministers in Panama was at a dinner and he came over to me and said, hey, like I heard you sold out Coronado. First of all, how does that happen? Because the projects all around you have got one sale to the guy's sister and his dentist and then just stops. And then they have problems because nobody's paying the HOA fee and you guys just walk in and sell it out. And I just told them it's because of the philosophy that we talked to you guys about in the past. And these are not just, these aren't necessarily at all retirees. Like they're bringing their businesses from wherever they're coming in the world. And we've got lots of Europeans, Canadians, Americans, Australians, people from New Zealand, all over the world that prefer Panama's even existing laws as a more freedom-oriented thing than where they're coming from. And so he's like, well, kind of like, how can we help you continue this? You're creating so many jobs and bringing in businesses. I think, like a guy like Mikkel, bring him up again, but I think he and his partners kind of represented over 50% of the expats moving into Panama this last year. And of course, a lot of those people are right up our alley in terms of like-minded, libertarian type of thinking, freedom-oriented. So a lot of those people come through Mikkel. So shout out to him for, mostly for giving people an option of where to live. Everybody comes in and we talk at these conferences and people are like, I didn't believe there was something like that out there. As you mentioned, everything's kind of ethereal. It's like, well, when we get an investment, we're going to buy some land and we're going to try for this and get a lot of those talks all the time. Right. So I'm proud of the fact that we're just doing and the diversification of multiple countries gives us a huge.

Timothy Allen: It's great to hear that somebody is a bot and three of them. I'm not even sure which guy you're talking about. I know there are a few of those. He just bought one of the new ones and I said, oh, cool. And he said, yeah, I've got one at Coronado and I've got one at Playa Pacífica. Okay, cool.

Patrick Hiebert: I mean, I probably can think of who that is. There's not too many with three.

Timothy Allen: He's quite tall. He was quite a tall guy. Maybe Dutch, maybe. I don't know. He'll know. He listens to the show.

Patrick Hiebert: So he'll probably.

Timothy Allen: All right.

Patrick Hiebert: Well, shout out to you. We'll figure out who you are. I mean, I can go look at the records and see who's gotten in each one. But yeah, that's kind of cool. I mean, here we are in Roatán, in Próspera. Right talking today and I've great thing I think you know eric and his team have done great things with creating you know the kind of governance they have here I wish we had that right that's a thing that we're working towards they they got it they fought the government over the last four years and socialist government sort of won I think they're here they're still then they're probably going to move forward I would love to have that but if you are somebody out there in the world that doesn't want to live in honduras there's no other option right so for us the reason we keep expanding and this is actually part of a trip of more country exploration than I've been to all of August pretty much and you know we are going to keep expanding in different countries because then somebody can say well hey I want to be part of that Veritas Village Club but I'd like to live in Paraguay because I heard Paraguay's got these rules and things that I really like and it's like great or I would like to live in Belize because I want to be on the Caribbean and but not in honduras and they're not picking on honduras you know for Próspera but I started selling community properties in nicaragua only right where our playa pacific is Veritas Village Playa Pacífica and it's a beautiful beautiful property but first of all you got to convince most people in the world that nicaragua is safe which it actually is but it's not what the mainstream media says right and then you get once they're there you have to convince them that you know you want to live in a Veritas Village and not just one of the other or random resorts or whatever, or communities around. So, you know, it's much easier, unfortunately, because Nicaragua is a nice country, but it's much easier to sell in Costa Rica or Panama and more people want to live in those countries. And they're stable. They been around with you know kind of capitalist like governments for quite a while And so you know that and countries like Panama have that the canal which generates a lot of revenue to keep them stable. And Paraguay is one we're looking at very strongly right now. There's a lot of Bitcoiners moving from, from Brazil into, into Paraguay to get away from some new rules that Brazil is putting into place and looks like their next election is also going to be won by the socialist party so it's one it's one of the few thankfully one of the few outliers that is still going that direction whereas I had a map up of of south and central america like on my presentation and it's you know in in this area the blue is conservative and the red is liberal or you know.

Timothy Allen: Red being in the u.s vernacular um lefty yeah I mean yeah lefty or liberal liberal is all right.

Patrick Hiebert: My book lefty is yeah yeah so I mean the lefty down in latin america lefty is more of a better word because it's socialist it's not really liberal yeah sure but uh the you know chile peru ecuador um now colombia obviously venezuela got a little help but I've all gone more to the centric centric right a little bit um on the political party so it's it's only since 2022 It's like four, not even a full four years that they've switched. Everything was leftist except Paraguay. Paraguay had a single holdout for years up until 2022. And I guess the other countries have, you know, it's an, you know, somebody was asking me the other day, like, what do you think about the, you know, the technology and general arms race or whatever you want to call it between China and the US? I'm more concerned about the fact that the West in general is turning upside down and South America is all of a sudden becoming the capitalist place, right? So it's worrisome that, you know, Europe and Canada and the US are really going more socialist, right?

Timothy Allen: I don't think it's a mystery why. It's easy to look at Europe and see why it's happening because it's a pretty simple mechanism. It's democracy and welfare and all those things inevitably, slowly but surely, causing an incentive model that works in favor of people who want free stuff and against the people that are productive.

Patrick Hiebert: I mean, yeah, there's nothing we can really do about it. It's an inevitable end of democracy every time in history. I mean, it's easily put into words. You want to win votes, you're going to buy your voters. And by giving them free this and free that, I mean, it's funny because in Nicaragua, I'm going to get stamped on for this, but in Nicaragua, they literally buy sandwiches to get your vote and give people a sandwich and that's enough to get them to vote for you. But I mean, it's a little different in Canada where they're going to call it free health care, even though it's not free or I think 36% or something like that of your taxes are spent on a very inefficient health system. That's terrible. And I can say that. I've been treated in Canada. People say, oh, you're just dissing something. That's great. It's like, it's not great. There's nothing great about it. Yep. And like my daughter just moved to Panama with two little grandsons and her husband. And they're just shocked. Like they just called a doctor and got in the next day or even that afternoon in Canada. That's like 10 months maybe if you're lucky to get an appointment. And I mean, you can die before you get your appointment. So anyway, all over the map on that answer. But yeah, I mean, unfortunately, it's the way democracy ends.

Timothy Allen: And I guess it's just, it's kind of like a cliff, isn't it? Like, I mean, how quickly, you know, Germany, UK, Canada, these countries are all kind of going further and further off. Like I think Germany's chancellor, whatever they're called, has just said last week that people's savings accounts is a bad idea.

Patrick Hiebert: That was actually Christine Lagarde. That's the ECB. But basically, that's wider than that. That's the whole of Europe.

Timothy Allen: I mean, she chose her words, when you look into that. No, no, she chose her words wisely. I mean, she said her words were, savings are lazy. We need to make them work for European companies. And I think people like us, we jump straight to the conclusion, oh, right, they're priming everyone to basically confiscate. I don't think they will confiscate, but what they will do is try and incentivize you not to save. Which is also bad because it's up to you whether you save and saving is good not not saving in fear is a terrible idea but saving as a concept is a great idea because because you want to save for that in case something bad goes happen or you've just got excess capital that you want to put to.

Patrick Hiebert: Work later or whatever you know well and I think like you just said it the way she worded it I I look at it like whether she meant we're going to take your savings or just meant this would be good for businesses and it the inevitable end is the same right and it's how the same thing with democracy we all know where it goes unfortunately because in order to get voted in and keep your job as a politician you've got to find ways to basically bribe people to vote for you and that ultimately becomes somewhere near socialism and eventually near communism right so it a path It is And it is also because they produce nothing themselves.

Timothy Allen: They have no income other than you or they can sell bonds. So borrow from you or take from you. There's only two ways to do it. And the savings are lazy thing does look a little bit like take from you.

Patrick Hiebert: I think maybe it starts as borrow from you, right? Here's, okay, here's an incentive. I don't know.

Timothy Allen: I looked into it because I thought that. And I looked for historical examples where someone said that first and then it turned into that. And there actually aren't that many of them, if at all. I couldn't come up with a concrete version where savings, apart from something like Turkey, when people woke up one day and half their savings had been turned into stock in the bank or things like that. That's the way they do it. They don't say, right, we're taking that now. You have no access to it. They'll turn it into a stable coin or turn it into stock or do something, you know. So yeah, it wasn't as simple as it looked. I saw that meme going around the internet, you know.

Patrick Hiebert: Yeah. Maybe it's a bad example, but it is just another example of, you know, making maybe well-worded, maybe poorly worded. But like you said, I mean, people with a savings account should just be able to decide. I mean, if investing in a European company was something that was going to make them more money than their savings account does now, that's probably what they would do. Just naturally.

Timothy Allen: I don't know me personally dude I don't want to get involved in all that crap no I'm not being funny it you know I don't want I don't want to invest my money I've got other things to be getting on with yeah you know that's why I like bitcoin because in a sense you can just put it aside and and and use it when you need it you don't have to necessarily think about oh well am I getting a better rate than the debasement rate and of my money and this that and the other and is someone going to take it from me? I think that's how things should be. I'm a simple guy. I don't want to think about getting 9%. I mean, you're a businessman. You thrive on all that stuff. But also with your personal finances, you probably would rather spend time just living your life.

Patrick Hiebert: I have no time. Even if it was like I would love to just sit around on a farm and collect chicken eggs and stuff like that. But even though I'm busy with the business, I still don't have time to deal with my own personal finances. So I'm also very heavily into Bitcoin for that reason. It's that I just know intuitively that it's not returning any interest rate. It's returning its growth and capital gain much faster than the fiat is collapsing most of the time. So to me, it is the best savings plan.

Timothy Allen: Well, it's also, even if you don't look at it like a savings, it's the best insurance policy against fiat. Because, you know, it has the characteristics fiat doesn't. And, you know, not being confiscatable in this day and age, as we might well see, is probably a good thing.

Patrick Hiebert: Well, and that's why Brazilians are moving to Paraguay, because Paraguay is very Bitcoin friendly. In fact, I think Paraguay is the third or second largest Bitcoin mining country in the world because they have extra power, energy, right? But in Brazil, I think if you do any transaction over – I don't think you're allowed to do a transaction over $10,000 worth of US dollars worth of Bitcoin, which I mean I just bought a car in Bitcoin the other day and I wouldn't have been able to in Brazil.

Timothy Allen: Well, no one would have known.

Patrick Hiebert: Well that's a thing but then then you're you're now officially in brazil's mind you're a criminal right so you have to you know it's like in the u.s and the irs if you decide not to report your income you can do that but you're gonna be living sleepless nights for a long time.

Timothy Allen: I'm aware I'm hogging this interview a little bit.

Patrick Hiebert: Not at all.

Timothy Allen: Patrick do you want to is there anything you want.

Patrick Hiebert: To throw back my way I mean I well I came to ask you about the ins and outs of of the villages.

Timothy Allen: Because that's that's the interesting stuff for me but well go ahead I mean we.

Patrick Hiebert: No no I got it okay I got I got it um yeah I mean I'm always curious about especially people living in the different countries in europe um I know you you really enjoy the uk and and you have a great place to live there.

Timothy Allen: And yeah I I I would quantify really enjoy when I'm alone at home with my family I love it as As soon as I interact with bureaucracy, I fucking hate it. So anyway, just to clarify.

Patrick Hiebert: Well, I mean, the UK is, in my mind, at least sometimes there's a neck and neck race with other countries. But sometimes the UK and Canada seem like they're in a race to the bottom together. And so we both come from countries I'm not in mind anymore. And I was able to not have my residency anymore. So I can't really be impacted by them too much. But, you know, what do you spend any time thinking about, you know, different things like, I guess, the Netherlands Sort of announced it and then retracted it and then re-announced it for 2028 to have like unrealized gains taxes and that sort of stuff. Like wealth taxes and exit taxes. Canada's threatening a half a million dollar exit tax. So I'd recommend people get out before they actually make that. I mean, they threatened the censorship laws and the hate speech laws and then they became laws. So I'm sure the exit is going to happen too.

Timothy Allen: Here's how I look at it. Because, yes, we think about this constantly. Um and I have broken it down for myself into to this and this is and I won't even talk specifically about myself here I think this is generally what people like me are thinking is we look at the we look at the country and we say okay what assets do we have what money do we have what income do we have what lifestyle do we have and then we put them on a chart and we say what's it worth okay so what seems to be happening is a lot of people are slowly making sure their assets are mobile or or doing things abroad or investing in other places or offshore or whatever that is that seems like something that people with enough money are starting to think about people are starting to think about their house as a liability and not a not an asset but in my case because I have a house that's a large amount of our net worth because we you know I paid the mortgage off a long time ago I was a good person that was the most stupid thing I ever did was think that I should pay my mortgage off but anyway I did and now I'm in my case as well I do see.

Patrick Hiebert: Okay this is a potential liability now however explain that to people why you see it as a liability.

Timothy Allen: Versus an asset well in the old days we thought um you could park your money in a property and it would go up and it does but if you actually look at it inflation adjusted it's not it's not some golden goose or anything actually it's it's a way to sort of try and keep up with um with the rate of inflation um but if you've only got one house that's not that applicable to you and even until you decide to retire or downsize anyway because you tend to as we have done we've always tried to get better and better and better we've always tried to get a better house and we have done but we have hit the top and you know we've got three kids we've got a family home we've got everything we need cool we're not going any further so that looks like an asset and in the old days you would say great we'll add value to the house we'll do this that and that and when we downsize we can pull some of that capital out and we can spend it on ourselves in retirement or whatever that's an asset a liability is when suddenly the thing that you thought you owned now is being used as um as collateral by the government or used as a way to to extract wealth from you I.e a wealth tax a wealth tax would say right you own a million pound house because it went up a hundred thousand last year bearing in mind you didn't add value to it yourself it just went up because the rate of inflation was going up so we want I think they were talking about a flat fee of to begin with maybe like 0.7 six percent which is it doesn't sound too bad but on a large house that's a that's a six thousand uh you know that's that's thousands that basically means that every year suddenly you have to find that and if you've got a really big house um that's quite a lot and this is and that's.

Patrick Hiebert: The beginning obviously that's just the beginning of it yeah I mean the bar will always have to be lowered right because eventually you don't get enough tax income and the people that were paying that higher have left I mean I think you guys had like 15 000 millionaires leave the uk last year.

Timothy Allen: 17 I think higher yeah I guess the year before it was 15 I think something but it's just like.

Patrick Hiebert: I don't understand what the government's I guess they don't care about the long term but they're only in it for the what they can get now because it's because it's a term.

Timothy Allen: Well not but kind of I mean they're in it just to stay afloat they're like a business that is bankrupt and they're just looking for money and they now see your asset as their asset and they can they can do that and the next stage after the kind of tax on your wealth is the tax on leaving which everyone's talking about now it's coming into the public domain which means that your house now because wealth exit taxes are much higher that's a much higher amount and traditionally in the uk we've always thought of your primary home as kind of being outside of all that stuff. The new Labour government are starting to talk about scrapping some taxes and replacing it with this new sort of this your house is worth this much this is how you pay. Yeah the next stage after that will be an exit tax and then with the exit tax the question is does that include your house? Almost certainly it will so now if you own a million pound house that might be 30 40 percent to leave which is so egregious as in and if I think about my own life from aged whatever it was in my early 20s buying a flat buying a house doing it up sweat and tears semi detached farm I mean this is 40 30 years of slog and I I pretty I feel pretty confident saying that mine that's actually mine you did f all mr government to help me get it to get yeah and in fact and in fact the funny thing is in our last purchase of a property we because it's kind of like a higher band property now because it's our best property I'm in my 50s I've earned this this nice house uh we have something called stamp duty which is a property tax when when you buy yeah and I had to get a small loan to pay that because it wasn't it wasn't in my budget because it's like you know It's like $20,000, $30,000, basically. It's not a small amount. Just to better your life. And I'll be honest, dude, for a couple of years, that was quite a crippling loan. It wasn't, you know, I just thought, I'll get that and I'll try and pay it off. But it was that more egregious because it was really controlling us. Like we went without holidays. We went without this. To pay this little tax that was just enough money to be a burden. And now guess what? So now they're going to change the way your house is taxed. They're going to scrap that tax. They're going to scrap that tax. So I paid that money and now they're going to give us the new tax, which is taxing every house every year. So I went through two or three years worth of pain. And now I'm being told, actually, it didn't mean anything. There's a new tax that you have to pay anyway.

Patrick Hiebert: This new tax is not property tax, right?

Timothy Allen: Yeah, it is a version of.

Patrick Hiebert: So is it in addition to what you would have as property tax every year?

Timothy Allen: No, we don't have property tax. We have council tax, which is like to pay for your council services. And property tax was stamp duty, which is at the point of sale, you pay a fee at a certain amount. But it's quite a lot. It's 20, 30, 40, 50,000 pounds if it's a big house.

Patrick Hiebert: I'm a little familiar with stamp duty because of stamp tax because Belize adopted that as well from the UK under Commonwealth.

Timothy Allen: Well, stamp duty is going to potentially be replaced by a single tax every year. But people who paid stamp duty, fuck them, fuck them. It's like you already did that. And like I say, it wouldn't bother me, but I just know that we've spent two to three years living a hard life. There were things we did not do with our children, specifically because this little, I don't like having debts. I don't like debts and I am and it was becoming something we needed to get rid of you know.

Patrick Hiebert: No that's crazy that you know impacts your life and nobody cares right but I mean I'm secretly always trying to get you and your family to move to Panama you know I'd love to or somewhere here.

Timothy Allen: Well hold a minute before you go on because I'll explain the second part of what I was saying I would love to move to Panama right but when you look at the graph of living in the UK there are benefits to it and they are the fact that my kids are having the time of their lives they are super happy they have no they have no idea any of this this conversation we're having is alien to them and there's no no way they'll ever find out it doesn't matter we grew up there their friends are there their family are there their grandmas and granddads are there it's all there so I'm that's the cost of life for me the cost of life is a stupid government stamp duty corporate tax this that blah blah it's all there so you have to put you have to look at the scales and say this is what I'm paying this is what I'm getting there's no doubt I would get so much more in Panama better health care better standard of living better everything better tax rate but you can't compete with me on family ties English culture these kind of things and so the truth is we will be there until the kids are old enough and then sure I'm out there like a shot man.

Patrick Hiebert: I can't compete with you on the family ties but um you know we have lots of examples my own daughter and and I don't think you know even after half a year of basically being in pan I don't think they will go back to canada ever because I mean their kids have now met friends from from panama and in the expat community is so I mean panama is not the only place right there's other countries that you could choose from but the expat community is so large that you like they're they're meeting from people from all over the world anyway right and speaking english and everything and learning spanish over time but but the maybe the better example is uh simon our kind of our head of marketing right now is um australian and he just went through all the same things and he's got three children and they're living in panama now and I was asking him last night like do you think like how hard is that for your kids and he's like oh they've all made great friends they actually really we thought that at least one out of three wouldn't like it here and so far you know batting a thousand good good for him we're very happy for him because none of them want to go back right to australia so and and like you said they none of that is based on government stuff or taxes I mean that foreign to to a 11 year old right so but the fact that they able to kind of feel the the the joy at least it a relief for their parents right like if you brought I I have known families where the kids didn get as you know into it right so it was tough on the parents that really wanted to stay I remember their family being in nicaragua they loved it the parents loved it and their daughter did not all right so eventually they did move back because it's you know it was too hard to try to convince her but you know for a.

Timothy Allen: Lot of people it is it is both I know I know we would like it though this is the thing when you guys have you know lived in yeah yeah you know what is el salvador for a while or something.

Patrick Hiebert: Mexico we don't so I think you know that's what I was recommending to somebody yesterday too it's like don't make it a move make it a holiday right and then just slowly this holiday lasts forever.

Timothy Allen: But but yeah this is the thing though I I know on paper all this is true that you're telling me patrick the the fly in the ointment is my children's friends at school my daughter's horses that we have now I'd have to ship horses to bloody panama which would be an absolute nightmare you can't just kill a horse or sell a horse that's that's part of the family you know it's those things star trek beaming one thing well those are the things that tie you to a place and I know I'm getting a terrible deal in a way where I am but it's the best but but but my kids don't know that my kids love it I'm the one that suffers in in silence about it but but that's cool that's that.

Patrick Hiebert: You make a sacrifice but.

Timothy Allen: But as soon as I can dude I am there well and it you know I totally understand I'm you know not trying to rush you into the move just what I'd like to see other people get away from these these government systems but but yeah I mean the it's a it's a it's a spectrum right how what do I get for what cost.

Patrick Hiebert: Yes so if if the value of what you have I mean I love canada it's a natural beauty like I love the mountains I lived on a boat there in the ocean and loved it and it's just nothing I'm not crazy about the rain on the west coast or the snow and cold in the in the prairies or whatever but as a as a country to live in when you know I lived there in the heyday right in the 80s 90s there was none of this talk about you know what's what's going on crazy in the in the government and there wasn't I mean the government and the banks were actually quite helpful for me to start my uh you know entrepreneurial life starting a software company like the there was grants and benefits and things that I wouldn't have been able to start without them now there's the opposite like you know there's dei so you have to hire like uh certain races and sexes to meet the quota and like you can't just hire based on merit so out of the gate you're getting killed right like you can't be the best company because you don't have the best people in the job right so all these things that are that made me leave of course the taxes I didn't even know I was libertarian when I left canada right that was something I learned after I left but I got hammered so badly by taxes and then you could see the tide of where the government was going and you know the fall of the democracy was starting probably around 2005 to 10 somewhere and that's kind of when I started getting out and happy that I did but I didn't really know why.

Timothy Allen: Other than it was just oppressive and it wasn't supposed to be and well I suppose the oppression hasn't arrived at my door yet the financial oppression is there but there are ways to mitigate that there are ways to be sensible about that um in legally sensible about that the obvious the last stage of course is to leave and to to leave it behind but but it's the it's the cultural stuff has never has never made it to our door the the general I mean look our the services we get are shit but um we're we're in we're kind of like libertarians we we take responsibility for everything anyway it's like you know if if the if the bin collection service is terrible I'll either do it myself with my truck or I'll employ someone to do it I don't I'm not going to try and complain to the government because they're not going to do anything about it.

Patrick Hiebert: You know and they don't really owe it to you unless they are taking all your money well they should they should owe it to us obviously but I mean in a perfect world you could have government.

Timothy Allen: As a service and choose which ones you want right it would be beautiful we dude we get one of our bins is picked up once every three weeks now I hope it's a big bin no no we have to put we have three bins now so we have well actually we don't use one of them because it's it's like for greens we've got a farm for fuck's sake we don't have to throw away that crap but but you get a normal bin and then a really big green one where you have to you know what it's like how ridiculous it is.

Patrick Hiebert: And all that stuff gets thrown in the same I think pretty sure it does yeah yeah actually in vancouver there was a documentary on that they just followed the trucks after they picked up your recycling and just all dumped it in a landfill straight in the sea well either in this yeah the stuff that was going to china was dumped halfway between canada and china and it was just unbelievable and like you people still do it and I keep telling them like you'd realize it's all ending up in the.

Timothy Allen: Same place they making you work to separate all the stuff and it just going to the same place to be burnt so but I also not sure it even even if it is being recycled I not even sure that that the the thing to do the thing to do is to invent something new if everything's getting if plastic bottles are sort of you know are a massive problem in society let's innovate the plastic bottle then because people aren't going to stop using plastic bottles they're not I mean we've got hundreds of them here look that you you can try to stop using we're on an island in the caribbean and we've got lots of plastic bottles well the shop's full of plastic bottles people use them I think this is where the modern world gets it wrong it tries to regulate plastic bottles rather than saying look at what people are doing right let's work with people they're not solving the problem they're.

Patrick Hiebert: Not incentivizing a new invention that replaces a plastic bottle not in the slightest and and I don't even like subsidies like you could have some kind of biodegradable paper version of it or something and and that gets subsidized to you know incentivize people to do it I think it just has to be better technology so people do it without the subsidies right yeah but that's you know for an Ambergris Caye in belize that's kind of what they do they're all for a good cause they don't want bottle caps and bottles lying all over the beaches and everything on a beautiful island so they're incentivizing the store owners to go with another type of technology like cartons like like milk comes in right and so there's more and more of that which is great and maybe that is the technology that should be used but it's not eventually the subsidy has to end and then what happens is just going to go back to what's more convenient and last longer plastic ball I.

Timothy Allen: Think one of the most effective ways to it doesn't solve the plastic problem but it solves the problem with plastic on beaches is to create a market for it and I mean you might have to subsidize that but I think there's a better way because it's more yeah it's more productive I think.

Patrick Hiebert: One of the things that europe does interesting I always remember it when I get there is that your bottle caps are attached to the bottle right so you kick it off and it's kind of like a hinge.

Timothy Allen: No I pull it off and throw it on the floor on purpose I now deliberately litter as a protest.

Patrick Hiebert: Yeah it's a pain it's a pain in the ass to drink with that caps to attach well they have innovated.

Timothy Allen: Though what they do now is so it started off with one little thing holding it on and it was always like that yeah then they they turned it into two and they're longer so actually when you do it now you can pull and one of them snaps but then it's still onto the long one but I'm so enraged by it I just basically open the bottle pull it off and do that just to piss them off and it's like I don't care I'm not ever having that back it's on the floor now I never used to put my stuff on the floor in fact I don't ever recall seeing lids on the floor yeah 10 years ago five years ago they didn't exist you know people weren't doing that most of the time even when you finish a bowl you even as you put the lid back on human nature to put the lid back on but uh I don't know a.

Patrick Hiebert: Solution for a problem that didn't exist I guess just a moral regulation yeah exactly um anyway.

Timothy Allen: Patrick, what do you reckon? Give me some more questions. I keep, I'm my, yeah, it's probably because it's my table, but I keep asking you questions.

Patrick Hiebert: Well, I guess the other thing I always find interesting about the UK is the, you know, I guess your conversion of the hate speech laws, right? Where I think there was more people, I don't know if arrested or accused or whatever. I think it was arrested in the UK than in like early days, you know, USSR. Are right so for you know speech against the government or speech you know in certain I guess what they would label as hate speech have you known I mean you know how these kind of conferences are right we're all we're all exaggerating all the issues around the world because we're such freedom seekers and lovers of freedom but you know do you know anybody like I think there's.

Timothy Allen: Been thousands of people arrested so is it ever hit home dude I had Lucy Connolly on this podcast Lucy Connolly was a mum who we had a we had an event at it was about two years ago a migrant guy murdered three young girls at a Taylor Swift dance class you know it was a terrible horrible disgusting thing she's a she's a mum literally you know tweeted some it wasn't kind and it was rude and it was I think she ended it with something like to be honest you can burn them all for all I care right you know irate mum who's talking right and and and in fact she even and you know this doesn't this is she she kind of uh went walked the dog three hours later came back looked at it and thought it hadn't gone viral looked at it and thought yeah that is a bit over the top deleted it. Didn't think anything of it. About five days later somebody.

Patrick Hiebert: Took a screenshot of it? Yeah.

Timothy Allen: No, someone complained about it to the police. The police came round, which is weird in itself. Did you say this? Yes I did and then I deleted it. Nothing happened then, but then a week later they came round, took her away. She did 13 months in jail. 13 months, over a year in.

Patrick Hiebert: I mean you know this is the law they just put into Canada same thing would happen but it's.

Timothy Allen: Astonishing and and this is and then when you sort of lift the lid on that world the kind of the world of people that know about Lucy Connolly and people like that yes it happens all the time and yes I personally I'm careful what I tweet yeah I mean I'm not the kind I'm not a big tweeter anyway I certainly don't tweet irate things I think I'm the kind of person that when I see a problem I think actually I'm just going to solve I'm just going to try and solve it I'm not necessarily going to complain about it you know and and if if if people murder people yeah shit happens it's horrible but I don't see what that proves it's like getting something off your chest isn't it if you tweet something like that you're not going to stop people murdering people yeah there might be a better thing to do so but but I would be very careful about what I do to do tweet about.

Patrick Hiebert: I'm not careful. I afford to be not careful. And if I was in Canada right now, it would be. In fact, I had a guy on this podcast that, you know, he's in the freedom space too, right? And he said, I just, my whole life has changed now what I say online. Because, you know, I'm still probably in trouble for what I said five years ago if somebody wants to go dig it up. But going forward you know I have to talk to politicians and about you know actually moving a freedom ideas forwards and I can't afford to be in jail right so.

Timothy Allen: No me me neither I I don't want to be in jail I don't I don't want to be in jail and this is what I mean about the state of the uk that stuff hasn't really knocked on my door yet because I'm not a tweeter I don't live in an inner city that's a disgusting hell hole now which I have been to them and that is that is also true I I mean, then again, on the other hand, I was in London the other day. I had to get a visa to come here. And it was lovely, you know. But I went to Birmingham last year. And the center of Birmingham, I was like, holy shit, this place is a shithole. It's really not a nice place to be. And I don't know. I used to live in London. And I get that when I was younger, I used to think a lot of graffiti and a bit. I thought I used to think that was quite cool and stuff.

Patrick Hiebert: A bit edgy.

Timothy Allen: Right, yeah. I'm not like that now. So it's much more evident to me that what I want is something quite normal and simple. And I want to feel like everyone is taking care of their local environment. And that's one of the things that you see less and less in the UK. And I think it's understandable why. Because you're getting lots of different groups of people staying in their groups, basically. And as a result, you don't have one unified sense of don't chuck that on the floor, mate. You know or don't don't do that or don't in the extreme don't shit there as I was talking to lou lou lou perez just before you he was talking about he saw someone just shitting on the fucking.

Patrick Hiebert: Sidewalk his joke was of course where was this uh in uh in new york I think and he said the guy but the funny he's a comedian obviously the joke was there was a drain just next to him and he was shitting on the street and he said why don't you shit down the drain but then he had to stop no but you know what I mean it was one of those greats you know what I mean he could have just.

Timothy Allen: Done it there no point is why are people shitting on the street no seriously why are people shitting I didn't grow up I don't think when I was a kid anybody shat on the street we didn't we didn't.

Patrick Hiebert: And I cried well it just wasn't cultural no I mean if if you were desperate to go to the toilet.

Timothy Allen: You wouldn't even do it yeah this is people who just don't give a shit and there's shit on the street yeah but but you know I mean that that that sort of degradation of some societal norms is real and um you just look I mean actually in my in my presentation later I'm going to show some old footage of sealand for example from from the 1950s and you watch how people are interacting on that that's how britain used to be in the 50s polite and even sealand you know the the royal navy came to sealand to sort of take it back and worked out that it wasn't jurisdictionally theirs and went away they wouldn't even do that now they just go there and take it back yeah you know what I mean that all of that stuff has has has collapsed that kind of gentleman's agreements and and societal norms and trust and all this kind of stuff it's gone well it was interesting the other.

Patrick Hiebert: Day, I'm on the fence of AI. It's useful in a lot of ways. It also can be very wrong. And it also depends very much on how you ask a question and different things. But for most times, simple fix this math situation or something, it'll do that. So the other day, I just saw some tweet about some statistics in Sweden and rape cases in Sweden. So I thought, I'm going to just check with Claude and see if you know what the reality is assuming that you can actually get reality out of AI But I said so what percentage of rapes in Sweden in last year occurred from by people like the offender was came from a Islamic country And it's like, well, surprisingly, you know, I know where you're going with this question, but surprisingly, only 48 percent of rapes were caused by Islamic immigrants into into Sweden. And I said, only 48 percent. What do they represent in the population? Oh, yeah, I guess I should have included that as part of the statistic. They're 8% of the population, which means that 97% of the rapes were relative to the population. Only 3% were Swedish-born people committing rapes. Well, almost all the other ones, all of them just about were. And I just found it funny because it's not a funny topic, but funny that even Claude seemed to be a little bit like, I'm going to protect this thing despite the facts.

Timothy Allen: Well, yeah. I mean, it depends what model you're using. But Claude obviously is trained on general consensus as well, which is never normally in those kind of issues a good thing because people don't like to admit that kind of stuff. I mean, I don't know whether the stats are true or whatever, but I wouldn't even necessarily rely on that. Just use your eyes. And I mean, not rapes in particular, but if you go to a particular part of your town and it's not like you remember it, it's changed. And you have a choice to say whether you think that's good or not. It's as simple as that. You know, and a lot of people don't like it. I think I didn't used to mind, like something like Chinatown, for example. Cool.

Patrick Hiebert: Yeah. But there is still respect inside of Chinatown, right? Sure.

Timothy Allen: Well, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah, I suppose. I don't really know. I never even thought about it, if you know what I mean. But now it's more like, I suppose the difference is when people with different cultural values start making their way into the governance layer.

Patrick Hiebert: Yeah. That's when it starts affecting everyone.

Timothy Allen: And I think that's, we do see that now. We're just seeing the beginnings of that.

Patrick Hiebert: It's a state in the US, and I probably will get it wrong, but it was like Michigan or something like that, that elected all Islamic, you know, town councillors or whatever. And then the first thing they did is they banned the gay pride parade and the flag, right? And the people that voted them in, were they wanting to be so inclusive? And it's like, and it's just like that meme, like um it used to be the the uh protest was trans for hamas and then guy in this in the crowd comes out with chickens for kfc and I still laugh at that all the time it's so it's so complicated.

Timothy Allen: And so rife with um people arguing and and because basically it's like what do you want what do they want how do we meet in the middle and that would be my normal strategy and I think many of the problems that we see now in society there isn't really a middle ground on them like for example take pride you either want pride or you don't there's no like well we can kind of have pride you know you can't you either think gay people are allowed to run around with their willies out.

Patrick Hiebert: Which I wouldn't say it's that something I would choose to do myself but you know and sometimes it is a bit offensive if it's more walking along with your children yeah I know if they want to do that you know a nude beach that's all adults or something but don't go running down main street.

Timothy Allen: Yeah but also I don't think being gay is a sin against god or whatever it's just like.

Patrick Hiebert: It's like you know what I think in the like in the 90s and early 2000s I think that was just pretty much everybody's feelings like there was no reason in my mind and maybe I'm just being naive but there was no reason to go back into, you know, such a divisive moments for like, you know, gay versus heterosexual or, or even like race, right? Race is such a huge topic now that I, you know, I look back to like the early 2000s, late nineties, I worked in software businesses and all my friends were Indian, black guys, Chinese guys. Like I never thought about it. Like we go out for lunch, never. I mean, it wasn't like, you know, I didn't see color. That's a bad term nowadays right of course you saw color.

Timothy Allen: Yeah I guess I did just didn't impact what I what I did or said so I mean I don't I really don't think I saw color I I do I I really I mean sometimes if you saw you know someone overtly dressed in a certain way yeah it was more about the dress than the yeah but but I've I've never cared at all I've I always care about a person like are you being a douchebag are you not being a douchebag is basically that however now race is being thrust down our throats and you know in the I think in america that was already the norm but but now in the uk it coming in through the internet if you go on you know if you well maybe it's just my feed but but but if I look at reels it's not long before you see two a black kid and a white kid fighting and it's either the black kid beats the white kid up or the white kid beats the black kid up so you know because they both work if you get angry you know if you if you if you get if you know and and it's I think that's making people think more more about it but because I think like I say if you think about chinatown or indian town or whatever when I was a kid they were like they were fun interesting things to go and visit and um you know but but now if you talk about a neighborhood of indians like if you look on the internet it's like look at this third world street guess where it is and you're supposed to think it's mumbai or something and it's like no it's it's london or something and yeah I used to go I used to hang out in places like this curry mile in manchester where we used to go to go for curries because it was the place where all the curries were I didn't have a problem with it but they're making it into.

Patrick Hiebert: Something yeah you know I guess I'm a I guess a firm believer in the you know the governments whatever the elites if that exists are always pushing divisive things right because it distracts you from what's going on right and one of the symptoms kind of of the fall of empires that we've talked about in the past too is that you know the make the people dislike each other basically and it's certain topics that do that right so it's the other thing it's just we we can end on this but the other thing I just remember watching one of your clips on on the podcast the other day which um the the term and finally right where they used to have some positive stuff once in a while in the news and it that one really hit me because it was like you know there just isn't that anymore like when you said that and finally you know it's like that it was like a trigger in my brain yeah now I'm gonna hear some good news right and it just doesn't happen so it's well just.

Timothy Allen: To lighten the mood yeah yeah it's like because you know the news it's always sensationalism and And it's usually fear oriented or, you know, but at least in the old days, they used to kind of wound that back up with. Like I say, it goes back to what I said about that 1950s clip of a guy interviewing someone on Sealand. That's what we were like. We felt more like I was talking to someone the other day about Bhutan because there's a special economic zone in Bhutan that's really interesting. And I've been to Bhutan and I've met Bhutanese people outside of Bhutan. And what you get with a country like Bhutan is people who live there feel like they're part of a big family of people that live in Bhutan. That's what it feels like. You get the same in Mongolia as well. When Mongolians meet each other on the opposite side of the world, they feel this is a brother or a sister. And that's what's disappearing from our culture. And finally, was very much a part of the British mentality.

Patrick Hiebert: Yeah and I guess for me too because it must have been from the bbc carried over to the cbc in canada the canadian broadcasting corporation they did the same thing and finally someone made a six foot hot dog.

Timothy Allen: Yeah and that's it or whatever you know in five minutes yeah yeah it's like bring it back yeah mate I'll start a campaign bring back and finally yeah we'll have to start our own news network or something god no nobody would watch it anyway maybe yeah no well I used to I did actually used to subscribe to a newspaper called positive news. Oh yeah.

Patrick Hiebert: I don't know where it's still going. I do have some of those on my feed too, just because after a while scrolling through doom stuff, it's like, Oh, it's nice to have something nice once in a while. So, but I guess on that note, that was the end. Finally.

Timothy Allen: Yeah. And finally back to, well, all I've got to do today now is my talk and then I'm going to go to bed early. So how about that? And finally, thanks at Patrick. And, um, yeah, I'm, I'm super happy about Coronado and certainly Atenas. I've got to get there, haven't I? I had a plan to come to Panama and then I did here and America instead because they fitted together. I'm trying to find a way to slot in a Panama trip to do a load of interviews and definitely to see all the different projects and stuff there.

Patrick Hiebert: Well, and I think it's easy enough to get to San Jose in Costa Rica from Panama, and we're on a half an hour drive from the airport. So we could definitely show you the Costa Rican property too. And there's directs back to Europe from San Jose as well. So you could even just make kind of a round trip.

Timothy Allen: Are there? Yeah. Direct as in?

Patrick Hiebert: I'm not sure which cities.

Timothy Allen: From Panama, you can do what? Amsterdam, London, I think, Madrid, Istanbul, Frankfurt, something like that. So there's quite a few options from Panama.

Patrick Hiebert: But I think San Jose has some directs to Europe as well.

Timothy Allen: So yeah 2027 is going to be that year where I do the big Central America trip You heard it here first.

Patrick Hiebert: Cool Then you be able to come to Coronado too and hopefully have something to eat at the restaurant there and use the gym check out the meet all the libertarians.

Timothy Allen: Around I will and I will hopefully be able to well maybe I should try and bring my wife and just she always for me the one that's always stuck actually is panama not the other ones will sound great but panama has stuck because a I know you live there and michael and everyone so you've chosen panama but just looking into panama and the tax regime and the quality of life and the all those services that you want plus bitcoin's a it's a great place to be a bitcoiner all that that seems like that would be at least an interim place to sort of fly it's all come into you know.

Patrick Hiebert: Actually you know when you mentioned tax again on pan I was going to say this earlier in our conversation but while you guys in the uk and canada are getting taxed going in the wrong direction new taxes being added uh the president and Mulino of panama just announced a week or two ago that there used to be this well there is still a transfer tax when you sell a property right but now it's uh it's exempt under 120 000 and then there's a tier above that that slowly grows about it so they're adding exemptions like they have very little tax but they're still removing more which is going in the right direction as far as I'm concerned.

Timothy Allen: Is that because they're, how come the government are profitable or whatever? What is it they're doing?

Patrick Hiebert: I think a lot of it is the canal, right? I mean, the ships going through the canal pay so much to do so that.

Timothy Allen: And the government owns that.

Patrick Hiebert: Yeah, exactly. The US gave them back the canal, I think, in 1999 or something like that, and they've been running it since then. So I'm sure that's a lot of it. They also, I mean, there is taxes, like there's a VAT or EVA tax, you know, like a sales tax. And I think the Panamanian government has been smart enough to realize that all these expats coming in spend a lot of money you only have to you know for a residency I would only have to be there one day every two years but that's not what I've chosen to do and that's not what most people do choose to do they they might do that because it's a plan b for them but their plan is to spend more and more time and once they do they usually spend more time so the government's figured out okay well you know all these gringos and people from the Europe and Australia they're spending a lot of money here which generates the more vat tax right so they they're they're still getting taxes they're just not getting it by you know as much by income taxes and and you know property taxes and things like that and then they introduce some other cool things like in panama city you can pay your property tax with bitcoin now so that's kind of cool so they're actually making it easier and easier to do things so it's just going the right direction.

Timothy Allen: I am almost certain I will spend my latter years in a place providing it's still like that in a few years well that's the thing.

Patrick Hiebert: Other reason we have Veritas Villages in multiple countries you can't bet on just one you know certainly in a lot of areas well you can't even bet on them the old first world ones anymore right like your country or my original country and and now so I'm not going to bet that panama is always going to be like that has been for many years costa rica has been stable for many years paraguay he's been stable it's why we're looking at countries like that but uh yeah it's good to know that if you're in the Veritas Village Club you've kind of got pretty cheap accommodations in any of the other ones if you suddenly had to leave one and or just like your guy you met that's.

Timothy Allen: Got a home in three he's spreading out his risk so I wish anyway great cool thanks man.

Patrick Hiebert: Take it easy. Appreciate it.

Timothy Allen: Cheers.