Raphaël Lima | Should You Fix Your Country or Leave It?

Timothy Allen: What I noticed was that your channel was translated automatically into English, was it? I went on one of your YouTube videos and you were obviously speaking Portuguese, but it was coming out in English.¶

Raphaël Lima: Yeah, but even so, the videos are Brazilian issues. So why would an American watch the goings-on of the Brazilian Supreme Court? Who cares?¶

Timothy Allen: Yeah, sure. I was just impressed that it was translating. Does that happen on all videos now?¶

Raphaël Lima: Yeah. YouTube already has that feature right now.¶

Timothy Allen: I didn't even know that.¶

Raphaël Lima: It's a new feature. It's interesting, but I think it's more interesting so that people from other countries, people who don't speak English, can get into that. Because even if I can auto-translate, I'm not talking about internationally relevant issues. And I think there are very many things that are interesting to talk about from a libertarian standpoint in the world, but that most Brazilians don't care about.¶

Timothy Allen: Sure.¶

Raphaël Lima: So, anyways, I throttled down my YouTube and I'm mostly focusing on Settee right now, which is the company with Francisco, to help Brazilians and other people leave for other, freer places.¶

Timothy Allen: It's such a shame, though. You've got almost a million followers.¶

Raphaël Lima: Well, yeah, but that was garnered over many years. Today, most of them... Most not, but a large amount are inactive. And what works today on YouTube is talking about the political issues in Brazil. I'm just not interested in 80% of them because both sides are not really good.¶

Timothy Allen: Do you know what I did? I put my AI to work this morning while I was doing another interview. I said, "Find out, give me ten facts about Raphaël Lima since the last time we spoke," because we spoke about three years ago, I think.¶

Raphaël Lima: Yeah.¶

Raphaël Lima: All right. So it was three years. I think it was April 21, 2023. I remember because it was a holiday in Brazil, and on that day I was actually getting a medal in Brazil, but I couldn't attend because I had been in Portugal.¶

Timothy Allen: Well, it seems like a lot has happened since then. Like I say, let me tell you what it said. I said, "Give me ten things that have happened to Raphaël Lima since that time."¶

Raphaël Lima: 2023, yeah.¶

Timothy Allen: Yeah. Okay. It said, "Take these ten things into the room. Tell me whether you think these are true." He used to be explicitly anti-voting and anti-political participation.¶

Raphaël Lima: In 2023? No.¶

Timothy Allen: Well, no, but he used to be.¶

Raphaël Lima: This was maybe, I don't know... Yeah, it was 2015.¶

Timothy Allen: Right. Okay. But then reread Rothbard and decided he was wrong, right? These are the important, interesting things. They're not necessarily the previous things. He then took the experiment all the way to actually running for São Paulo City Council in 2024.¶

Raphaël Lima: Yeah, he did. Thankfully, I did not win.¶

Timothy Allen: Well, you got 21,707 votes and lost, okay? Bear in mind, I'm going to say all these just to set up the conversation. He now lives in Paraguay. So basically, the guy that spent years telling people to vote with their feet appears to now have actually done that himself. His Settee work has effectively turned jurisdiction shopping into a consumer product.¶

Raphaël Lima: Yeah. That's true.¶

Timothy Allen: He has long argued that online libertarianism isn't enough. The internet spreads ideas brilliantly, but also brings out the worst in people. Real physical communities matter. This is a good one. Years ago, he was already proposing that libertarians deliberately migrate to one small place and form a concentrated community, essentially a proto-Free City strategy. When asked whether it was a dream, he answered, "No, it's a plan." Milei seems to have changed the scale of what Raphaël thinks is politically possible.¶

Raphaël Lima: Yeah, definitely.¶

Timothy Allen: Okay, we'll talk about that then. He now treats Argentina as evidence that radical fiscal cuts, deregulation and libertarian-adjacent reform can actually be attempted nationally. He isn't simply doing libertarian purity tests on Milei. His latest Argentina discussion explicitly gets into criticism from Hoppe, practical sovereignty, alliances, sequencing, blah, blah, blah.¶

Timothy Allen: He thinks Brazil has almost the opposite political problem to Argentina. Bolsonaro dominates the anti-left space so thoroughly that economic reform gets crowded out. Raphaël thinks a fiscal crisis could eventually create the opening for a Brazilian Milei-type figure. And lastly, his theory of persuasion is almost anti-intellectual in the useful sense. He told you he doesn't want to be the technical PhD guy. He wants to tell a story that somebody enjoys, remembers and then retells, and gets persuaded almost accidentally.¶

Timothy Allen: The way it summed it up is: he spent a decade trying to change Brazil, entered Brazilian politics, lost, moved to Paraguay, whilst simultaneously celebrating Milei for proving that changing a country politically might actually work. It sounds a bit contradictory.¶

Raphaël Lima: Yeah, it does.¶

Timothy Allen: But that's why it's interesting. How does that work, that last bit?¶

Raphaël Lima: You can do it in some places. The question is where are your efforts best placed? The whole thing of why I ran for elections is actually a terribly sad story. It's a very not-good story. I wasn't very interested. But the conclusion that I reached is that, looking at Brazil and the political scene and everything, while Milei did prove that you can do it in Argentina, I didn't find in Brazil the same things, the same ingredients to do it. And while I believe that it is possible in Brazil, that would require of me literally betting my life on it.¶

Timothy Allen: You mean getting killed?¶

Raphaël Lima: I might.¶

Timothy Allen: Right, okay.¶

Raphaël Lima: And also, in a sense, if I could do it, it would take ten, twenty years.¶

Timothy Allen: Good.¶

Raphaël Lima: But if I failed, I would be forty, fifty, nothing to my name, no career, nothing. So it's still something I consider doing, but something I would do in my forties or fifties.¶

Timothy Allen: So why did you do the city council thing then? As an experiment?¶

Raphaël Lima: No. The reason I said it was a terrible story is it's not that fun a story.¶

Raphaël Lima: Because I don't know how to segue into that. But the thing is, I had a lot of personal problems with depression during and after the pandemic. I already had problems with that personally, finding aims and goals and things I was interested in. I always loved libertarianism. I always loved teaching. I always loved those things. But I just kind of fell off of it and I couldn't drive myself to actually want to do something. I didn't want anything in particular.¶

Timothy Allen: Was the channel going at that point? Your YouTube channel, was that already happening at that point?¶

Raphaël Lima: Yeah, yeah.¶

Timothy Allen: But that channel started... That was quite a driving force, presumably. A million followers on whatever it was, probably 750,000 people.¶

Raphaël Lima: Eight hundred and something. If you add up my Instagram, it's a million people.¶

Timothy Allen: Doesn't that get you up and out of bed in the morning, even if you're a bit depressed?¶

Raphaël Lima: After a while, it didn't. And there were personal things, and there was the whole situation in Brazil. I think the pandemic was really a downer for me in many senses. And afterwards, Brazil got back into statism. I realised, "Okay, this is a far larger work. It's a far longer trail to go than I thought it was going to be." And I couldn't bring myself to want anything. I was really depressed and that type of stuff.¶

Raphaël Lima: So I thought, "Well, if I don't care about anything, I might as well run," because it's not a good life being in office. Ask anyone who has already been in office, because if you're actually going to tell the truth to power, if you're actually going to stand up, if you're actually going to work, and you're probably going to do it alone, it's not going to be fulfilling. I know a lot of people who have gone into Brazilian politics. I know dozens of them. They don't have good lives. It's not fulfilling. It's not happy. They all have problems. And I realised that's one of the reasons that people don't want to do it.¶

Raphaël Lima: One of the sad things about politics is that you're actually going to make a lot less money. If you're a good person, if you're a good, moral, productive person, you would make a lot more money in the private sector than having office. But then you can say, "Well, the wages of politicians are really high." Yes, but if you can be a good private entrepreneur, you're going to make more with far less hassle, far less personal commitment. That's one of the reasons why a lot of people don't enter politics. They decide, "Well, I can help bankroll the campaign of someone. I'm going to support someone, but I don't want to do it," right? We listen to that. We hear that a lot.¶

Raphaël Lima: And so I decided, "Well, since I don't care, I might as well go, because whatever, right? I don't have any particular desire to do any of those things." I was in a really bad depression for quite a few years. So I decided, "Let's just go run for office." And I sort of felt the pressure that I should have been the Brazilian Milei. I know that's massively arrogant to say. That is massively arrogant. But I did feel that pressure, and I thought, "Well, let's go into it." But the thing is, it's not fulfilling. It's not something that you're going to get joy in, and a sense of fulfilment and importance from that. It was going to be a very long road.¶

Raphaël Lima: I ran for office. I wasn't into it really. So when the vote count happened and I lost, I was like, "Oh, all right. Okay, so what's next?" It wasn't my dream in life. And after that, I thought, "Well, someone has to do it, but I don't want to do it. I don't want to be the political guy. I don't want to be Javier Milei. I want to be much more like Milton Friedman did with Free to Choose. I want to be much more like a person that spreads ideas, spreads stories." But look, God didn't put me on this earth to interact with human beings. I don't have that skill. That's not something I'm good at doing.¶

Timothy Allen: All right. Perfect politician.¶

Raphaël Lima: So, yeah, I wasn't born to be a politician. The way that you have to communicate as a politician is not my style, is not my way. I could force it, but it didn't jive with me. I really just wanted to go back to telling stories, to make content. What happened also in that process is that I started thinking back into why did I start my channel in Portuguese? Why did I do that? I should have started from day one in English. I spent ten years talking about libertarianism in Portuguese. I got a million followers. If I had done that in English, the impact would have been so much bigger.¶

Timothy Allen: Would you have got them in English, though? Maybe the Brazilian thing was a part.¶

Raphaël Lima: I think I would have, because I think my English is good enough. I'm far more interested in foreign issues. I'm far more interested right now in discussing the migration problem in Europe, war in Ukraine, and thinking, what are they going to do afterwards? What is going to be the economic future of Russia, and how that plays into Russia and China, and what Ukraine could do afterwards? Or if Ukraine could bring private cities as a way to rebuild Ukraine and draw a lot of investment. I'm really interested in the situation with the ideological debate in the US right now.¶

Raphaël Lima: I converted. That's one thing. I found Jesus during all those things. That happened in 2023, eight months after our podcast. So that was a thing. I'm really into discussing now the interaction of Christianity and libertarianism and how they are really well aligned. That's something I'm interested in. I'm interested in discussing how the whole of Spanish-speaking Latin America is getting a lot of things right, and Brazil insists on not even listening to it, because Brazil thinks they're too good to learn Spanish. I know that because that's how I felt fifteen years ago. I thought, "I want to speak English because I want to speak to the developed world. The Spanish-speaking world is not going to ever produce anything." And now I live in Paraguay. Eat that one. So I just thought that's far more interesting than whatever nonsense is happening in Brazil right now.¶

Raphaël Lima: Also, something that happened over the last few years is that, and I'm writing a video about that, it's a very deep reflection, and this is what I have so far: I don't see myself as a Brazilian anymore. I think that most libertarians would not see themselves as the country that they came from. Because think about it. Forget very ethnocentric states like Poland, South Korea and Japan. If you tell me that you're French, or that you're British, or that you're American, that tells me borderline nothing about you. Borderline nothing. If I tell you that I'm Brazilian, you're going to think a lot of things about Brazil and a lot of things about Brazilians that have nothing to do with me.¶

Raphaël Lima: So, on the flip side, if I tell you that I was a huge Charlie Kirk fan, that I play chess, and that I'm here in Próspera doing a podcast, that tells you a lot more, right? I don't feel like I owe a debt to Brazil, because I wasn't even born there, actually. But because I'm a Brazilian, that I should just do it in Portuguese. I'm like, "I have hundreds of millions of people in potential in the world that speak English and that care about liberty. Why would I not talk to them?" They are very much more me. I identify with them. I have common values, common cause, far more with right-wing French people who know that Le Pen is just a statist than I have with someone who used to live thirty feet away from me in Brazil. I feel like I should be talking to them and building something together, developing those ideas with those people who want to listen.¶

Raphaël Lima: On a very deep sense, a rule that I always had in my life, but I started to follow much more strictly over the last few years, is that you shouldn't try to help people who don't want help. I know that's a segue, but that's also a big insight that I got from, I'm pretty sure it was the Mises founder. I completely blanked out on the name.¶

Timothy Allen: Lew Rockwell.¶

Raphaël Lima: Yeah, Lew Rockwell was talking about how people re-evaluate their values and their ethics. Almost every time that happens is when they have a huge personal impact in their lives. They lose someone, someone dies, their company goes broke, they almost die, something like that. Because you're not going to be in your pool on a Wednesday, drinking a beer with two Porsches in your garage, in a big house, thinking, "You know, I really think everything with the world is wrong." No, you're going to be super chill, right? I don't wish upon people to face a crisis, to face difficulty, but the fact is that a lot of people are really comfortable with the situation as is. And so, unless something happens to them, you can shout for years, and I did that, they're not going to figure out that they should be listening.¶

Raphaël Lima: That's something I realised was happening to Brazil. They were not focusing on the very important things. The Brazilian political discussion was not at all paying attention to what Milei was doing. My conclusion was, "You haven't figured out why you should be listening to liberty at this point." It went over their heads. They were listening ten years ago, but then everything kind of stabilised, and they were like, "Oh, no, I don't need that anymore. We can go back to whatever." I decided, "You know what? There are hundreds of millions of people in the world who want to listen. They understand. I want to talk to them."¶

Timothy Allen: Two questions then. One, did you start an English-speaking channel? And two, why didn't you move to Argentina?¶

Raphaël Lima: Well, okay, so I have started an English channel. I am writing a lot of stuff. I'm developing how I'm going to do it. I'm thinking about it more. I have some videos there, but I haven't fully started that. I'm probably going to do it November, December. I have some things written down. I really want to up my game a little bit. Right now I'm really focused on Settee, which is my company with Francisco Litvay, who is also an ambassador here for Free Private Cities, for the Free Cities Foundation. I still use the old school.¶

Timothy Allen: Yeah.¶

Raphaël Lima: So I'm really focusing on that company because we're helping out thousands of Brazilians and people of other countries to find their liberty, to pay less taxes, to go to societies and countries with far more aligned values. I went really from talking to hundreds of thousands to fundamentally changing the lives and helping a few thousand people. So it's a different business. I'm really focused on that right now, and I should start English content by the end of the year.¶

Raphaël Lima: I moved to Paraguay and not Argentina. I wanted to move to Argentina. [Unclear phrase.] But because of Settee, which is our company, we have almost 4,000 clients at this point over five years of business. We helped almost 4,000 people, most of them Brazilians. I would say that 60% of them moved to Paraguay. So most of our clients are in Paraguay somehow. I moved there to be the Paraguay side of our operation. Of course, we sell seventy different countries. We have incorporated companies for people here in Próspera. We've done a lot of stuff. But the majority of our business ends up happening in Paraguay because it's cheap, it's really easy for Brazilians to get into there, and it's really close to Brazil.¶

Raphaël Lima: The main issue that keeps Brazilians in Brazil is not financial. It's their family. They want to be close to their family. You could reasonably drive to Paraguay, so a lot of them go there. I went there to handle that side of our operation because Francisco, my business partner, is a digital nomad. He's everywhere. He's opening up businesses and ideas everywhere. I went there to handle our operation there and help people invest there. Right now we are helping to guide where investment is going to land, coming from Brazil, for over $100 million at this point in our clients.¶

Timothy Allen: Paraguay or everywhere?¶

Raphaël Lima: Money coming out from Brazil that mostly wants to go to Paraguay.¶

Timothy Allen: That's interesting.¶

Raphaël Lima: That's a slight percentage of their GDP, so it's a relevant number. What I'm doing right now is doing the management of the operation and helping people invest in Paraguay in real estate and companies and that sort of thing. My idea is, look, there are a lot of Brazilians that want that conservative mindset that Paraguay has. They want that entrepreneurial mindset. And the Paraguayans deserve that. That's a very moral thing that I got in my head over the last few years. At some point, we need to stop blaming politicians and we need to start blaming voters, right?¶

Raphaël Lima: Because if the US selects one bad president, you can still say, I have many criticisms about the US, it is the most successful country in the history of mankind. They have a few problems. All right, okay, they have that. They have everything. But all things considered, it is the most successful country and society in the history of mankind. I don't think anyone could seriously argue otherwise. But that being said... Where was I? Sorry.¶

Timothy Allen: We were Paraguay.¶

Raphaël Lima: If the US elects one bad president, that's just one bad president. I can look at the whole of American history and say, "You screwed up a few times, all right, but you have a good result." But then you look at a country like, let's think, France. It wasn't one bad president. The French voters decided that this is what they wanted over decades. They're not victims anymore at this point, right? You can't tell me that the German voter is a victim at this point. The German voter has caused the situation that is in Germany right now. I'm not saying that if you are German, you are responsible, but the vast majority of them are. If you're hearing this podcast and you're German, you're almost surely not responsible. You're not one of them. But the vast majority are, right?¶

Raphaël Lima: So I look at Brazil and I thought, "Look, 80% of people don't get it. They don't even have the values necessary." Because it's not libertarianism. It's not just about economics and reading a lot of Mises. It's also personal moral values. Civilisation is the combination of good economics and good values. And when you reject both, you're not a victim anymore. You are causing this. When I go to Paraguay and I know their society, and I know the ethos and how they work culturally, they do deserve investment. They do deserve growth. They do deserve jobs and development. They have a good, conservative, family-oriented culture.¶

Raphaël Lima: They absolutely hate politicians to a level that is just astounding to me as a Brazilian. They pay half the tax, a third of the tax the Brazilian pays. They pay it with five times the anger. It's fascinating. Imagine if you had Switzerland, and the Swiss are complaining that gun rights are too strict. That's Paraguayans. Your income tax is 10%, and they're like, "Everything about that is theft." It's just like, "Dude, are you just instinctively a libertarian?" They don't have socialists. The left-wing vote in Paraguay is 3% to 5%, and the left-wing agenda in Paraguay is, "People should have access to public universities because being poor shouldn't stop you from becoming an engineer." That's being a socialist in Paraguay.¶

Timothy Allen: You're selling it well.¶

Raphaël Lima: I just look at that and I was like, "I want to help these people. I want to bring investment to this country. I want to bring jobs and investment and develop this country, because they earned it, and Brazilians didn't." So that's what I'm doing right now.¶

Timothy Allen: Yeah, you're selling it well. I've never been to Paraguay.¶

Raphaël Lima: Well, my job is selling Paraguay.¶

Timothy Allen: I don't really know much about it.¶

Raphaël Lima: But I truly believe in it.¶

Timothy Allen: By the sounds of it, yeah. Tell me more then. The Brazil connection is obvious because it's you and it's close, but I do know a lot of Europeans that I know have popped down there and are making it their base as well. What's going on down there that the rest of the world doesn't know about?¶

Raphaël Lima: The major problem is that the rest of the world doesn't know about them.¶

Timothy Allen: Well, that can be a good thing.¶

Raphaël Lima: They had just bad marketing, right? It really improved over the last three or four years. Every year migration is growing by 60%. And they have the same policy. You could argue that they have open borders. What we learned in Europe, I hope, what Europe is in the process of learning, is that you cannot have open borders and a huge welfare system. The US used to have open borders in 1880 and it was all right. "I land in the US. What do you get?" Well, you got a bucket of mud and a kick in the face. Go work. You can go over yonder to South Dakota and get some land, homestead it and go work. That's it. So who was drawn to that? Hard-working people from Europe. They were like, "I'm down to face that. Let's start over."¶

Raphaël Lima: What Europe has done over the last twenty years, grossly, but especially over the last ten years, is say, "You can come here, and if you want to work, you actually can't, because it's too hard to open a business. Minimum wage is too high. But if you want to live on benefits, you can." And then suddenly you get tens of millions of welfare parasites, and countries are going broke. Paraguay right now has pretty much the same immigration policy that the US had in the eighteen-somethings. You can go and get your residence. It's super simple. You just have to present your passport, a few documentations, a criminal background, something that would get you called racist in very many parts of Europe today. And you will get nothing. There is no welfare.¶

Raphaël Lima: So you don't have people just doing drugs on the streets. The police doesn't tolerate that. The people don't tolerate that. The Paraguayan culture doesn't see people asking for money in a good light. They don't tolerate that. Even poor people, they'll try to sell you something, but they're not just going to ask you for money. What's that going to draw? That is drawing entrepreneurs. That is drawing investors. That is drawing digital nomads. Plus, like I said, it's a very conservative, family-oriented culture. There is no leftism. If you want to be in a country where there are no leftists, where the very few people who are left-wing have to hide it because it's considered kind of crass, kind of shameful... It's kind of like you have to hide an addiction. Something like that. I mean, I'm exaggerating a little bit, but it's not well seen. If you want that society, you can go.¶

Raphaël Lima: So who is that going to draw? Paraguay is now getting 5,000 to 8,000 Europeans and Anglos, and about, if you discount students and that type of stuff, 5,000 to 10,000 Brazilians. Those are digital nomads, people with some interesting networks, entrepreneurs, investors. They're coming in and they're starting to build. That's very interesting to be into that, right? I challenge you: come to Paraguay, live for a year there, do not open a company. I formally challenge you. It's a country that has their problems. They have infrastructure problems. They're a country that is still getting digitalised. But they have a lot of freedom and they have very low taxes. So you can actually solve those problems. It's actually legal. You can do so. If you live there for one year, you will find a problem that you can solve, and you will open a company. It's just so cool to be in that environment.¶

Timothy Allen: It just sounds like utopia.¶

Raphaël Lima: It's not utopia. They have problems.¶

Timothy Allen: I'm sure, but the way...¶

Raphaël Lima: They have sewage problems. They have traffic congestion problems. They're having some energy problems because they're growing too much. They're growing 6%, 7% per year, and their electrical demand is growing 18% per year. They're going to exhaust their total energy production capacity in five or seven years, and they still don't have a plan on how we're going to build that. So there are those problems, but you can go and solve them. That's really interesting.¶

Timothy Allen: Going back to the migration thing in Europe, what do you think the outcome is?¶

Raphaël Lima: Well, short answer is I don't know. I think it's very presumptive to think that you're going to predict the future of a continent, especially with me having spent a grand total of three months there with all my travels.¶

Timothy Allen: Yeah, but you can have an opinion on it.¶

Raphaël Lima: With that being said, there is not an understanding, even in the right wing, that the state needs to be massively reduced. I don't expect anything from the left. I don't even want to talk to them. When I see someone that is left-wing in my social media, just block him away. We don't have anything to discuss. Go away. But when I look to the right wing, my first question is, are you just pissed off with immigration, or do you actually understand that the state is detrimental to the formation of a healthy society? Do you actually understand that politics, that state intervention, not just causes economic losses, taxes, etc., but it actually interferes with a civilised, functional, moral society?¶

Raphaël Lima: Because if you understand that, then you can start change. Then you're going to realise that the people need to create those institutions, that they have to care for their family and the people around them, and that they need to reduce the state. I'm not going to say that Argentina understood, but Argentina decided to give that a shot with Milei. You have roughly a third of the vote that has understood that, which is already unthinkable five years ago. One third of the vote is just left-wing and they don't care. And one third of the vote, the middle, they're like, "Let's try that. We tried everything else. Might as well," right? Okay. So they understand that.¶

Raphaël Lima: But when you look at the right wing in France, let's think Le Pen, she's a right-wing statist. So are you going to reduce the state not only in taxes, but in spending, in its structure and in the way that it actually interferes in society? No. Well, I don't see how you're going to fix this. They're in a very deep problem in terms of debt, in terms of spending, in terms of loss of social cohesion. That will take a very bold mind to fix, and a mind that understands the libertarian criticism on how the state poisons society.¶

Raphaël Lima: But talking Europe is too broad, right? I have no hope about France or Germany. But given recent events, I might think about Spain, with the whole migration crisis, with seeing the entirety of government going into corruption scandals and being charged. I think the right wing there is starting to figure something out. By the way, shout out to Juan Ramón Rallo. I hope I pronounce his name correctly. He has been a titan on that by talking in Spanish to a Spanish-speaking audience. He has been a great inspiration for me that I shouldn't be talking just in Portuguese, because he talks to the whole Spanish-speaking world. Portuguese is only spoken in Brazil, Portugal, Angola, Mozambique, Cabo Verde and São Tomé... Who cares, right? But speaking Spanish, he reached everyone in Argentina with Milei. He reached the whole of Latin America. That's huge, right?¶

Raphaël Lima: So maybe Spain, and the former Soviet bloc countries, because of the trauma. Going back to what I said, you have to understand why you should be listening to those ideas. The countries that went through communism, they understand. Even their right wing understands. Not saying even their right wing, their right wing understands it's not just about taxes and spending. It's about the state is a very dangerous weapon and we should contain it, which should be the original conservative argument. But the conservatives in the UK don't understand that anymore, which is wild. They created that idea, allegedly, and they don't understand that anymore.¶

Raphaël Lima: I think there are countries that could figure it out. I think Hungary could figure it out. I think Hungary is going in a sort of okay direction. I think the Czech Republic really understands that. By the way, both countries essentially don't have a left wing. Poland does not. Estonia does not. I think the future of Europe is in those countries. While the Netherlands have the wildest thing. There is a city in the Netherlands, Utrecht, and I know that because I have a great friend that lives in there. They will fine you for having a barbecue. Have you ever heard of that one?¶

Timothy Allen: What, in your own garden?¶

Raphaël Lima: In your own garden, in your God-given land, produce a weapon of mass destruction called a barbecue, and thereupon putting coals on it and a piece of meat, authorities will show up and fine you.¶

Timothy Allen: Is that to do with the hot weather, or is that something else?¶

Raphaël Lima: Oh, it's because of the climate and it's emitting carbon. That country is lost. God has abandoned them. There is no... Holy, I don't know what happened there. So I have no hope for them. Trauma may teach them, I don't know. But if people are getting fined for having barbecues and they're not setting government buildings on fire, I don't have a lot of hope for them.¶

Timothy Allen: They're probably not setting government buildings on fire because they get a fine.¶

Raphaël Lima: They would get a very good fine, yes.¶

Timothy Allen: Tell me about Charlie Kirk. You mentioned Charlie Kirk there when you were just reeling off a list of things that really interest you. That's interesting. Why?¶

Raphaël Lima: Well, he did something that I still cannot bring myself to believe that I could do, or that works, but I thought it was really beautiful in spirit, which is actually trying to talk with leftists. He went to universities. He went to leftists and said, "Well, what's your point? State to me your point calmly, in a civilised manner, and I will state my point and we will try to have a conversation." That's something I cannot bring myself to do because I don't believe that... I don't love humanity to this point. He was such a good Christian in that sense. He really loved everyone to the point that he would subject himself to surround himself with leftists and attempt conversation with them. I thought that was beautiful on a theological level. That's something I cannot bring myself to do. I don't think it's worth it, but I thought it was beautiful that he did that.¶

Raphaël Lima: In fact, it did reach a lot of people, and it did help to expose what the left wing actually believes, not only to normal people but to themselves. Because when they tried to debate him, even they would realise, "You know what? That sounds kind of silly when I talk about this out loud here, not surrounded by my guys, but when I'm surrounded by normal, non-medicated people. This looks like, yeah, whoops." And the way he also rallied a lot of people, I think that was very inspiring. One point that we had talked about a few years ago, and that I still maintain, is that you're not going to talk your way into liberty. It's not going to happen. You need to talk, you need to discuss, but you also need to mobilise. You also need to have people running for elections. And I did.¶

Raphaël Lima: I don't think that in Brazil that was the best use of my time. I think I could have done other things. Like I said, that's not my calling. But I still think people should do it. I still think someone has to do it. If you have the talent, and that's something that drives you... I don't care about people clapping for me. I don't care about being loved and followed. That's not something that drives me. But if that drives you, and if you are into politics, and if you are into that, I think someone needs to do that. Go do that. I can help you. I can help you with the ideas. I can help set up a debate in the public sphere, helping those ideas so you can then take over and get that into votes.¶

Raphaël Lima: I think you should have experiments like Próspera, and I think you should have many different fronts on trying to get things done, even if it's not in ideal conditions. He did that. He did a lot of mobilising people, because he could just be in a comfortable place and say, "Look, I don't want to run a risk." He did, and he did pay the ultimate price for that. I think his career was inspiring.¶

Timothy Allen: When I think about him, I think less about, say, leftists self-reflecting, and more about the fact that he probably inspired quite a lot of people to understand how to interact with leftism.¶

Raphaël Lima: Yeah, that is a very much better point than what I made. Yes, I will [unclear].¶

Timothy Allen: Well, I can't imagine, judging by the fact that a lot of his stuff got clipped. Most people discover Charlie Kirk through clips, shorts and stuff. They were always just epic owns of idiotic leftists who chose to stand up there and say something, expecting that he hadn't already thought it through. This is the weird thing about young leftists: they honestly think they've had this novel thought that someone else hasn't probably ruminated over for twenty years already, and knows every single possible comeback to it and things like that. I didn't imagine there was much self-reflection going on in any of those videos. But I know what you mean. That's interesting, though, because once again he's an inspirational guy, but you don't want to operate on the inspiration.¶

Raphaël Lima: Yeah, no. In part, I do, in the sense that I still help mobilise people. I do that still indirectly. I started an institute. That was a very seed thing when we talked in 2023. I started an institute in Brazil, which is the Free Market Institute. It operates in Congress, in the House and Senate, lobbying for free markets with the congressmen. It's today one of the five most influential institutes in the National Congress. I started that back in 2019, 2020. It grew a lot. In 2022, 2023, I passed it on. It's now managed by other people. But I helped to start that.¶

Raphaël Lima: I just realised I'd rather be doing videos and telling stories than lobbying politicians. So I started that and then passed it on to someone who could manage and grow it into something far huger. Now I'm just one of the founders. It's kind of weird. It's kind of curious. It's like a grown-up child. It's doing its own thing. Sometimes I look at what they're doing. So I did that. I'm still helping people run for elections right now in Brazil and giving them some aid as I can. I did spend ten, eleven years spreading ideas, agitating, mobilising people, helping people get elected. I consulted for politicians at the state, local and federal level in legislation. I have legislation approved.¶

Raphaël Lima: We have approved legislation towards the idea of Free Cities, of Free Private Cities in Brazil. It's the export processing zones, which, by the way, that's something new. We got that approved in 2021. We had that legislation that allowed processing and export zones in Brazil to have their special regulations, special contracts. It's not a full ZEDE. It's like 40% of it, but it's a step, and we got it. In 2024, the socialist president Lula went there and signed the first private processing and export zone in the state of Espírito Santo, which is going to be a harbour port and fish processing for exports. I thought, "Yo, we made legislation, and in 2024 a socialist president signed an actual project that is going to draw millions of dollars and generate hundreds of jobs into that. He doesn't know that that came from ancaps." That's a weird story. I hope that he doesn't hear about this podcast. He's probably going to be too drunk for that anyways.¶

Raphaël Lima: But my point is, I've done that a lot. After ten, eleven years, it was like, "I want to do something else. I'm done with that." I really wanted to do something in English. I wasn't fulfilled in doing content just in Portuguese. Most subjects in Brazil just don't interest me anymore. I'm far more attracted to other global issues that I want to talk about with libertarians throughout the world. And not only libertarians, but people who understand that there's something wrong. I want to talk to the guys who are thinking about voting right-wing in Europe because they're figuring out that something is wrong. They just can't figure out what it is.¶

Raphaël Lima: I don't want to do videos like, "Libertarianism is the answer. We should privatise everything." It's like I said a few minutes ago: talking to right-wing people and explaining how the state actually impedes a civilised operation of society, how good morals and good institutions are fundamental for society and the state is detrimental to that. I think people who are getting interested in the right wing in general, or that are coming to their faith as Christians, they're going to look at that and think, "Well, that's an interesting take. Let me hear about that." Then I weave libertarianism into that, or telling stories about how the free market has solved problems.¶

Raphaël Lima: I don't like anymore to do super-theoretical videos. I prefer to tell stories or examples, because very few people will ever read a theology book, but they will read the Bible, which is a history book. They will remember. Like that. I prefer to tell stories. I don't want to be a PhD doctor or something like that. I think that's an inspiration that I always had really, from back when Stefan Molyneux was starting to do videos. I was watching him. I was like, "Oh, that's kind of interesting." Now he went to many other different places, and that's another whole discussion. But I think Charlie was an inspiration to that, into talking about those issues and bringing back, "Let's talk about family values. Let's talk about how leftism is bad for you psychologically and spiritually."¶

Raphaël Lima: Let's get people to talk about that and promote that, and to unite them, to get each other and to know each other, and to start having physical chapters where people meet each other and talk. So it's not just us commenting in videos on YouTube. It's, "Look, you should be friends. You should have relationships with each other, friendships, business relationships. Know each other's kids and grow something there, and start those cells." Not that it's starting, that already happens in many other institutions. The church is there for that. Families are for that. Clubs are for that. But he started that as well with his organisation, and he motivated people to do that as well.¶

Raphaël Lima: That's something that I think, in a way, that's what I do today with Settee, helping now thousands of people. But we want to really grow to help people go to the societies that have the values that they like, that have the liberties that they like. For example, we have a lot of clients right now in Brazil who do homeschooling, and homeschooling is illegal in Brazil. You can be arrested. You can be fined. Nobody ever went actually to jail, right? But you can be sued, and you will be defamed. You're going to be sued not only by, the legal term is "intellectual abandonment", because you homeschooled your child. That's the opposite. That's beyond insulting. But you will also be framed as an abuser of your child. You will legally be charged with abuse because you dared to homeschool your children.¶

Raphaël Lima: We had a conviction in Brazil a few months ago where a judge decided to convict parents, mother and father, to jail because of intellectual abandonment, because of abuse. In his decision, he cited, he quoted that when the daughters, it was two daughters, two kids, when they were interviewed, one of them said that she really loved classical music. She didn't like rap music. She didn't like funk music. Funk music in Brazil is kind of like reggaeton. It's women with very little clothes, with lyrics about sex and drugs. And she was like, "I don't like that type of music. I really like classical music, and not rap about shooting people."¶

Raphaël Lima: It was like, "This is evidence that they're being kept away from society and from discordant experiences that can lead them to other ideas. That proves that these parents are isolating these children from the world." And everyone in Brazil was like, "Motherfucker, what did you say?" They were sentenced to jail because their daughters didn't like sex rap, and that showed that they were cloistering their child. So we then got a huge wave of homeschoolers saying, "All right, I'm leaving. I'm done. That was it. I already wanted to leave." We got hundreds of people that wanted to go homeschool somewhere else.¶

Raphaël Lima: I was today helping one client. He has six children, and he's going either to Portugal or Paraguay so that he can homeschool his children. He's going to a society that is far closer to his ideals, to his values, so he can have his family. In Paraguay, because there are a lot of Brazilian homeschoolers going to Paraguay, they're starting to form societies with themselves, like, "Let's go where there are other homeschoolers so we can be close to our people." That is helping people to be closer to what they want to build, what they want, inside a statist framework. Of course, Paraguay is not Ancapistan, but it's a step in a good direction. I want to grow that. I want to help those people, because today that gives me a really good sense of fulfilment.¶

Timothy Allen: Have you heard of the project that's happening in Florianópolis, Ipê City?¶

Raphaël Lima: Yeah, I've heard of it.¶

Timothy Allen: Do you know much? What do you think? I've interviewed the lady that's at the forefront of it and stuff. It sounds amazing. Florianópolis, I know, is a nice part.¶

Raphaël Lima: It's very nice. It's the good part. Santa Catarina, that state is the right-wing place of Brazil.¶

Timothy Allen: Yeah, but the history of it is fascinating, because it is a form of privately run... It's a privately run city already, weirdly. But they're now looking to try and get special status for a part of it as well. I just thought it was a fascinating project. I think it's one of the most promising new projects I've heard of for a while. Have you been down there at all?¶

Raphaël Lima: No, I haven't visited the project. I'm aware of it, and I think I can help them legally in some stuff. I will if it comes to me. I could reach out, I guess. That's it.¶

Timothy Allen: No, no. I think I'm going to take a trip.¶

Raphaël Lima: I'm a bit sceptical of trying to work in the Brazilian framework today. You could do it because they're in the most right-wing, libertarian part of Brazil. Florianópolis, everything within a hundred-kilometre radius of that, they have a very cultural libertarian root, instinctively, actually. But it's still trapped in Brazil.¶

Timothy Allen: But don't a lot of people like Brazil, though? You've got a history with it, I think.¶

Raphaël Lima: There are places that are very beautiful.¶

Timothy Allen: Do you know what? In fact, I've got a feeling last time I spoke to, who was it? I think it might have been Fran, your colleague Fran. He said one of his favourite places in the world is actually Florianópolis, and he would move there.¶

Raphaël Lima: Florianópolis was really chill. Yeah, I really liked that.¶

Timothy Allen: But as a place, as a good place to migrate to if you're a European or something.¶

Raphaël Lima: Well, yeah. Countries have different functions. They have different things that they offer you, depending on what you want. In Settee, we sell seventy countries. Sometimes people ask me, "What's the best country?" I don't know. What do you want? What do you wish? Depending on your answer, yes, Brazil can be an answer. But for me it isn't, and for the future of its own people, right now it's not. Let's think about this. I like to contrast Uruguay, Chile and Paraguay. You can ask me which country is better for me to live in. It depends, because Paraguay now is a country that is up and coming but has its own problems.¶

Raphaël Lima: They're growing 6%, 7% a year. They grew 6.6% last year. They're going to grow seven-something this year. It's wild. But they still have shitty streets. They still have flood problems when it rains too much. That's a growing country. If you want to build something for yourself, if you want to build a company and really solve deep problems, and you're willing to go into a frontier and face that, yeah, that's something for you. But if you're fifty-eight and you already have your money, and you told me, "Look, dude, I just want to chill. I've done what I need to do. I really just want to enjoy my life and kick back," it could be Florianópolis. It could be Brazil. Brazil could answer that for you.¶

Raphaël Lima: Uruguay is very much a retired country. You go there if you want to retire, or if you're really wealthy and you just want to stay wealthy. Are you going to get richer there? No. Is Uruguay going to get richer? No. But it's pretty cool. It's super expensive, but if you have the money for it, okay. Maybe you want to tell me, "All right, but Uruguay is too old. It's too retired. It feels too much like a senior citizen's condo. I want a living city. I want a metropolis, but I want structure. I don't want to grow and become a millionaire. I just want a country in Latin America that is structured and that I can work remotely and live my life in peace." Chile. Chile is very structured. It's a very good country. It's a bit more expensive, but you have everything and you have nature.¶

Raphaël Lima: If I were to homeschool, I'm not a father, but if I were to homeschool my children, I would move to Chile. It's so cool. You have the ice sheets in the south. You have the Atacama Desert in the north, and you can see the stars, and you have the astronomy observatories there. You have the mountains. You have beaches. You have all types of farming. You have forests. You have their corner, Patagonia. If you are the type of person that really likes nature, and if you want to show that to your kids, that's super cool. You can, in three hours' drive, be anywhere.¶

Raphaël Lima: Paraguay is, I mean, I love Paraguay, but it's a farm. It's a farm. There are [unclear] things that you can show to your kid and be like, "Oh, this is completely different." It's a very simple farming country. So if you want a very established country, I would say Chile. Why would someone go to Brazil? If you want to say, "I just want to kick back. I don't want to make millions. I don't want to start a company and rule the world. I just want to be on a beach, eat my shrimp, my fish, have fun, can go to the beach anytime I want, nice beer, nice people," all right, Florianópolis is good for you. It's expensive, but it is.¶

Timothy Allen: What's the Free City scene like in Paraguay? Anything like that going on down there?¶

Raphaël Lima: They're coming to it. I'm not sure if the average Paraguayan knows libertarianism, economic freedom, that thing theoretically. They know it kind of instinctively, but they haven't formalised it. The political discussion right now is much more around corruption, because there is a corruption problem there. About government starting to talk about raising taxes, and people started talking about setting them on fire. Everyone hated that. It's like everyone on fire, everything. The Paraguayan government is running a slightly irrelevant deficit. They're like 3% of GDP deficit because they are very inefficient on their spending. A few politicians said, "Well, we could raise the income tax from 10% to 15%, maybe. Fifteen, could we do it?" People started thinking, "Well, what if we set fire to your house? That sounds interesting." That was the actual response. So there isn't that discussion, but we could take it there. I don't know.¶

Raphaël Lima: My Spanish is still not very good. I've been living there for six months, but they understand Portuguese quite well. I actually have to fight them, like, "Talk to me in Spanish, please. I need to train. I don't want to be the foreigner that doesn't speak the local language." So I'm doing classes right now to improve. I can't deeply articulate technically into the public discussion right now. But as it is, they are drawing a lot of investment in industry. There are very many companies coming in to invest from Taiwan, because Paraguay formally recognises Taiwan as a country. They're broken up with China. So there are a lot of Taiwanese companies coming in. Argentinian companies are moving because even though Milei is fixing stuff, they need a fix now, not a five-year transition. There are dozens of Brazilian companies coming in.¶

Raphaël Lima: There are companies from Europe now starting to incorporate there and think about that because it's a very cheap energy cost, low power costs, low wages. Land and building, it's still very cheap. So they're getting a lot of investment from there. If you come in with the idea of, "Oh, we could have private cities to draw investment," they're already drawing a lot of investment. They're going to be like, "That's not very much a problem. We actually need the investment to generate energy, because we're going to have a problem with that." Paraguay is now the fourth-largest country in the world in Bitcoin mining. It's around 5% of all Bitcoin mining. That's a huge energy demand.¶

Timothy Allen: As far as I know, a lot of that comes from water.¶

Raphaël Lima: Yeah, the hydro plant on the border with Brazil. Paraguay and Brazil own it fifty-fifty. Paraguay has a lot of extra energy that they sell to Brazil. But they expect that in five or six years they're going to use the whole of it, and then they're going to need to import energy. So if you want to build some energy infrastructure there, you should call the Paraguayan government. They want to talk to you.¶

Timothy Allen: I'd love to. In fact, I've got a feeling that there are people on Roatán who work here who have got mining operations out in Paraguay.¶

Raphaël Lima: Yeah, yeah.¶

Timothy Allen: Well, look, I think I probably need to take a trip down to Paraguay.¶

Raphaël Lima: Yeah. Also, one reason Europeans love it so much: cheap steaks.¶

Timothy Allen: Argentina's like that as well, isn't it?¶

Raphaël Lima: No, Argentina is really expensive. I think that the price of Argentina right now is worth it. I've been to Argentina a few weeks ago. It's beautiful. It's expensive, but I think it's worth it. But they are like Europe prices of meat right now, almost. It's expensive because they're fixing things, but the taxes are still kind of high. So there's a problem. But in Paraguay, you can get really good, really cheap meat every time. So you don't have the European winter. You don't have European socialists. You don't have immigration problems, and you can have a steak the size of your head every day. If that interests you, call me.¶

Timothy Allen: I'm just looking at my clock. I've got a bit of a tight schedule today, but that is a nice place to wrap up, because I like all of those things. It might well be that I do give you a call across the table. But no, I really should check this place out. I know so many people going there. I know so many people operating out of there. I need to go and take a look. Many thanks, Raphaël.¶

Raphaël Lima: [Unclear response.]¶

Timothy Allen: Nice to hear from you again after so long, and in another, in a better part of the country. We were in Prague last time, wasn't it? We spoke in Prague.¶

Raphaël Lima: Portugal.¶

Timothy Allen: That's right. It was in Lisbon, wasn't it?¶

Raphaël Lima: It was Lisbon. It was raining cats and dogs that day.¶

Timothy Allen: That's right. Now I remember. I was trying to put... It's funny, the funny thing is that my AI agent knew all about it. It told me all about it. It had done a search on the internet. There's a transcript of our whole thing on the internet somewhere, because it found it.¶

Raphaël Lima: Awesome.¶

Timothy Allen: But anyway, great. Nice to talk to you. What are you doing at the conference here? Have you got a speech or a panel?¶

Raphaël Lima: I'm doing two panels, mostly about how taxation in the world is changing, how governments are, they're always doing that, but in Europe this is intensifying now, trying to shore up the walls and not let people leave. How there are new mechanisms. Próspera is a new mechanism. We actually used it this week. We incorporated a company here to help a Spanish client that had a whole lot of Bitcoin that he needed to get out and formalise everything, and he wanted to invest in Paraguay. We used the Próspera jurisdiction to make everything work out. That was bad English, sorry. But we used that.¶

Raphaël Lima: We have now new alternatives with not only the ZEDEs, but in Paraguay, alternatives to do your tax residency, to do investments, to protect yourself from how Europe and the United States are shoring up their walls and defences against people, and how there are new opportunities in the world coming up. I've talked a lot about Paraguay, but you have Chile now coming back to being a right-wing country. I think the whole of Latin America started getting a lot more interesting. You can talk to Fran about Colombia. He spends a lot of time there. Now they went back to being a right-wing country. They decided, "No, we should shoot the narcos. It sounds like a good idea," instead of asking them not to shoot us. You have El Salvador, which is really interesting. You have Milei in Argentina. You have many new possibilities coming from there.¶

Raphaël Lima: By the way, I think it's more likely that Argentina does a Free Private City thing in some way. I think it's far more likely that he can do it than Paraguay, maybe. Maybe Chile could do it, because Chile lost a whole bunch of investment to Argentina, because Milei helped a lot of investment in mining and oil and gas to happen in Argentina. A lot of companies that were doing that in Chile, when they had Boric as president, realised, "Well, why would we go there?" Chile lost probably something like ten years' worth of investment. They're really trying to figure out a way to get more investment going there. I'm going to talk about these new alternatives that are starting to show up in Latin America as destinations for liberty.¶

Raphaël Lima: We have another panel talking more about the society thing, which is the point I was talking about before. Liberty is not about economic freedom in the legislation. It's there, that's something. But it's far more about the minds that are creating and preserving and passing it on. I want people to start thinking of liberty not as a legal framework, but as a culture, as institutions, as a way of thinking and being that is reproduced. It can be translated into legislation and can be manifested in very many different things. But legislation is not a being. It doesn't exist. It doesn't physically exist in the world. What exists physically in the world is people behaving and having their morals, values, customs and institutions.¶

Raphaël Lima: I want people to think more about that way, and then look to countries and look for those people as alternatives in liberty, and not just look at the tax rate or the legal structure. I want to get more people thinking that way. I think that's a very useful way.¶

Timothy Allen: Amen to that. It is. Thanks for spending some time to talk to us. I look forward to listening to that talk as well.¶

Raphaël Lima: See you next time.¶