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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   22600 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 1, 2026

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Why is Peter Thiel Moving to Argentina?

Some Irresponsible Speculation

Billionaire Investor and ideologue Peter Thiel has publicly announced that he is moving to Argentina. Among a grab bag of explanations that included nuclear war and AI risk, along with the obvious implications of the California wealth tax on his residency, Thiel reportedly was concerned about the political direction of the United States. Given Thiel's ties to much of the American political right, what does this tell us? What should our Bayesian update be from this information?

Some possibilities:

-- Get the obvious out of the way: Nothing ever happens. This is a non-event, Thiel is moving for publicity or tax reasons, and the announcements are just him engaging in punditry.

-- Alternatively, none of this may indicate anything because Thiel himself might be stupid/mistaken/prejudiced/insane.

-- Thiel is in deep with MAGA, but thinks that the wind is changing direction, the MAGA project has failed, and he doesn't want to be left holding the bag in America when the left comes back into power. This seems like a sub implication of the action even if he doesn't believe it, because his very act of fleeing and blaming the political climate will tend to reinforce the idea that MAGA has failed and increase the odds of it failing.

-- Alternatively, Thiel thinks MAGA will be triumphant, but Thiel is on the outs with The Donald, and he is concerned about being targeted after Trump turns on him. Moving to Argentina is an attempt to hedge risk.

-- Thiel is a true believer in the Argentine project, and thinks Millei-ism will succeed beyond all our wildest dreams.

It feels like something big for Thiel, who is intelligent and well informed if perhaps nuts, to make this move and publicly announce it is motivated by the state of the union.

The actual obvious part is that Thiel has residences in New Zealand and Uruguay, and I suspect in more places (haven't checked). He's an eccentric billionaire with idle doomsday fantasies. He can afford a mansion in Buenos Aires as well, just for meme value provided by Milei and Nazi jokes alone.

More speculatively: this is, if anything, bullish on Trump. Argentina isn't some neutral safe haven. It cooperates with the USG under Democrats eagerly: consider that in 2022, they've arrested and extradited two random Ruskies, at the American behest, to the US. They'll extradite an American charged with some crimes even more readily. Thiel presumes that Trumpism will survive, and in fact succeed with the Donroe Doctrine program, the entire South America becoming integrated into the new security regime, as per the National Security Strategy document. Palantir will be key to this. And he expresses his enthusiasm by claiming a foothold at the tip of the cone.

I'm going to guess a ravishing blonde twink named Eduardo Hainzmuller.

It doesn't take a Thiel-tier political genius to see that 'starting a guaranteed-loss war with Iran' will greatly damage Trump and perceived Trump allies.

Fuel prices were very damaging to the Biden administration. Humiliation/botched withdrawal in Afghanistan was pretty damaging. Amp both factors up considerably, what does that do to Trump?

Can't keep draining the SPR forever, can't keep manipulating markets with announcements forever. How can Trump survive midterms if there is a fuel crisis? There will be a fuel crisis by September unless Iran opens the straits. How can Trump survive midterms if he makes objectively humiliating concessions to Iran, who is not exactly beloved by Republican voters? They've been told that the war has been won about a dozen times by now, so a humiliating defeat is not going to go down well.

There can't be an 'Only Trump could go to Iran' moment like Nixon, not after a surprise attack Trump started. Few consider world-historically deft diplomacy to be a Trump strength either.

Thiel is to the left as Soros is to the far-right, they hate him a lot. But the left actually goes after enemies with institutional power.

Now I predict someone is going to come and suggest a military breakthrough will rescue the day for Trump and America. But what military breakthrough can there be? If there are amazing anti-drone weapons or other wonderweapons, why haven't they been used already? Or used against the Houthis earlier? If the straits can be secured, why haven't they been secured already? If there is ongoing work to degrade Iranian capabilities that will soon show fruits, why has the US been so quick to look for a diplomatic solution, why accept a partial truce that logically enables Iran to regroup and prepare for further fighting? If the blockade was going to degrade Iranian oil infrastructure why hasn't this happened already or when Iran lowered oil production in 2020? If Iran were to be more aggressively bombed, how would this prevent Iran destroying more oil infrastructure and heightening the fuel crisis?

US can end the Iran War in 36 hours if we wanted to. We choose not to because of stupid liberal war ethics. And that’s without using nukes. A few key hits on infrastructure and Iran surrenders.

OK but then Iran would retaliate by razing oil infrastructure across the Middle East. And so Trump would be considered a Bibi-tier war criminal and also ensure very high oil prices, probably a recession.

That's not a victory! Wars are fought to achieve political goals, not just to blow things up.

How would Americans feel if Russia or China attacked key electrical and water infrastructure? How would Americans feel if a great power launched a sneak attack across their whole country? Would they cuck out like pussies or hit back hard? Iran isn't a country of pussies. They didn't give up after taking considerable casualties against Saddam Hussein (not known for liberal war ethics), they kicked him out of Iran and tried to conquer Iraq, only to get bogged down after years of bloody fighting. That was when they were at their weakest and Saddam was supported by both superpowers, Iran was very determined and tolerant of suffering in that war.

They didn't give up when Saddam terror bombed them, they're not gonna give up to US terror bombing.

To beat Iran there would need to be a full scale multi-million man ground invasion or large-scale nuclear attack, which is just not on the cards.

Though Iran already maxed their ability to hit other countries oil infrastructure. Yes sure a lot of these conversations are just discussing who is holding back military capabilities. The US is 100% avoiding Iranian infrastructure attacks. Iran has hit some oil infrastructure.

I have no idea the reference to Bibi or War crimes. We live in different news source worlds. Seems like a good guy to me.

Lots of normies think Netanyahu is a war criminal and so does the ICC. Obviously the biggest crime a leader can commit is losing the war, that's the key issue. Kill lots of people and win - statesmanlike, to be emulated, FDR and Churchill. Kill lots of people and lose - infamous, hated like Nixon.

I don't think that Iran has maxxed out their abilities, if they wanted to destroy the Saudi pipeline to the Red Sea they could, they've demonstrated the ability to hit it. If they can hit US bases and Israel, presumably they can also hit oil facilities.

Yes, 36 hours. A few well-placed hits, and they surrender. They're just not realizing how they're outmatched, they think the US is bluffing, the "whole civilization will die tonight" stuff was a joke, but no, it's totally serious. If only liberals weren't in the way…
Sure.
It is edifying to reread the posts around the start of the war, when it was actually measured in hours. I suggest this one. I'll even quote it in full, it's so amazing.

Are we in a new age of hyperpower?

OK, this war in Iran is only 2 days old, and as we all know "truth is the first casualty of war." So this is very much a hot take, and we'll need a lot more time and thoughtful analysis to see how this plays out.

But right now, as an American watching the news, I'm feeling a bit drunk on national power. I can only imagine how Trump and other leaders must be feeling, let alone the actual soldiers who drop the bombs. Already this year we've fought and- it seems- won two wars! The first one with absolutely no losses, and this one also seems quite low casualty. This was done purely with American military (and help from Israel), no NATO help necessary. Iran has spent the last 40 years building up a gigantic military, and now it all just looks like an absolute joke. All their leadership is dead within the first day, and the US has massive air superiority over most of the country. It's now basically just a choice of what targets we want to bomb.

I took this chance to go check back in on Venezuela. I couldn't find many good sources there, but so far it seems... basically fine? There's no civil war or hardline Maduro loyalists fighting to the death. The new president has taken over with basically no issues, and she seems to be cooperating quite well with the US. Lots of Venezuelans are happy that this happened. Of course there are still many problems with the country, but it's fair to chalk that war up as a win.

But what about China? We're supposed to be in a new "multipolar" age, right? The US can't just go throwing its weight around wherever it wants because there are other powers to stop us. Iran was heavily involved in selling oil to China, and was a military ally of them through the Shanghai Cooperative Organization. Well, so far all China has done is say mean things about us. They can't even say it openly, they have to do it in phone calls to Russia. So apparently they're not much of a counter at all.

I think we've reached a tipping point where US air power just crushes all of its adversaries with no counter. It's not any one weapon, but a combination of factors- more satellites, better human intelligence, more stealth aircraft, better radar, more JDAMs and stand off munitions, cyberattacks, and now AI to help us identify targets. The US can completely devastate most countries, even large ones like Iran, without putting a single boot on the ground, unless we want to send special forces to arrest someone like we did to Maduro. And we've got 100 next-gen stealth bombers currently in production, plus... whatever the hell the F47 next-gen fighter can do, so I expect this dominance to increase over the next decade.

But what about nukes? Soviet nukes held the US in check throughout the cold war, surely those also put a break on US imperial ambitions? Well, to some extent they still do, but the US has made some very impressive progress in missile defense lately. THAAD is now hitting its targets with an impressively high success rate, and was recently used to help defend Israel against Iran's missile barage. The main limiting factor there is just building more interceptors, and Trump is pushing for massive funding there as part of his Golden Dome project. That also opens up some intriguing options in space- and, oh hey, would you look at that, the US also has SpaceX utterly dominating LEO launch, and it will likely get even more dominant there if/when Starship becomes practical. Meanwhile China has a relatively small nuclear arsenal, and Russia's is just leftover Soviet junk that might not even work anymore. I think we are rapidly reaching a point where the US has overwhelming nuclear dominance.

The question then becomes- what do we do with this power? Trump used to always preach the merits of isolationism, and he made a big splash early in the Republican primary by being the only candidate who strongly denounced the Iraq war. He clashed heavily with Marco Rubio over that issue. But now he has Rubio as his Secretary of State, and he seems to have rapidly "evolved" to favor military interventions. But, being Trump, he still makes speeches about "taking Venezuela's oil" and other me-first boasting. So far no such boasts about Iran, but I can only assume there will be some.

My guess? He keeps doing this. Cuba is an obvious target, they're pretty much falling apart already. Next would be Panama, where he always talked about wanting the Canal back. After that... I have no idea. Colombia? Mexico? Somalia? Cambodia? He could potentially attack all of those places, if each one is as fast and decisive as this current Iran war seems. I... don't think Trump would actually invade Greenland, or attack China, but... who can say? If he chose to do those things, who could stop him?

Anyone ready for Colombia? Mexico? Somalia? Cambodia? Salivating at the thought of more hyperpower dominance?

Sarcasm is unbecoming.

It’s possible to build a good post around a rhetorical turn, but when the rest of your comment consists of quotes, you need to speak plainly.

Was Operation Rough Rider a great demonstration of American invincibility too? They brought in multiple carrier groups, bombed Yemen endlessly and assassinated plenty of Houthi leaders even up to the Houthi Prime Minister but the Houthi missile/drone capabilities were basically untouched and Trump effectively gave up after a month when stockpiles started running low.

So if this goes the same way and Iran is still firing missiles and drones a month at every country hosting American military assets, shutting down the Strait of Hormuz and possibly obliterating all of the soft oil infrastructure between the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea would you still consider it to be a great victory for Trump?

For some reason the warmongers can get it wrong literally every time but they never lose their confidence in predicting how easy the next war will be

That strikes me as wishful thinking. Neither Iraq nor Afghanistan surrendered, they had to be taken, and each of them took more than 36 hours, as would Iran, due to their geography and population, if nothing else.

I am specifically saying “Not if you do war crimes”. We clearly can’t do regime change etc with just air strikes on military targets. But we do have the ability to bomb basically anything in the country. We can nearly completely cut power/water in Iran.

The regime will shoot protestors to maintain power. If we credibly threatened civilian infrastructure and it became topple the regime or die I think we could succeed.

I am specifically saying “Not if you do war crimes”. We clearly can’t do regime change etc with just air strikes on military targets. But we do have the ability to bomb basically anything in the country. We can nearly completely cut power/water in Iran.

You said you can "end the Iran War", how do you propose cutting power, and ruining their infrastructure will do that? They have stockpiles, underground bases, and a fanatically devoted military. They'll keep shooting at ships until you mop them all up. I'm not saying you're unable to do that, but thinking you can do that in 36 hours is delusional.

How well can a modern army operate without electricity? Can you make drones in the dark? Do starving populations riot for regime change? Do starving soldiers still fight?

There are good reasons to not do things that lead to a large loss of civilian human life. But let’s not act like it wouldn’t be effective.

They can't even get the Palestinians to riot for regime change, and compared to Iran that's shooting fish in a barrel (the barrel being Gaza).

Can you make drones in the dark?

No, but you can store them.

Do starving populations riot for regime change?

Who cares? Are they going to stop you from shooting at ships from your secret underground bases?

Do starving soldiers still fight?

Who says they're starving?

“Can store them” - eventually run out.

  • if you don’t control your own country and hinterland then the underground missile launch points you propose eventually run out of supplies

  • “who says their starving” That is why you take out civilian infrastructure. Cut electricity, power, key bridges and suddenly your farms don’t have irrigation and the food disappears.

So all you did was ignore the entire point I made of taking out civilian infrastructure. You just ignored it. You didn’t even counter that it would fail for x,y,z reason. Which it may.

How long would America last if a country had air superiority and bombed every power plant and oil refinery?

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Saddam Hussein fired chemical weapons directly into Iranian cities and killed hundreds of thousands of people yet the Iranians kept fighting for years in the hope that they could seize some territory in compensation.

It seems pretty doubtful that blowing up some civilian infrastructure would achieve much of anything

Grok say this never happened. And from what I know about the US military they tend to find chemical weapons as not effective but I’m no expert.

And from what I know about the US military they tend to find chemical weapons as not effective but I’m no expert.

My point wasn't that chemical weapons are effective, it's that Saddam was willing to cross all moral red lines against the Iranians and it didn't work. Where is the evidence that your strategy works?

Grok say this never happened

Perhaps you should think and research with your own brain instead of replacing it with a machine

Dude. You 100% used a machine to research whatever you said occurred in Iran. You used either Wikipedia, Google, or maybe some podcast bro. AI can just scan more data points than google.

You didn’t go to Iran and interview villagers and do soil samples.

FWIW chemical weapons have never been effective in war. History is filled with stories of high civilian casualties and destroying civilian infrastructure led to victory. Roman salted the earth. Mongols slaughtered entire towns who fought to well so other towns would just agree to be slaves. America carpet bombed Europe and nuked Japan. Sherman marched thru Georgia.

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Wikipedia indicates a few tens of thousands of civilian injuries from Iraqi chemical weapons, some Iranian and some Kurdish in an Iraqi city recently captured by Iran.

Just to be clear you quoted sources that indicated “0” recorded instances of Iranian civilian deaths.

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Not some civilian infra, it would need to be nearly all of it. Full shutdown of roads, industry, oil, etc. Any building that makes other things. If production is mixed into residential then the residential has to be hit too to hit the production.

This would of course be a genocide but if nobody can move an inch without being cluster bombed with artillery surely Iran would collapse if only to starvation and looting. The strait would probably be open in this case.

Trump hesitates because he fears the inevitable war crimes tribunal this would cause from democrats. He is not confident republicans can hold the executive for the remainder of his lifespan, or that some other republican president would throw him under the bus in an act of bipartisan goodwill.

The US doesn't have the sortie rate to do this. US aircraft already fired off the bulk of their standoff arsenal and achieved nothing of great significance.

The necessary munitions do not exist, nor do safe airbases to launch such a demanding operation.

Iran is much less vulnerable than the Gulf Arabs in a war of food and water, their retaliation would smash US regional allies and severely hurt Israel, who is also desal dependent.

There is no path to victory for America here.

Ah, well if that's the case then Trump and the US are truely done for unless ground troops are mobilized. There's no way the IRGC will settle for anything less than full nuclearization and financial reparations for the damage they suffered otherwise.

The strait would probably be open in this case.

Why? Has everybody forgotten that partisan / guerrilla warfare exists?

Partisans can exist only within a living civilian population. Guerrillas can't exist for very long without civilian support.

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Both sides want ships to pass through while neither side wants a deal that the other can accept. In the last 24 hours 11 ships have transited. Other fuels have gone through saudi arabia to the red sea. Iranians are trading at record rates through the caspian sea, pakistan and through central asia. Iraq has a land boarder with Turkey.

The doomsday scenario is overblown. We are not going to see a mass collapse of the economy after oil spikes to 250 dollars. What we will get is a dragged out forever war that is going to drain the US navy causing years of maintenance backlog while keeping oil at 100+ dollars per barrel and inflation a few percent higher than projected with meagre economic growth. Trump is stuck, and the war isn't going to end due to a shock. The US is going to go woke again because Trump decided the middle east was more important than the US.

Other fuels have gone through saudi arabia to the red sea. Iranians are trading at record rates through the caspian sea, pakistan and through central asia. Iraq has a land boarder with Turkey.

This is optimistic. Land borders are irrelevant, the Caspian is irrelevant: because we're talking multi million barrels per day, the only thing that matters is existing pipeline capacity, available short term. And there's really only three pipelines in the area that matter: the Saudi East-West pipeline to the Red Sea, the Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline to Oman, and the Iraq-Turkey pipeline to the Med. Their max capacities are around 7 million barrels per day, 1.5 mb/d and 1 mb/d, respectively. But they all already carried fuel before Hormuz was closed (albeit not at full capacity), so if you want these pipelines to substitute for crude carriers through the strait, you might get an additional 4 mb/d through them, 7 mb/d if you're lucky (that requires the Saudi to do some real magic to their pumping stations, and you need to unfuck the political trouble between Iraq and Turkey that prevents them from using that pipeline - and even then, it doesn't even connect to Iraq's major oil fields in the South).

That leaves the global market short 13 mb/d, -13% in total. And that's a major oil crisis, almost double the shortfall of the Arab oil embargo of '73, which quadrupled oil prices. Once the strategic reserves run dry, the oil price is going to do violent things.

And then there's, of course, the matter that pipelines are extremely large, effectively impossible to protect and thus really easy to bomb with drones.

Thiel is in deep with MAGA, but thinks that the wind is changing direction, the MAGA project has failed, and he doesn't want to be left holding the bag in America when the left comes back into power.

This seems the most likely to me. Unlike many here, I've never bought into these "new right" movements like Maga. They feel very synthetic to me (or, as the kids say, fake and gay), in the sense of both being manufactured and specifically being manufactured by people who have dubious belief in the product they're selling. Like having a tattooed pornstar, a WWE Smackdown champ, and an Indian woman praying to a Hindu god featured at the RNC does not strike me as a sincere evolution of the right-wing movement from 20 years ago: it looks more like a spiteful mockery of the Christian right's inability to stop a hostile takeover.

Hillary said back in the day that Trump was a Pied Piper. She presumably meant he was there to lead the right astray into clowning themselves and severing their access to power forever, as she, the stout and civilised pantsuit princess, ascended to the throne as First Woman President and Leader of the Free World.

As is often the case in politics, she was quite deluded about herself. But I think she was basically correct about her opponent.

I keep predicting a market crash, and I keep being wrong, but... well, I'm going to keep predicting it anyway, because the market looks pretty damn irrational to me. And yeah, if you get the largest market crash since the Great Depression, it might be a good idea to be somewhere else, because people are already not in a good mood. There will be calls for heads on pikes.

Hillary said back in the day that Trump was a Pied Piper.

He wasn't their only candidate, and the strategy still gets trotted out: build up the extreme opponent so they take or split the vote from the more moderate guy who would be harder to beat. I still enjoy this piece from Politico where it is claimed the Clinton campaign expected she'd be running against Jeb Bush, and the problem was that his policies were doing better than they expected. So they needed someone on the Republican side to weaken him, by forcing him to move more to the right and thus adopt positions that would alienate moderates, but nobody imagined that Jeb would drop out and Trump would end up as the candidate, much less win against Hillary:

Six months later, Clinton associates' wariness of Bush and his likely financial firepower was still acute: Democratic pollster Celinda Lake wrote to Clinton adviser Minyon Moore to warn her that she’d been testing Bush’s economic message for a client. “It has been remarkably strong. Getting even half of african americans and democrats and two thirds of latinos. Some thought it ended too harsh. But the perspective on the economy has really worked. Now we didn’t tell people this was from bush. But it’s a warning."

So to take Bush down, Clinton’s team drew up a plan to pump Trump up. Shortly after her kickoff, top aides organized a strategy call, whose agenda included a memo to the Democratic National Committee: “This memo is intended to outline the strategy and goals a potential Hillary Clinton presidential campaign would have regarding the 2016 Republican presidential field,” it read.

“The variety of candidates is a positive here, and many of the lesser known can serve as a cudgel to move the more established candidates further to the right. In this scenario, we don’t want to marginalize the more extreme candidates, but make them more ‘Pied Piper’ candidates who actually represent the mainstream of the Republican Party,” read the memo.

“Pied Piper candidates include, but aren’t limited to:
• Ted Cruz
• Donald Trump
• Ben Carson
We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to [take] them seriously."

Salon was equally shocked and disgusted about his victory:

Republican Donald Trump, a far-right demagogue who campaigned on a slew of bigoted, xenophobic policies, has won the 2016 presidential election in a shocking victory few people predicted.

...On April 23, 2015, two weeks after Hillary Clinton officially declared her presidential campaign, her staff sent out a group message with information for a “strategy call.” The email included as an attachment a “memo for the DNC discussion.”

The memo, which was addressed to the Democratic National Committee, outlined “the strategy and goals a potential Hillary Clinton presidential campaign would have regarding the 2016 Republican presidential field.”

The document stated, “Clearly most of what is contained in this memo is work the DNC is already doing. This exercise is intended to put those ideas to paper.”

It continued, “Our hope is that the goal of a potential HRC campaign and the DNC would be one-in-the-same: to make whomever the Republicans nominate unpalatable to a majority of the electorate.”

The memo articulated a three-point strategy. Point 1 called for forcing “all Republican candidates to lock themselves into extreme conservative positions that will hurt them in a general election.”

From the memo itself:

Friends,

This memo is intended to outline the strategy and goals a potential Hillary Clinton presidential campaign would have regarding the 2016 Republican presidential field. Clearly most of what is contained in this memo is work the DNC is already doing. This exercise is intended to put those ideas to paper.

Our Goals & Strategy

Our hope is that the goal of a potential HRC campaign and the DNC would be one-­‐in-­‐the-­‐same: to make whomever the Republicans nominate unpalatable to a majority of the electorate. We have outlined three strategies to obtain our goal:

  1. Force all Republican candidates to lock themselves into extreme conservative positions that will hurt them in a general election;

  2. Undermine any credibility/trust Republican presidential candidates have to make inroads to our coalition or independents;

  3. Muddy the waters on any potential attack lodged against HRC.

To be fair, the strategy worked great! They sure showed Jeb! 😁

Hillary said back in the day that Trump was a Pied Piper. She presumably meant he was there to lead the right astray into clowning themselves and severing their access to power forever, as she, the stout and civilised pantsuit princess, ascended to the throne as First Woman President and Leader of the Free World.

That's what she wanted, her machine reassured her that by boosting Trump she'd have the presidential election in the bag. The entire MSM played along. They couldn't get enough of Trump being a loud obnoxious orange man.

If only they realized that was exactly what people wanted, some one to say fuck you to the "losing respectably" RINOs and cuckservatives in GOP inc.

-- Thiel is a true believer in the Argentine project, and thinks Millei-ism will succeed beyond all our wildest dreams.

Thiel has a chance to do the funniest thing, he could fund an ancap paradise in Argentina out of his own pocket

What if he's not frontrunning America's decline, but the complete opposite? Venezuela takeover, pushing Mexico to deal with the cartels, salivating at Cuba. All these are signs of USA getting hands on in the region. After Iran war is done, I wouldn't be surprised to see a more formal 'empire expansion' down there, although I have no idea how exactly that would look like.

Other option: the geo-physical event is coming in the near to medium term and he’s moving to safer territory. At least that’s where my mind went. South America is speculated to ride things out better than North America.

Edit: on a more serious note (not implying the GE is not serious, just less serious), maybe he just realized NZ is a terrible hedge. It seems to me that the commonwealth countries are far more pozzed than the US. It seems hard for me to imagine the government there will be friendly, despite what money can can throw around. As someone else mentioned, if shit hits the fan, they will not let him live the good life while their fake country collapses.

As someone else mentioned, if shit hits the fan, they will not let him live the good life while their fake country collapses.

I saw a tweet which read something to the effect of the best hedge for a billionaire against instability is finding a clannish small community somewhere in Appalachia and adopting it. Pour money into roads/schools/businesses, sponsor local events, and otherwise do literally everything you can to engender as much good-feeling in the community as you possibly can. Practice the kind of noblesse oblige Chaucer would have approved of. Live in an estate not a mansion. Total out of pocket cost could probably be kept to the low millions. Of course these people aren't stupid, if you're just phoning it in they'll know and they'll take your money and smile and fantasize about putting your head on a stake, so if you're as an individual completely incapable of caring about anyone other than yourself this may not work very well.

Historically, you have to marry into the local elite and have children recognized as part of the in-group for this to be effective. It doesn't always work but it's the mostly reliable path for outsiders to integrate. YMMV and it may take multiple generations. Doesn't work if you're publically gay, though.

Almost surely won't work in Appalachia if you're out and gay.

"Men are more ready to repay an injury than a benefit, because gratitude is a burden and revenge a pleasure ... Benefits are only acceptable as long as they seem capable of being repaid; beyond that point, gratitude is replaced by resentment." - Tacitus, Annals

Perhaps Appalachia is more resistant to this psychological disease than elsewhere? But it's a disease stretching across millennia, and if some subculture really has stumbled into a way to avoid it en masse then figuring out exactly how is probably the best anti-SHTF action imaginable.

maybe he just realized NZ is a terrible hedge

New Zealand is even more cooked with the woke mind virus/immigration frenzy than the US/UK. So makes sense not to have that as your exit strat as a billionaire.

As someone else mentioned, if shit hits the fan, they will not let him live the good life while their fake country collapses.

I think a point could be made that all countries are fake.

Also, the number of countries which let billionaires live the good life while collapsing is just about zero. There might be some principled libertarians who would feel compelled to respect the property rights of the rich even in the middle of a collapse, but the average policeman or soldier is not going to watch his family starve while the rich feast.

In democracies, runaway inflation will reliably cause the election of extremist candidates. And dictatorships are even worse -- dictators as a rule do not believe in respecting human rights, so they have no principled reason to respect the property rights of the rich. Sometimes they even expropriate and imprison rich foreigners when they are not collapsing even though it might seem in their long term interests to not do so.

Your best bet in an authoritarian state is probably having close personal ties to the dictator (e.g. through marriage, Crusader Kings style), but even then there is always the danger of an internal coup. It seems hard for foreigners to have collectively enough political clot that the generalissimo feels that he can't throw one under the bus from time to time.

If I was a billionaire, I would still bet on the US. The 1% class is very good at looking out for their own interests. Ideally, I would recommend staying out the culture war and partisan politics. Let the peasants fight about affirmative action or abortion, the rich can thrive both under GWB and Obama.

Your example of Dubai imprisoning rich foreigners for no reason is a bad example. Albert Douglas's son Wolfgang had a company that accumulated ~2.5 million pounds of debt in Dubai. So from Dubai's perspective, they were dealing with a clan of criminal fraudsters who stole from their country and then tried to run away.

The numerous english facing websites and articles dedicated to the release of Albert imply to me that the Douglas family could easily pay the debt but chose media pressure on Dubai over human rights as a reasonable strategy to get Albert released. I suspect they just paid the debts owed after 4 years of Albert getting tortured.

In Western countries debt can't be transferred between family members, but obviously Dubai has a different opinion on the matter.

I will grant you that just from the facts I have read, it is entirely possible that Wolfgang's company accumulated the debt through straightforward fraud and they are now living in luxury due to their ill-gotten gains.

However, I do not think this is overly likely. I surmise that the local law makes a distinction between fraud and debt, and it would be strange to only charge the latter if the former applied.

The more central possibility seems to be that his company either got unlucky or got played. Suppose you are a local noble, and you desire the company of a foreigner. You know your legal system works in practice, against whom laws get enforced and who is untouchable. So you get him to accept a contract with a local government, and then subcontract a significant amount to a locally owned company. The subcontractor does not deliver. Now he is a debtor to the government, and a creditor to some local noble. The court system is not going to send a local to debtors prison for a debt owed to a foreigner, but it will gladly send the foreigner to prison -- he might have offshore assets he could still cough up to shorten his stay.

I can not rule out the possibility that everyone rotting in debtor's prison in Dubai is guilty as sin, there might be a correlation between willingness to do business in autocraties and crookedness, after all. But I find a conviction in some Dubai court to be only very weak Bayesian evidence of guilt of anything, because I do not trust their justice system very much.

But I find a conviction in some Dubai court to be only very weak Bayesian evidence of guilt of anything, because I do not trust their justice system very much.

I wish I could remember where I read it, but it was by some journalist or businessman who'd been there for a while and described Dubai as having a basically western court system for people accused of regular crimes. Investigation, attorneys, trial, etc. If suspected of anti-government activities or advocating for radical Islam, though, they simply disappeared in police state style. Merely one person's report, but it stuck in my head.

From the guardian article:

He was cautioned about the risk of further imprisonment for speaking English in the Arabic courts.

Could obviously all be a fabrication on his part, I was not present for the proceedings. But like the guardian, I would tend to believe him on that part, and see it as a scathing indictment of the court process. I do not know how Western courts handle language barriers, I presume that they use interpreters (but probably can't afford simultaneous interpreter?), but I am sure that they will not simply tell the accused to STFU with his heathen tongue or be held in contempt.

And a court which is fishy in that way is probably also fishy in other ways.

I don't trust their justice system either, but I think Dubai also has concerns with their international business reputation. Seizing assets on the pretense of fraud would surely deter investment and maybe even tourists. That Dubai imprisoned him for four years seems to indicate they had a serious grudge against him or his family in general.

It's a lot of trouble to go through to seize one timber factory, IMO. Might scare off the investment in data centers.

Your example of Dubai imprisoning rich foreigners for no reason is a bad example. Albert Douglas's son Wolfgang had a company that accumulated ~2.5 million pounds of debt in Dubai. So from Dubai's perspective, they were dealing with a clan of criminal fraudsters who stole from their country and then tried to run away.

I mean yeah but 'fairly useless lottery winners being able to arbitrarily suspend legal principles when it suits them' isn't a precedent that's super glowing if you're trying to flee there to avoid the Boogaloo.

If you're a powerful political elite while the world is in a crisis rich foreigners with minimal direct ties to your country are the best possible people to make examples out of. There's already an "us vs them" for the ordinary population especially if the country wasn't directly involved in causing the world crisis and them being foreigners means they likely don't have well developed connections with native elites meaning you don't end up pissing off a bunch of them (which could threaten your long term grip on power) when you make an example out of the rich foreigners.

Thiel and Co. need to realise that in the end they are made of the same flesh and blood as the meanest of us. If the world collapses everyone suffers, including them and their current fame means they don't get the cloak of invisibility conferred by (relative) anonymity even ordinarily successful UMC people do.

Back in 2013 I got the chance to meet Peter thiel at a students for liberty conference. He was fielding questions from students at the bar.

I basically asked him where he'd move or where he thinks the next good "liberty" place is. He insisted the USA was the best.

A decade is both a short and long time. Plenty of time for an individual to change their mind or their views to shift. But not very long for a country to go into the shitter. And not very long to verify that a newly successful country is going to stay successful. People seem to forget that Soviet Union had a few decades of apparent success. A single leader can make for a few great years, maybe even a decades worth of great years. But the systems, institutions, and culture of a country are slow to change on such timescales.

I think in this case the US has gotten worse, and Argentina has gotten better, but what has changed the most is not the US or Argentina, but Peter Thiel. It's the boring answer, but still the correct one.

Thiel only needs Argentina to stay safe for him for another 20 or 30 years. He's gay and his children are adopted, he has no biological skin in the game that incentivizes him to prioritize a country's long term stability. Thiel is an example of why gay elites are worse for society compared to straight elites, all else being equal.

If America falls Argentina is the likely place where civilization will be reborn. America has imported the third world and our politics will turn into Brazil. Europe is demographically dead. The southern cone is filled with Europeans. Paraguay will be dominated by Mennonites in time.

If your playing the long game on western civ Argentina is simply the only hedge to America falling.

NZ doesn’t work because it’s too small. You won’t be able to rebuild civilization there. Maybe S Brazil is better but it’s still politically connected to Brazil.

If America falls Argentina is the likely place where civilization will be reborn.

Gene Wolfe spoke of this.

Wait which book? I do not remember anything on the sort in Book of the New Sun.

Most fan speculation claims that Nessus is Buenos Aires (with some hinted confirmation from Gene, I think). There is argument about east/west being reversed and the map on wiki being wrong.

I did not pick that up in the slightest, GW at it again.

By the 3rd-5th reading, a number of details start to snap into focus.

Most of it obviously happens in Latin America, Nessus is often mapped to Buenos Aires. There are alternative theories, of course.

It's perhaps a bad sign that I understand that reddit post (although I disagree with it) instead of believing it to be unhinged schizophrenia.

How is Argentina capable of birthing civilization when they go begging the US or IMF for a bailout every 2-5 years?

Europe and America are immensely richer, more populous and stronger than Argentina. A Brazilified America is still going to be far more capable than Argentina just from its industrial/capital legacy and remaining clusters of strong demographics.

The simple argument is that they have birthed civilization basically three times. Rome, Renaissance, and early Argentina was fairly rich.

… and have become exceedingly efficient at it

The problem with Argentina is the same as with the rest of Latin America... they always keep going back to commies.

Me being both Italian and Catholic can recognize the part of the culture that leads those countries to a form of being commie. Or fascists like Mussolini. Abortion really split the Catholic vote in America where half sided with the GOP and half became redistribution like Biden/Pelosi. With abortion the Catholic vote would likely be 80-90% Democrats (before woke era).

What are the troubles of Brazil that isn't obvious from wikipedia? Also, why doesn't Argentina have these same problems even though Argentina is relatively close?

We live in a world in which noticing the strong correlation between demographics and how shitty a place to live is strongly discouraged. Even if it has substantial predictive power.

The murder rate in Brazil is much higher. Many areas over 10x that of Argentina. Many would blame this on demographics. These issues cause many other problem throughout Brazilian society including their political institutions.

Thanks, I suspected as much.

He also bought land in Uruguay, so I'd say it's a hedge against nuclear war/de-globalization. Even though I'm sure he's on a special regime, it doesn't make a lot of sense as a Tax move.

As to why stay in Buenos Aires vs someplace in Uruguay/Chile/Paraguay/Southern Brazil, it's probably a combination of politics and (zero bias here) Buenos Aires being the best city to be in South America.

As to why stay in Buenos Aires vs someplace in Uruguay/Chile/Paraguay/Southern Brazil, it's probably a combination of politics and (zero bias here) Buenos Aires being the best city to be in South America.

Will not dispute, 100% objective evaluation.

Anyone who disagrees can feel free to donate to an anonymous vacation fund of my choosing.

Peter Thiel has publicly announced that he is moving to Argentina

Wait 10 years for the next Peronist government to come back into power and then he'll very quickly be moving out of Argentina.

Argentina is one of the best places to be if the world goes to shit. There are no nuclear targets in South America. Prevailing wind patterns would prevent significant fallout from crossing the equator. Argentina has better demographics than Brazil and more space than Chile or miscellaneous Southern Hemisphere island nations.

Always good to be one step ahead.

I think you are pessimistic about the consequences of nuclear war. I do not think that there are enough nukes in the world to glass the US.

Popular depictions involve the survivors either donning spiky leather straps and becoming raiders or turning into man-eating mutants. I am a bit more optimistic. The United States does not seem like the kind of institution you can destroy simply by turning DC into a parking lot. Nor do I think that starvation is inevitable. If the 50 biggest cities are gone, it seems like the US would have a huge food surplus.

Nor would the industrial capability drop below that of Argentina. Some sectors (finance, insurance, software development, liberal arts) would be devastated, but plenty of factories seem to be located in smaller towns, and there would be no reason to mothball them until some vault-dweller discovers them centuries later.

Absent cobalt bombs, I don't think radiation would wipe out the US population either. Anchoring on Hiroshima, it seems that more people are killed by the blast and heat than radiation poisoning, and cancer deaths are a distant third. If cancer rates in the midwest increase by 10x, that is not nice but also not enough to collapse civilization. And billionaires would be exempt anyhow because they could afford to consume more expensive low contamination food.

That is not to say that nuclear war is fine. The QALY costs are enormous. The US could well lose its exceptional status in the world. The disruption of international supply chains might throw the country back to the tech level of the cold war. The voter base of the Democratic party would be devastated. The political system might not survive intact, and would likely be replaced by something more authoritarian.

If I were looking to bug out at the last moment, Malaysia or Thailand would be on my short list. I don’t know much about Argentina’s geography for long-term trends, but if governance is an indicator of well being, I’d look elsewhere. In his case though, it’s probably more related to where it’s better to be “rich” than it is to “live.” Being poor sucks in any country.

Given that this is known, what are the odds that at least one of the nuclear powers has major population centers/rich areas of South America as some of their auto-attack targets if shit hits the fan? Nukes aren't exactly cheap things you can just throw around willy-nilly on a whim, so perhaps it wouldn't be worth it. But I know that if I were in charge, I'd try to make sure we've got a few reserved for targeting places that are of strategic non-importance for (1) spite (the big reason) and (2) making sure that they don't have advantages over us for the Mad Max-esque post-apocalypse. Better to be Immortan Joe than a War Boy. I might even devote some intelligence resources to tracking the top X richest individuals on Earth at all times and make sure that their latest-available/best-guess coordinates are targeted.

Due to treaty drawdowns and increased targeting, there's barely enough nuclear weapons to shoot at the primary targets, let alone throw spares at random third parties.

If Russia and the US got into a nuclear tiff and they both went countervalue, things could be really nasty. But if they went for counterforce, I think the overall impact in terms of "damage to civilization" would be more like, say, COVID than Max Max Part 0.

Argentina is out of range of most land-based balistic missles from countries other than the United States (I think Russia has some brand new models that can do it.) There's a lot of ocean where a balistic-missile submarine would be able to hit both Argentina and the United States from a single position, but I don't think anyone expects an isolated submarine crew to faithfully execute Plan Exterminate Human Civilization.

"The MAGA project has failed" is far too strong wording. The Dems have proven increasingly willing to go after people they dislike on trumped up charges. There's probably a 30% chance that a state or federal prosecutor will try to indict him over the next 10 years. If he's out of the country he'll be out of mind for them.

The other thing is that it's probably possible for him to do a big construction project in Argentina that wouldn't be possible in California. He might be trying to fulfil some dream from his 20s about building a beach town for brainy gay nerds. Basically to build a Mecca for his tribe.

There's probably a 30% chance that a state or federal prosecutor will try to indict him over the next 10 years. If he's out of the country he'll be out of mind for them.

More than a criminal prosecution, I bet he's concerned the IRS under a Dem admin takes a look at his Roth IRA shenanigans.

His "shenanigans" were perfectly legal. He put stock purchased with post-tax money in the Roth, it went up (bigly), he doesn't pay taxes on the gains. I wouldn't put it past a Democratic administration to reneg on Roths (either for him or generally), however.

On the one hand, "purchased" should probably have scare quotes when applied to stock that isn't on the open market and that is being assessed at a 0.1-cent-per-share par value instead of anything an economist would recognize as value. Confinity might have been a gamble in 1999, but it was not a "the market cap would have been $62K" sort of gamble. Nobody gave Thiel 1.7 million shares of stock because its worth was anywhere near $1700, or because they really needed the cash for a new (but-not-top-of-the-line!) PC, and at anything like a real valuation he wouldn't have been able to squeeze more than a fraction of those shares under the IRA contribution limits. Under the spirit of the law this was a total scam.

On the other hand, I'd guess it was perfectly legal under the letter of the law, partly because there seems to be no limit to legislators' unjustified faith in their ability to write complex laws without loopholes or to fix the inevitable loopholes with more complex patches, and mostly because if "ha ha par value counts" wasn't a loophole in this case then by this point you'd expect Democrats would be prosecuting it, not writing whiny ProPublica articles about it.

On the gripping hand, this feels kind of like the cherry on top of the perfectly foreseeable karma for the "we need to protect the little guy from those conniving rich people" crowd. Public offerings are regulated out the wazoo, so a ton of stock changes hands at hard-to-quantify values before companies feel secure enough to brave the gauntlet of preparing for an IPO, so many of the opportunities for gains during that time are restricted to conniving rich people and kept out of the hands of the little guy. And even after the fact, are any of them complaining that we couldn't have gotten in on the earliest stage of the PayPal boom? Nah, just that the taxman couldn't. They only got $73.8 trillion dollars of revenue in the first quarter of the 21st century, when they should have gotten ... well, an extra $2 billion from Thiel still leaves us rounding to $73.8 trillion, but it's the principle of the thing!

Yeah, that's my major concern about Roth's. About the time Social Security starts having major shortfalls, an untaxed pool of capital seems likely to look very juicy.

A much younger me once made the same financial bet for the same reason.

There will be a ratchet for Roths, gradually dissipating everything nice about them. First distributions will count toward MAGI; then they'll be subject to tax for "millionaires"; until eventually they are basically only the equivalent of a 100k tax shelter.

He already has a presence in NZ, right? Deciding he wants another plan B seems in character- and Argentina has a lot of upside, it's running pretty close to the minimum possible society it could have, difficult to see how it doesn't become a bit of a nicer place to live over the long run.

NZ is also beholden to American interests in a way Argentina is not, re: Kim Dotcom, and those interests are generally Blue-aligned.

I find it very difficult to believe that if Armageddon happens and you decamp to your NZ bunker they won't very quickly just tax you and your wealth to try and alleviate the negative effects of Armageddon on the rest of the NZ population until you aren't doing particularly better than a mid tier local elite. And if you refuse then they just siege your compound and smoke you out.

Unless you've bought out the government itself to the point it sides with you and people like you over its own people (not happening in NZ, probably not happening in Argentina either, but at least you can make the argument for Argentina) when the sky falls in this isn't a particularly good situation for you.

Milei would gladly extradite a Kim Dotcom type for Trump and the Peronists / leftists would kick Thiel out without any American pressure.

Argentina is also on the short list of countries that will probably be 'fine' in the event of de-globalization. So establishing an existing presence there is good as a hedge even if you generally expect things to be fine.

However, I am more concerned with how much of his time he actually shifts to spending in Argentina vs. merely relocating. Theil has been mucking with U.S. politics for a while and as ever, I want our elites to have skin in the game.

If he actually believes things are going to turn sour and he pre-emptively situates himself as far from the fallout as he can feasibly get, and stays out, I would take that as a very bad sign.

Note, I don't judge the guy if he's trying to keep his kids safer or whatever, but he should be willing to face down the consequences of his political machinations along with the rest of us.

Considering he easily has the resources to make this move more surreptitiously if he wishes, I would say that him making it so public belies it being a move motivated by fear.

Considering he easily has the resources to make this move more surreptitiously if he wishes, I would say that him making it so public belies it being a move motivated by fear.

Certainly, which means that by making it publicly and stating that part of the reason has to do with the state of the US vs the state of Argentina, he's making a deliberate action to make that statement.

Publicly stated? What statement? The headline is based on a story from the New York Times made up of rumors taken from "people familiar with his thinking". The Times said that Theil explicitly declined to comment. All commentary about Peter Thiel making a statement (and in fairness I've seen a lot of this kind of discussion on twitter) looks totally speculative to me.

Buying a $12 million dollar mansion is tantamount to a public announcement insofar as the attention it brings, given there are methods of doing that without getting much attention to the specific owner.

He has not made a specific statement that I can see, though, so motives are purely speculative.

$12 million is ~0.048% of Peter Thiel's net worth. According to Google's incredibly shitty search AI, that's equivalent to a $9,000 purchase for the median American. Sounds pretty reasonable for a timeshare.

The average home price in Argentina is apparently $130,000.

Point is its a high enough number that people will note it and be curious about the buyer.

Same reason people care about Gabe Newell's Yacht even though its "only" like 5% of his net worth.

Also I really have to object to scaling a purchase by a .0001% outlier to the purchasing power of an average American.

The average American will never even achieve a net worth of 12 million over their entire lifetimes (sans hyperinflation) Especially if you account for the fact that guys like Thiel drag that average up.

The median is even worse.

Sure, but the point is, it's an announcement he's rich and wants a house in Argentina. It's not an announcement of anything to do with his future lifestyle or political beliefs except for what "people familiar with his thinking" say. I guess he could have used a bunch of shell companies, but there are many many possible reasons beyond the ones we're speculating. Maybe he has a big business deal coming in Argentina and wants to make Milei happy, who knows.

I think you mean a $96 purchase for the median American.

Yes, I am bad at counting.

I agree, the median US net worth is not 19 million dollars, after all.

(It also matches intuition -- 0.05% is an amount you can spend every day for almost six years before going bankrupt. Literally the kind of money you can spend on a whim without thinking too much about it. If the average American tells their spouse they dropped 9k$ on a whim (e.g. on a life-sized dinosaur model, or a fancy gaming rig, or a high end vacation), I think it is likely that their spouse would go wtf instead of treating it like Tuesday.)

How do you know Thiel didn’t buy the mansion quietly? Is there anything backing up the assumption that this is intended to send a message?

I googled this and the news that he bought a mansion in Buenos Aires is at least a month old. A Real Estate & Investment consulting firm (presumably the one he used) tweeted about it in vague terms but terms that imply it is an investment:

https://x.com/buysellba/status/2047482125902073856?s=46

There is no indication I can find that supports any of the interpretations being gossiped about here or on Twitter. Peter Thiel bought a house in Buenos Aires over a month ago and this weekend the New York Times runs a story alleging to understand his motives while in fact offering several interpretations.

Even the New York Times is more measured in their reporting that what I’m seeing elsewhere: Thiel fleeing America because America is doomed! Insider bet against MAGA! Maybe he just didn’t think it was that big of a deal. He’s already a dual citizen of America and New Zealand and has properties all over the world. It just might not be that deep.

Its the "moving the family" part that piques me, personally.

No you're right about that but it's not clear to me what that implies. The New York Times says he "temporarily" moved his family. It's not as though there was a public announcement and everything else is speculation. "What did he mean by this?"

This would be my guess. I’m very concerned that the Petrodollar is going away, and hyperinflation will result as we can no longer maintain our standard of living and certainly not our generous welfare and social programs. This probably means that civil unrest will happen. The people who suddenly don’t get their welfare benefits for months are not going to give up peacefully, especially if prices are also inflating by double digits.

After learning about the flagrant fraud with the hospital/learing center grift and the somalians I'm thinking a lot of the budget can be recovered if the "social programs" were cleaned up of graft. You could also stop sending nonillions to various countries for military 'aid'. (IE pork barrel graft so they turn around and buy your military hardware at ridiculous pricing)

Problem is you can't clean the graft out of the social programs because the people elect governments who are openly in favor of this graft.

As far as our dominant status as the world reserve, there are still good reasons to think that won’t be going away for a while.

This exact same narrative could’ve been told in 2003, 2009, 2015 and it’ll be written again in the future. Everyone wants to displace the dollar. Russia is economically irrelevant; it’s smaller than both Canada and (almost) Brazil. The problem with China is they can't fully float the RMB and allow unfettered international capital flows. There’s a ‘ton’ of debate as to whether or not the Chinese banking system can even survive without direct government support. If the RMB were to become the global reserve currency, the Chinese would need to first widely open their economy and secondly, export their financial sector out into the world. That’s not happening in the next 30 years (if it ever happens). The Japanese wanted to 'yenify' the world in the 1980s and 1990s, how'd that work out?

The Euro was created in large part to compete with the USD, but the ECB has spent the last 25 years tripping over its own feet. The Eurozone itself has massive internal structural issues it needs to address before they are close to being able to look outwards. And no, don't even start on crypto.

The USD is the primary currency due to massive global structural reasons that aren't changing in the next several decades. China is the only likely candidate in the near future, but it can't open itself up without 'Japan-ing' itself.

It seems more likely that the Dollar's reserve status would be displaced by a commodity rather than any specific country's currency.

In unrelated news, "Gold has overtaken U.S. Treasuries as the World's Top Reserve Asset"

I don't think the petrodollar going away is worth worrying about, insofar as there is simply no competitor to replace it to our detriment.

And the U.S. is energy independent for all pursuits and purposes, and thus can weather most economic storms in a way few other countries can.

The social chaos that might result if social programs can't be sustained would not be fun, though.

What does it mean for Thiel to move to Argentina? This is the kind of rich international person who travels for much of the year anyway. It’s not the same as someone who works a regular job moving to another country. Maybe he spends 100 days a year there, probably fewer.

A recent acquaintance suggested to me that Argentines are hot and gay. Peter Thiel is rich and can live anywhere. Why not Argentina? That it would suit his personal tastes in some way would be much more "normal" human behavior than any deeper prognostication. Nuclear War? Does AI not accelerate in Argentina? These explanations don't really make much sense, or add much clarity. I think it all amounts to augury or haruspicy. A flock of headlines has been observed flying in a cropcircle formation, should Donald Trump postpone the invasion of Maga Graecia?

Jokes about the right wing German tendency to flee to Argentina aside, I think it's entirely for economic reasons.

California has proposed a wealth tax recently, and I wouldn't be surprised if it went through.

Unless he gives up his US citizenship he's still getting taxed on his income and such. He doesn't gain any more protection from IRS taxes by moving to Argentina vs Texas or Puerto Rico.

Unless he gives up his US citizenship he's still getting taxed on his income and such. He doesn't gain any more protection from IRS taxes by moving to Argentina vs Texas or Puerto Rico.

As another poster pointed out, moving to Argentina might help with state and local taxes in the US. Although if you are leaving a high tax state like California, New York, or New Jersey, from what I understand you have to sell your house and really cut ties. And even then, you can expect an aggressive residency audit.

But I mainly responded to your post that unlike anywhere else in the world, moving to Puerto Rico does have the potential to help a US citizen avoid federal taxes. You have to jump through a lot of hoops and the stars must align, but from what I understand you can bring your tax rate from 37% all the way down to 4%.

You don't have to sell your house, but if you keep it you do have to spend less than ~180 days in the state. I think this is similar in low-tax states but they aren't as aggressive about enforcing it as New York.

You don't have to sell your house, but if you keep it you do have to spend less than ~180 days in the state.

I am pretty sure you are wrong here. From what I understand, there are two ways New Jersey can consider you a resident for purposes of taxes: (1) if you are domiciled in New Jersey; or (2) if you maintain a residence in New Jersey and spend more than 183 days. In theory, a person who spends 7 days a year in New Jersey can be considered a domiciliary if he leaves the state without intending to cut ties.

Avoiding having NJ as your domicile is easy; you just establish one somewhere else. You can do that without selling your house. What bites people is when they're domiciled somewhere else but have both residential property and business reasons to come to NJ (keeping in mind going through Newark Airport is sufficient)

Avoiding having NJ as your domicile is easy; you just establish one somewhere else.

While in theory it's just a matter of establishing a domicile somewhere else, in practice I don't think it's that easy.
Here's an article which claims that for purposes of domicile, a past domiciliary must NOT maintain a permanent home in New Jersey:

https://www.domicile365.com/Articles/New-Jersey-State-Tax-Residency.html

I'm not sure how accurate the article is, but it's important to keep in mind that in high tax jurisdictions like New York, California, and New Jersey, the authorities are very hostile to claims that a person has moved out of the state, particularly if they have gone somewhere like Florida or Texas. If there is an indication that you are trying to move "on paper," it's going to be a challenge to avoid the taxes.

No, it says that IF New Jersey is your domicile, you can avoid being a resident for tax purposes by not maintaining a permanent home in New Jersey, maintaining a permanent home somewhere else, and spending less than 30 days in New Jersey. This would apply mostly to students and military, I think, though possibly some people on temporary job assignments -- e.g. if you take a 1-year assignment in Dubai where you rent a place to live, but intend to return to New Jersey, you might be still domiciled in New Jersey, but not a resident for tax purposes.

Since you only have one domicile at a time, it's easy to satisfy the domicile test by setting up a domicile elsewhere.

More comments

He'll get taxed at a Federal level, but not a state level. The protection he gets by moving isn't from the IRS, but the CDTFA.

My internal model is that it's a threat, or a sign that he doesn't need to remain a US citizen like some mere peasant, bound to the land.

Some Irresponsible Speculation

The The New York Times articles has some less irresponsible speculation and is how I would hedge I had the resources.

Mr. Thiel, who has a history of collecting backup countries as he hedges his bets against the United States, is considering making Argentina another Plan B, according to two people familiar with his thinking. Born in Germany and raised in the United States, he received citizenship in New Zealand in 2011, and applied for a passport in Malta in 2022.

I'm not super optimistic on Milei long term but, if I had the disposable income it's a bet with a lot of payoff.

Why the pessimism on Milei?

The economic distortions and perverse incentives that statism creates - especially those seen in Argentina for decades - take a long time to unwind and will make many people's lives worse in the medium term. Even if Milei manages to stay ahead of entrenched interests, a recession that is bound to occur regardless could derail everything in an election.

The communists will always vote for communists thick or thin, and the wobblers will only vote against communists if things are going especially bad for the communists in charge or if things are going really good for the non-communists in charge. These two groups together make a majority, so you always go back to communism.

I'm not as black pilled as you, but it is why I will probably never be "super optimistic".

The Argentine peso trade (short Peronists, buy when they lose) has been something international investors have been able to set their watch by for a long time. Maybe Milei breaks the country out of that, and he's certainly the kind of guy they need, but he's not exactly a figure who projects long-term stability. The eternal Argentine cycle probably would have restarted already if the Trump administration hadn't bailed him out (and made money on the trade while doing so).

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Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


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