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As the title of this video suggests, and the thumbnail which probably seems out of place, it’s a thumbnail from the film Scarface with Al Pacino and the scene has become sort of memetic, like a meme on Twitter; let me just jump into it, because I initially came up with this while looking at a meme on Twitter. So, somebody named PPG - we will put this on screen, put this up: Thai Lawyers and real estate sales people cashing in on the Dubai exodus. So, what this person seems to be talking about is the situation in Iran and the Middle East which has frankly become something I think that is far more chaotic than anybody would have wanted it to be some 6 or 8 weeks ago, but here we are. Long story short, there is some question about whether or not folks are leaving Dubai and elsewhere in the Middle East to go to other places. I talked about this in the early part, sort of the first week of the conflict, that there might have been folks here in Thailand so assisting them in transiting either through Thailand or getting them back to their homes is probably going to be an issue, or dealing with absorbing them in terms of staying here might prove to be something of a challenge. Again, we are still sort of slogging through that. Frankly, Thai Immigration has been fairly solicitous for lack of a better term, or fairly accommodating toward many of the folks that have had issues associated with travelling through the Middle East or back to the Middle East; we probably won’t look at that.

Putting that aside, there then came a later response and quoting from this person under Chuck Lone @AmericaninBKK, again we’ll put this on screen: “Very few if any of those guys will move here. The reason they were all in Dubai was because of the taxes. No income tax there. And they cannot incorporate here as well without having to do some kind of “Thai ownership manipulation” that can get you in big time trouble here. And unlike Dubai, foreigners can only buy a condo here. then there are all the visa headaches here as well. And they keep changing the rules so the risks are high. All those guys in Dubai were not idiots. They did the research on the taxes, property ownership, taxation and visa issues. So, they will figure out quickly what a headache it is to live and do business here in Thailand. Yeah, nice beaches here and the best society in the world. but let’s face it, these people are focused on one thing, and that’s making money. But with a 35% high income bracket here and all the other headaches...it’s not happening.”

I then went on ahead and put up one more, and I’ll put this up on screen: “All those guys in Dubai were not idiots. They did the research on the taxes, property ownership, taxation and visa issues.” And my response to that was: “And then chose a place exceptionally vulnerable for all of those reasons we have seen the last 2 months. By concentrating solely on taxes etc., they ended up far worse off.” And this is my sort of point with regard to all of this, and I have been trying to put my finger on – I don’t have a problem with digital nomads per se, I don’t have a problem with foreigners who are much more in transit now because they are able to work remotely, use a laptop, computer, whatever; live your life, I don’t care about that. What has been bothering me is something Matt Smith – I have mentioned this multiple times, he is on Doug Casey’s take, he is also throughout the internet, he does interviews himself and things - he is down in Uruguay. Doug Casey is like an old hero of mine. I remember reading International Man and stuff years ago, even before I left America and the era when it was really exotic the notion of like economic citizenship or citizenship by investment but Doug Casey was at the front end of that; he was at the tip of the spear with a lot of that stuff. And Matt Smith is somebody I have watched over the years. I haven’t had any direct interaction with him unlike with Mr. Casey but he has brought up a point many, many times that like digital nomads, there is just, for us sort of older time folks that became expats – in my case I am a true immigrant – they have always had a different paradigm and I am really kind of the last of the prior paradigm. I often joke with people, “I am either the youngest old guy, or the oldest young guy; one of the two.” But that is what I am. I am 44. I am not quite in that zone that are sort of the true old school types most of whom went on retirement visas. I sort of came out here at an odd time and managed to establish myself during sort of an odd moment; it worked, but it sort of was what it was. And again, I have a different paradigm than the whole Nomad thing which first came about in the aftermath of me being out here, shortly after. I think I first heard that term, probably around 2010, ‘11, ‘12, somewhere in there and the first time they tried to roll this stuff out, frankly it didn't catch on very well, because honestly, at least here partly it could have been the circumstances on the ground especially 2010 with all the upheaval we saw here in Thailand, that probably threw some folks off. But I have watched the Nomad space for years and it is sort of one of those things where I'm sort of aligned with it, but sort of in it, not of it; I wouldn't say I am aligned with it. I'm close to it insofar as they are folks that are in similar circumstances that I've been through but they're sort utilizing a different paradigm, a different methodology. And some things to take away from this and this was my whole point in the Tweet, because I finally fleshed out, it's not so much my issue with the Digital Nomad thing, it's just my observation and I think my observation is this. One, I think the era of the Digital Nomad is probably fast coming to an end. And I say that for exactly the reason that that post on Twitter came about, which is the circumstances that have now arisen in the Middle East. Nomads, Digital Nomads and I remember reading years ago about this, I think in The Economist if I am not mistaken, about how Digital Nomadism in what was called at the time sort of Globalism 1.0 which is going back to roughly from about 1995 to call it probably the Great Financial Crisis, right around 10 years after that, but call it 15 years later - 1995 up to 2010 - right around that time. That was like the first iteration of nomads and The Economist talked about it I remember. They talked about how it's kind of a precarious thing. It's predicated on optimal supply chains, optimal energy supply chains and also the ability to gain perfect information and perfect communication with sort of the places that act as the anchors to pay people in currencies that have sort of an oversized, they sort of punch above their weight in jurisdictions that have a perhaps higher standard of living but a lower cost of living. So perfect example of this is sort of Nomadism 1.0 if you will, which I would say was from really '95, sort of the end of the Cold War, the clear Cold War was over, Russia was selling; Dave Callum, another guy I like to watch out there in the ether of the internet has talked about the headwinds or the tailwinds if you will that came along with the 40 years from roughly 1989 to now. Roughly 1980 to 2020 which were - the boomers came into the markets during the '80s, but then the Cold War ended. Russia was selling energy for nothing; China was selling labour for nothing, and a variety of other factors factored into this sort of optimal period of time. That bred Nomadism. All of those data points are what bred it, and then we saw a different iteration come from The Nomad space after roughly about 2010. Well, this was reflective of massive changes that were occurring in currency which started happening when QE was introduced i.e. money printing basically. Look, I remember coming out of Law School in 2006 - at the time we weren’t aware of it - but what would later be called the Housing Crisis and then later became the Great Financial Crisis - those more in the know call it the Lehmann Crisis, whatever, I came out of law school and it was not an optimal time to be trying to find like a domestic “normal” job if you will. It was one of the reasons I ended up abroad, but I didn't ever view myself in that Nomad sense. I thought I was going abroad for a year to teach English, ended up down here in Thailand, but I have always had in my opinion sort of an immigrant mentality. It's one of the reasons - I have travelled the region, but it's not something I do frequently. I mean I put down roots in Thailand; this is my home; this is what I think of where I live. The point I'm trying to make here however is it was the optimality of the energy sector especially, where we had a really like highly efficient supply chain, there was also a highly efficient supply chain regarding goods and services moving around the world and it was in such a way that was very beneficial to certain groups of people, namely folks in the Anglosphere primarily, and Western Europe, so basically America, Western Europe and sort of the remnants of the old British Empire if you will. Between the three currencies, the Dollar, the Pound and the Euro, if you could earn in those currencies, and then spend them here in Thailand, if you could earn money much the same way as say a mid-level Executive in New York City could have earned, but you could do it from Thailand using a laptop or something, that created the environment that allowed this Nomad lifestyle to exist, and as a result, we saw a lot of Nomads; it became a thing. This second iteration has come along; my opinion is to some extent the likes of people like the World Economic Forum etc. seem to be in favour of this Nomadism. Now it seems like there's always this impetus to push people that aren't from a given country into a given country, and it can cause all kinds of disruptions. We see it now in a certain sense over in the West - I'm not saying that nomads are disrupters per se, but let's be honest, they are people that aren't from here, that are in their own sort of economic universe, but yet they are sort of operating in Thailand - that's going to have an effect; good, bad, indifferent, it's going to have an effect. But long story short, and the point I'm trying to make here is not that I'm against nomads, it's that look, I think this trend is something that was an anomaly. I think it has existed for roughly the past 30 years because for the past 30 years it could exist. And by that, I mean again the tail wind Dave Collum talked about in terms of the overall market, in terms of the overall economy, in terms of energy and labour being very, very cheap for a long period of time. On top of that, we had a global supply chain that was working in terms of again energy, goods and services. I don't think that that's safe to say that that's the case now. 

Now again, I'm not Chicken Little; I don't think the sky is falling. Things will sort of transition, things will reorganize. Water does figure out a way to flow downhill. If there's money to be made, people will figure out a way to make it; don't get me wrong about that. But what I'm saying is that the very special set of circumstances that led to the rise of what we now call Nomads, I think that that time has passed and I would not have said that prior to this Iran situation, but I think now especially 6, 8 weeks on now from February 28, coming up on 8 full weeks, coming up on 2 months, I think it's safe to say this, that - now I'm not saying don't use a Nomad-created Visa, that may be the right way to deal with things, but the point is, couple of things. First of all, the circumstances aren't such that Nomadism is going to be optimal in my opinion. Secondly it led to a really weird situation these last 30 years where people from a certain place i.e. the West and I could go into great detail, but I call the currencies that are in the so-called "basket of currencies" of the IMF, these are the quantum currencies: the Dollar, the Pound, the Euro to some extent the Yen, and even the Yuan from China, have all been included in this thing. They can be manipulated and things in different ways than can other currencies and also, they interact with other currencies in different ways. That was optimal for the nomads of the past, because all of that augured in favour of their currencies. That's not necessarily the case right now. Now I'm not saying there's going to be some big crash or anything, but I do think there's going to be a reorganization of the Global Supply Chains. There's going to be a reorganization of trade arrangements between different countries, and it's going to lead to, in my opinion, a kind of an equalization if you will, overtime I'll grant, but equalization or sort of equilibrium being reached with the currencies than in the past used to punch far higher than their weight, I think that that is coming now, where those are going to start looking more like the currencies in terms of purchasing power of the jurisdictions in which they are in. On top of that, this optimal set of circumstances - again Optimal Energy Supply Policy - the so-called unipolar moment for the Americans insofar as there was sort of world peace under this Pax Americana especially in a maritime sense, allowed for places like Dubai, which again, not knocking Dubai, not saying anything about it, never been there, but I've read about it. It was largely created sort of artificially. It was largely created as a result of these highly optimal set of circumstances that have existed for the past 30 or 40 years and it's the reason that folks were, in my opinion, possibly not looking at all the factors they should have when they decided to move to Dubai because all they were looking at was taxes, Visa scenarios, etc., and again it kind of goes along with this notion; there's one of the guys out there in the sort of Nomad space that kind of concentrates on it from that angle, that goes on and on about "go where you're treated best" and I've talked about this for years. That's a bad attitude to have as an expat. My opinion, you cannot look at these countries like comparing different hotels, and what kind of points you are going to get from the concierge service by being in these different countries. These are Nation states. You need to look at these places as places you're going to move and live, not as like some hotel lobby you're going to hang out in; it's just a bad way to look at it in my opinion. And I think it's like a bad for folks that didn't fully appreciate all of the inherent risks that came with living in a jurisdiction like Dubai. Again, I'm not knocking Dubai; Dubai didn't do anything dishonest. They didn't do anything wrong. Frankly you could argue they didn't really just do anything to deserve what has happened in the past few weeks. But leaving that aside, if one would have done an objective analysis rather than through the lens of this kind of nomad thinking, one would have seen that, hey, Dubai might not have been the optimal place to be for a variety different reasons, most notably things associated with supply chain and its inherent precariousness geopolitically, which I will admit I was even blinded to that through normalcy bias up until about eight weeks ago but clear to me, now is the time that thinking in these old paradigms that have I will admit, prevailed for at least 40 years now, it's probably not going to be wise moving forward.

And those that are looking to move abroad, be it Thailand, be it anywhere, it's time to look at factors beyond the purely discrete issues associate with things like taxes and slight hassles on your Visa. What you should be looking at is, is this a country that I can live in? is it relatively safe? does it not sit in a geopolitically precarious position? is it mostly friendly with its neighbours and those other countries of the world that it does business with? Those should be the things to be being looked at. How is its infrastructure, etc. Again, these circumstances of the past have led to a reliance on thinking that frankly although it might be in line with Nomadism, it's not in line with setting yourself up for permanent sort of success and possible prosperity in any jurisdiction, the Kingdom of Thailand or otherwise.