Costa Rica

In Costa Rica, as in many other places, this year is a census year. I intend to do everything possible to avoid being counted.

My experience with the census started in 1970, when my parents received "the long form" (for lack of a better name). I recall my father feeling important because "they" wanted to know all about him. I saw the form and felt creeped out. It asked things like how many bathrooms in the house, how many TVs you owned, etc. I remember thinking that this was none of their business.

As I have noted before Costa Rica is not a Libertarian paradise. Despite that I felt it was pretty good place for those who want a great deal of effective freedom. I am no longer sure about this position.

I recently saw this video interview of Bill Maher by Olbermann where Maher explains why he is criticizing Obama. Basically it is because Obama is not socialist enough. Specifically he criticized Obama's statement that he was not out to install a government health care system. Maher said "... why not, maybe our health care situation in this country would be as good as Costa Rica's or Morocco's" (at about 4:00 into the video).

These days it seems that almost everyone (yes I'm exaggerating) is talking about one type of "collapse" or another. We have Wendy talking about the collapse of the US$, Igor Panarin predicting the break-up of the U.S.A., Kunstler, John Michael Greer and others talking about Peak Oil and Man Made Climate Change. If you read The Daily Reckoning then you have been exposed to the view that the world economy is doomed. We have great choice in collapses. Which will happen? How to deal with them all?

First of all, what constitutes a collapse? I suspect from a personal POV it is going to be similar to the difference between recession (when your neighbor loses his job) and depression (when you lose yours). I think some hard times are coming, but I do not think that there will be a collapse. What follows are several different disaster/collapse scenarios, and how we would deal with them.

From the little I’ve been able to read hastily, it appears you may be offline for a bit ... but once you’re back, I sure would appreciate a quick note—here or an email if you prefer. And if there’s anything I can do to help you, say the word.

(Yes, the snake is worried. It does happen.)

Wendy has long been into frugality and voluntary simplicity, a way of living which is becoming more and more popular as the economy tanks. We see reflected in the blogs. Many people, who do not normally talk about frugality are now doing so. Two examples are Karen de Coster and J. D. Tuccille (Wendy has linked to them as well) I have also seen it in some tech blogs I read. In short, this is becoming a very popular topic.

However, as good as all the advice may be, there is something missing. Planning. It is fine to cut coupons, but we cannot since they are not offered in Costa Rica. It is also fine to turn your thermostat way down, but I do not have a thermostat. In fact, my heating and air conditioning costs are exactly zero, so this is not an area I can save in. Likewise, I can give good advice on cutting back your food costs, but it would involve living in a year-round temperate climate and growing 80% of your own food. Not applicable to many people.

Tonight was the opening night of The Metropolitan Opera. This season they are doing HD Live presentations around the world, one of those being in San Jose, Costa Rica. Ricardo and I went to see.

It was fantastic! When I lived in New York City 20+ years ago I would go to the Met several times a year. It was wonderful being able to see the opening night live, without the massive crowds. Renée Fleming is simply an amazing performer.

Sure, there were a couple of technical hiccups. At the beginning there was no sound, and in the second section the sound and video got out of sync, back in sync, then out of sync again. But that is to be expected with something new.

It was great to be at a live Met performance after all these years, it was one of the few things I still missed from NYC. To be able to do it at a 15 minute drive from my house is, well, just short of mind blowing.

Things like this remind me that as bad as some things are, the technical progress that is going on around us can make our lives richer and better.

As I recently was, I just learned that J. Orlin Grabbe passed away a couple of months ago. I don’t know much about the inside goings-on of the Costa Rica group of which Laissez Faire City Times was part, but Orlin always seemed straightforward with Lobo and me. And his web site was eclectic, even for an Erisian individualist! Orlin will be missed.

A comic strip I really like is Mafalda. A few days ago the local newspaper had one that is so good I have to share. I found a copy of it online here.

The first panel shows Mafalda reading the dictionary.

"DEMOCRACIA (del griego, demos, pueblo, y kratos, autoridad) Gobierno en que el pueblo ejerce la soberanía".

DEMOCRACY (from Greek, demos, people, and kratos, authority) Government in which the people exercise sovereignty.

The rest is self explanatory.

It has been eight months since I last posted. Shortly after disconnecting the TV back in April, I stopped reading the news. It had gotten to a point that I would read about something evil or stupid (or both) that some government official did and start ranting. It was not good for my health.

Instead I have focused on my life. Trying to be a good father, working on a few projects, tending to my property and reading a few books. All in all life at a slow, relaxed pace. Which is wonderful. Not that everything has been perfect, being the parent of a teenager is never easy and retaining patience can be quite a challenge at times. However, we seem to be doing a lot better than most people we know with teenage children and it is certainly much better than it would have been if I was still ranting about the idiots with power who are trying to screw everyone.

Of course the world has not stopped just because I crawled into a shell. The horrors of the US government continue, and continue to get worse. The recent election will change exactly nothing, in fact may make things a lot worse in two or so years when the Democrats take the Presidency and retain their majority in both houses. The current gridlock might (but only might) make things a little less bad for the next two years, but after that things will probably get worse a lot faster.

During the 90s Clinton was unable to violate rights at the rate he wanted to simply because the Republicans refused to co-operate. Not out of any principle, just out of spite. Despite this Clinton managed to put the final nails into the Fourth Amendment and violate a score of other rights. He would have been a lot worse with the Democratic party controlling the Congress.

The new Congress with not cut funding for the war in Iraq, nor will they repeal the Military Commissions Act, the Patriot Act, and many other laws which grossly violate rights. The best we can hope for is that they don't cooperate with Bush because they hate him. But come a Democrat in the White House, watch out. They will rape the people just as fast, if not faster, than the Republicans.

In my view it is way past time to leave the US. Of course this is easy for me to say since I left almost 18 years ago. I realize that it is much more difficult for others, especially those with families and "real" jobs. To my mind the US is moving in the wrong direction at a frightening pace. The risk of having your door kicked in as part of the "war on drugs" is very real. The risk of dieing in such a raid is real as well, so is the risk of being framed. And this is only one aspect. No place is perfect and as I have said many times before we all need to choose which aspects of freedom are more important to us, but at this point I'm sure that for just about everyone who values Liberty, there has to be a place which is better than the US.

In any event it has little to do with me. I cannot control, let alone stop, those power hungry maniacs. What I can do is live my own life, avoiding the state as much as possible. Of course I need to keep my eyes open and pay attention to actions which might affect me, my family and my friends. As I live in Costa Rica the antics of the Costa Rican government are especially important. So far, despite continuing noise on taxes not much has changed here. This is good.

Of course US government actions are important also, especially those which cause the value of the US dollar to drop. As our savings, investments and income are largely in US dollars, this is a serious concern.

The dollar seems to be going straight down the tubes. Jomama has posted a chart at the top of his blog. The Mogambo Guru is ranting stronger than ever. This comes on top of the announcements by the Chinese and the fact that the dollar is now 1.32 to the Euro.

To protect ourselves we are moving into gold and silver. We still hold some stocks, those which we think will appreciate faster than the dollar will decline and some which we think might benefit from the dollar's decline, but mostly, now is a time for hard assets, not speculation.

I hope that what we are doing is enough to ride out the coming storm. In fact I hope that I am wrong about the storm. But I don't think so. It is a great pity that the actions of a few crazed lunatics with power, who reside thousands of kilometers away from me, could potentially screw up my life. In fact it is a pity that they have power, and that people let them have power. But that is the way it is. That is what we all must deal with.

As troubling as the dollar's demise and potential new taxes in Costa Rica might be, we don't let it overwhelm us. This is a small part of our lives. Much bigger is caring for our property and animals and watching our daughters turn into women. The joy of watching them make their own decisions and seeing them deal with the world with confidence far out weighs the frustration of dealing with a teenager.

It is clear that we will not change the world. Living this way will not convince others to throw off the yoke of the state. I do not feel completely comfortable about this, however it is clear that my previous actions and my previous outrages over abuses changed exactly nothing as well. Plus they expended a lot of time, energy and money. Better to use those limited resources in other, more productive, ways.

For me, this way is better. Many would view our lives as extremely boring. Many will consider that I gave up the good fight. To each their own. We find life in the slow lane to be very good.

Yesterday the people of Costa Rica went to the polls to choose a new President, all 57 members of the Asamblea (congress) and members of the 81 city or county councils. Jacqueline has some good posts here, here, and here on the election overall.

The vote for President is too close to call. We will probably have to wait for the official hand count of all the votes to know who will form the next government. As both men have very different policies I will delay an analysis of what the new president will mean for libertarians looking to Costa Rica as a possibly freer destination.

To me, and many other libertarians, the performance of the Movimiento Libertario, the former Libertarian Party, is of great interest. As documented here and here the ML abandoned libertarian principles in favor of a pragmatic approach because, as Otto Guevara, the party's presidential candidate, said “we need to be more moderate and move closer to the Costa Rican people if we are going to gain power.” Does abandoning principle “work”?

To answer this question lets look at how the “radical” hard core ML performed four years ago. In 2002 the ML received 1.7% of the vote for President and 9.34% of the vote for the Asamblea, electing six Diputados (congressmen). To do this they spent a bit more than US$ 200,000 in privately raised funds, explicitly rejecting government funds as immoral.

This time around, they spent roughly US$ 1,900,000 and accepted state funds. For President, Guevara received 8.4% of the vote (86.9% counted). For Diputado, the ML has received 9.08%. It seems that they have elected six, but one has a razor thin margin, which may just disappear when all the votes are counted. So far 83.4% have been processed.

The source for the numbers above is el Tribunal Supremo de Elecciones. The TSE is the government body in charge of elections. The numbers on the web page are provisional. The official numbers will come out in about two weeks, after the hand count. A note on the web page: It can only be viewed in IE. I have tried Firefox and Opera, neither can read it.

Internally, the ML was expecting 20% for both President and the Asamblea. This was widely leaked. On the 5th of January Otto said in an interview that they were going to get 23% or 24% for President and 12 to 19 seats in the Asamblea.

Since changing direction they have gotten many public figures to join the party. Mostly from PUSC, which has self destructed (more on that below), and some from a couple of small moribund parties. The ML had a slogan “cada día somos más” (“every day we are more”). Well, yes, more of the same. More of the same tired old, corrupt politicians of always. And now they are in the ML. Instead of fresh new faces, with bold new ideas, they ended up with the same old, tainted faces, with a bunch of “moderate” (as they put it) proposals that sounded just like everyone else.

Guevara and his group expelled the hard core libertarians, or as he called them “radicals”, from the party, saying that they were responsible for impeding the growth of the party. He said that by becoming “moderate” they would move closer to the Costa Rican people, thereby gaining many more votes.

So, they abandoned ideology, purged the “radicals” from the party, spent 9.5 times what they did before, and came out slightly worse. Maybe significantly worse if the seat that is hanging by a thread is lost.

Add to this that one of the two major parties, in fact the one currently in power, basically imploded. PUSC has been plagued by corruption scandals and the current President is very unpopular. Their Presidential candidate only received 3.4% of the vote. For the Asamblea they only received 7.6%. Yet the ML did not benefit from PUSC's demise. Not a single seat. Can you imagine the Republican Party in the United States self destructing and the LP failing to gain anything from that?

This was a clear abject failure. So much so that last night Guevara did not talk to the press. He only made a 15 minute speech and then left the election night party. Today he is nowhere to be seen. Contrast this with the 13 other Presidential candidates, some who did much worse numerically. All of them are talking to the press, all of them are participating in the analysis of the results. All except Guevara.

What would have happened if the ML had remained hard core? We will never know the answer to this question, but I will offer a possible scenario.

In September of 2004 I saw the results of an internal poll which said that the entire Libertarian message was very popular with 25% of the population. Many positions were supported by the majority of the people. The main problem seemed to be that the ML had not effectively communicated the message. For example 70% of the population was opposed to government funding of political campaigns. Yet only 15% was aware that the ML did not accept state funds. When speakers would talk to small groups of people, communicating a hard core message, they would get enthusiastic responses, including offers of help. The big challenge was figuring out how to package the message into 30 second TV spots and getting the funds to take it to the people.

There were very creative people in the party. This problem was being addressed. If it had been solved, then a hard core ML would have elected 14 or 15 Diputados and been a significant force in the legislature. Possibly being able to advance Freedom a little bit. Sadly, we will never know.

This Sunday, 5 Feb, the people of Costa Rica will choose a new President and Asamblea (Congress). Unfortunately they will not have a libertarian choice. In This post I talk about the transformation of the Movimiento Libertario from a Libertarian party to a run of the mill Liberal (in the European sense) party.

I made some predictions, and so far have been correct. I predicted they would accept state funds, they did. I predicted that many hard working people would leave the party, they did.

The most important prediction I made was with regard to the number of seats the party would win in the Asamblea. I said a maximum of seven seats. This prediction will be put to the test on Sunday.

The more I see and hear the more confident I am that I will be correct here also, or at least not too far off. The ML has been steadily dropping in the polls, with the latest indicating 11.8% of the vote for President, four pretty solid seats in the Asamblea, three "likely" seats, and three "possible" seats. That poll was conducted three weeks ago. If the slide continued, they won't reach those numbers. Additionally, I noticed two more things today. One, an article in the paper talking about the preparations that the various parties are doing for election day. Most are along the lines of "call our people and provide busses to get them to the polls". The ML said that "organization is important, but not critical" and that their people "would ride the opposition busses to the polls and vote for us". This confirms something I had heard before, namely that they do not have much of a volunteer organization and that those who are there are not motivated. Which leads to the second item. While driving through a town today, there were a group of about 15 children, ages 10 to 16 or so handing out ML bumper stickers. They all looked very bored and only made feeble attempts to give the sticker to passing motorists. If this is the most enthusiasm that the ML can generate among the youth, its traditional core group, they are in big trouble.

By Monday we will know if selling out paid off. I intend to post first thing Monday morning. Right after I read the newspapers. Shortly there after I will post my analysis of what happened since the pragmatists, or as they call themselves "moderates" took over the party. Also what the new government is likely to mean for Costa Rica and specifically what it will mean for those who look to CR as a place to escape and possibly live a bit freer.

An article (Spanish) in today's La Nación talks about what the various political parties are promising to do about crime in Costa Rica. The "new" Movimiento Libertario, the supposed moderate Libertarians, are promising to make permanent the anti-drug police presence in neighborhoods and increase the number of jails.

This should end any illusions held by Juan Carlos and others that the party is still Libertarian.

But it is still independent from the USSA, which is worth something.

In this post Sunni refers to an article which talks about a contract received by a law firm to oversee the US government's asset-seizure efforts in Costa Rica. She comments that "It's also a safe bet that the C.R. govthugs are getting a generous slice of the pie too, to ensure continued docility."

Fortunately, that is not the case. I did a little digging. The US gov has contracted BLP-Abogados to represent them in Costa Rican courts for asset-seizure cases. If the US gov prevails, (in other words, convinces a CR court that the property in question should belong to the US gov) then BLP-Abogados will manage the property on behalf of the US gov.

The person I spoke to (a lawyer) says that the only way the US gov can prevail in such cases is if the property in question belongs to a person convicted of something that is also a crime in CR, and a US court has ordered the specific property seized.

It is not good that the USSA is contracting foreign law firms to attempt property seizures in other countries, but thankfully it has nothing to do with the CR government and they have to go through the slow CR legal process to accomplish it.

In other CR news, the Movimiento Libertario is "considering" accepting government funds for its political campaign. I predicted this here. Of course, they are only "considering" it right now. They need to change the party bylaws to be able to do this, but according to the article in La Nación (registration may be required, in Spanish), they plan to hold another assembly in September to do just that.

Finally, last week a friend of mine came from the states, so we went to the beach. For those who are interested, we stayed at Casa Camarona, which I highly recommend. Right on the beach with a truly excellent restaurant along with a competent, friendly and helpful staff. However, my car had a problem, so I had it brought back to San Jose on a flat bed truck (this did not interfere with the vacation). I went with the car. On the way back we ran into one police check point and were stopped by the police twice on the road. The check point is apparently a permanent feature of the main highway. The cops are looking for illegal migrants, drugs, smuggled goods (from Panama), etc. I asked the driver the obvious question, "don't the smugglers just use another route?", he said, "Yes, there are many other routes, but this is easy so the cops hang out here." On being stopped he said it was routine. They stop him, and other independent drivers, to check brake lights, turn signals, hassle drivers about the weight they are carrying, etc. Basically looking for bribes. He just accepted it as normal. No point in getting angry since it wasn't going to change anyway.

Note that the cops have never bothered me, but I do not engage in "public" type activities. If I started a tow-truck business, you can bet that I would suffer the same fate. Costa Rica is good to live quietly, but not a good place if you need to earn a living from the local economy. I know that there are those who have businesses here, and many will disagree with my assessment, but for me, doing business here, at least in any public way, is not worth the hassle. It is a great place to live quietly and inexpensively.

Just yesterday morning, my sweetie and I were discussing tactics and prospects for advancing liberty. His view, as I understand it, is that a voluntaryist community can't happen here -- not in the current social tides, at least: nation-states have claimed dominion over all the land where such an endeavor can focus on that primary goal. I'd counterclaimed that there's reason to be hopeful about educating more individuals successfully, and that achieving that could make enclaves possible in some parts of the world that are more disposed to laissez faire. But after reading two news stories pointed out to me by another friend (who didn't give permission to be credited), I may have to concede that my sweetie's right.

First, Costa Rican Law Firm Gets Half-Million for U.S. Asset Seizure Cases, from August 15. First and last paragraphs:

The U.S. Marshals Service this week cemented a deal to have a Santa Ana, Costa Rica-based law firm oversee its asset-seizure efforts in that nation. BLP-Abogados, located in the Forum Business Park, will get nearly a half-million dollars over the next year to perfom those services. BLP is the acronym for "Business Law Partners." ....

BLP staffers include Georgetwon University Law School graduate Luis Manuel Castro, former Washington, D.C.-based attorney Neftali Garro, Harvard Law School-trained attorney Vivian Liberman, and former justice of the Costa Rican Supreme Court of Justice Hugo Picado.

Costa Rica has long been one of the places held as a good alternative to Amerika, but this development seems to squash that hope. What the fucking fuck are U.S. Marshals doing seizing property in another country -- and at such a rate that they need to buy a law office to oversee their thievery? It's also a safe bet that the C.R. govthugs are getting a generous slice of the pie too, to ensure continued docility.

And as if that weren't bad enough, the next day saw this posted at the same site: Central American Rulers Push for U.S.-supported Militarized Police. The basics:

In the aftermath of CAFTA, the presidents of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua have proposed creating a regional rapid-response police force with military-assault capabilities-- if, that is, the United States government will provide resources for it.

This may be a statement from Central American governments to the United States government: you want us to join you in CAFTA, so give us the money, guns, and military training to control our people.

The irony's thick and layered throughout all this. But it appears clear that, for now at least, the USSA's mission is one of conquest, and no place is safe from its tentacles.

Jorge, do you know anything about this? Got any thoughts in response?