Shopping around for your country

[volco]

Ayn Rand left her native country which she described roughly as an oppresive wasteland moving from a medieval sick man to the avant-guard of terror; for a new foreign country she SELECTED out of many for being the best.

She then fully integrated and became very patriotic as the United States of America was at that time (and maybe even today) the government that defended individual rights the best; where one could live properly as a human being.

She also made extended criticisms to the state of her adopted homeland, without contending it was still not the best country on Earth.

After the Cold War died out and Globalization expanded; new alternatives of residential nationhood arose, and even the chance not to live in one country.

A real life version of Ragnar Danneskjold would probably fly a flag of convenience.

I am raising the topic of Citizenship and Residence of convenience as a way to by-pass the minuses of specific countries.

Like Flags of Convenience for Maritime Trade, Expats, Travellers and Multi-Citizens are Residents of Convenience.

Many Third World coutries increasingly realize that tourism and "lifestyle" is worth a lot more than cash crops and so they turn their serfdom based economies into service ones. Eventually, and the smaller the countries (Thus the Caribbean and Central America being thee prime example), these begin to compete to offer either the best banking privacy, the best personal privacy, the best security, etc.

Existing governments, inadvertidly face an expanded system of check of balances: the Market. The market for a country.

It could be a similar advantage in halting the oppresive power of government as the appearance of Media was progressively last century.