202 - The Cost of Staying Put | Patrick Hiebert

<p><strong>How much freedom can you actually build without legal autonomy, and what's the real price of staying put? Two men who've answered that question differently, swapping questions in Próspera.</strong></p>

<p>- A different format this week. Timothy and Patrick recorded during the Free Cities Conference in Próspera, and with neither of them having much time, they made it a collaboration with Patrick's own show, The Freedom Lover's Life. Timothy asks first, then Patrick turns it round.</p>

<p>Patrick is CEO and co-founder of Veritas Villages and of its parent company Autris. He's Canadian, left partly because of the tax rate and partly because he could see where the country was going, and has spent the years since building freedom-oriented, off-grid communities across Latin America. Coronado in Panama is now sold out, with the adjoining land optioned and permitting underway. Chiriquí, Playa Pacífica in Nicaragua, and now Atenas in Costa Rica, on a property that National Geographic once called the best climate in the world.</p>

<p>At Atennas, thirty hectares, roughly the size of Casco Viejo in Panama City, laid out as a walkable European settlement rather than a resort. Timothy's question is the obvious one: Patrick has none of Próspera's legal autonomy and is building under the laws of the countries he's in, so how much freedom can you actually create that way? And what happens when a hundred people who agree on the non-aggression principle disagree about a third tennis court?</p>

<p>Then Patrick turns it round and asks the question Timothy gets from listeners constantly. Given everything he says about Britain, why is he still living there? The answer takes in stamp duty, exit taxes, a house that has quietly become a liability, and three children who have no idea any of this conversation is happening. Timothy calls it his definitive answer.</p>

<p>From there it opens out: Bill C-9 in Canada, Lucy Connolly, what Ursula von der Leyen meant by savings being lazy, Bitcoin as insurance rather than investment, why South America is becoming the capitalist half of the hemisphere, and whether the places either of them grew up in still feel like the same places.</p>

<p>WATCH HERE: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK7dfgoFVNs">Video version of this episode</a></p>

<p><strong>Key topics covered</strong></p>

<ul>

<li>Coronado sold out, and the option on the second half of the mountain</li>

<li>Atenas, Costa Rica, and the best climate in the world</li>

<li>