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The Iron Curtain is no more. Currently, most nations do not care if you leave, but that could certainly change.  I have mentioned here and elsewhere that there is every reason to believe that United States government will move to stop expatriation and flight capital as conditions continue to deteriorate.  When it happens, and I am sure that it will, some method for preventing families expatriating will not be far behind. Leaving then will be complicated, especially if they suspect that your motive is to expatriate. What happened in the original Brain Drain in Britain consisted of Britians best and brightest leaving Britian.  The same may happen in America.  Those on welfare are not going to expatriate, creative people capable of observation and of conscience certainly may. Those are not the kind of people any nation can afford to lose.  Already stem cell researchers are leaving American and stem cell research stands the greatest chance of curing desease and extending human life of any science. Expatriation could eventually become very compliated, and then if you do manage to leave with your entire family, it may be impossible to expatriate your capital wealth.  Speculation?  Okay, it's speculation.

Currently in the USA, if you are an American you do not actually need a passport to exit, but in most nations you do need a passport to enter.  While there are exceptions the best policy is to have a passport.  If you are reading this article and you do not have a passport, and if you do not do anything else mentioned in this article, do get yourself a passport to travel.  As soon as is humanly possible. My suspicion is that that will be the area of attack, with legislation written to begin issuance of a short term travel passport for businessmen and tourists, but not a bona fide passport. (They will say that the change is required to protect Americans from terrorism abroad and to prevent terrorists from entering the country or some equally plausible lie.) 
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Of course I may be wrong about this. But I'm willing to bet that I'm right. You can place your own bet by ignoring my warning, or paying attention to it. It's simple to play. A passport costs less than $100 and all you have to do is get one or not get one and wait for either set of consequences. By not preparing a second alternative offshore (safe haven, residence or nest egg,) you leave yourself at the mercy of your current government. If I'm wrong you can have a good laugh later at my expense. God help you if I'm right.

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Currently getting out is easy, but what started as a trickle of people leaving the USA has steadily increased over the past five years and is approaching a critical mass that has already begun to be noticed.

Safe Haven: Offshore Residence As Safe Haven
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Getting out is currently easy, setting yourself up ahead of time was once problematic. Which is why I like the idea of using offshore eCommerce to start a second business offshore. Viewed as a way to put together your own little contingency nest egg it's a good idea, viewed as a way to establish an alternative residence offshore it is an amazingly good idea.  The Way Rogue Nations Keep Track Of You Is Via Your Paper Trail  Establishing a residence offshore in the way outlined includes a lot of excellent features.  Property in some countries is at bargain basement prices, making your purchase a good investment. Having a second place of residence is in my opinion one of the most intelligent moves an intelligent person can make. It's better than life insurance, because life insurance won't buy your way out of a trap.  Moving money in an offshore IBC into the purchase of a residence has a big added attraction; which is that you can purchase the property in the name of your IBC. This means that you did not take your money as personal profit, it remains as part of the company's tax free estate, beyond the scrutiny and reach of Colonel Quadafi.  Moving offshore in this fashion means that there will be no paper trail back to Colonel Quadafi, in case you wish to sever your ties with the regime. Alternatively, the fact that there is no paper trail back to the Colonel means that you can remain in Libya if things improve there.  Purchasing a house in many offshore regions is often done in the name of an IBC in any regard, as it certainly is in Panama. See the article, Offshore Real Estate As Offshore Survival Retreat - on setting up an offshore residence as safe haven. In places like Belize and Panama it is entirely possible to live off of the land and sea, so in really terrible times it would impossible to starve. I am not suggesting that things could come to that, but it is good to know that there are places where you can live off the fat of the land where real estate can be had for under $5,000 an acre.

You can purchase a house, a car, a boat, a Hummer, an airplane, your furniture, your wardrobe or anything else you desire, all in the name of your IBC, without ever taking any of it as personal income. i.e. It all belongs to your company, for company use.

Owning your car in the name of your IBC also has the added advantage of lowering your liability. Many people who live offshore have a separate company that owns their vehicles, providing an interface that lowers their liability to zero, as the assets of their main company are separated from that of anything that entails liability. (Just like our buddies at Toyota.) Owning your house in the name of your IBC renders your house all but impossible to confiscate. Especially if your IBC is set up correctly. (We have an article about setting up your IBC correctly in issue of the Quarterly.)

Advantages Of Offshore eCommerce

Other articles in this issue discuss the wide range of advantages of engaging in offshore eCommerce. Briefly, once money is rolling into your merchant account you have a number of options. 1.] The money can be invested into any market in the world via an offshore brokerage account. This can be done online offshore, or via your own personal offshore broker. 2.] The money can buy real estate, be held in gold, moved from your account in Panama to any bank account in the world. (Note: It is not recommended that you repatriate the money to your current place of residence, unless you live in a tax haven, once you remove your money from your corporate bank account and move it into a personal account it is considered income, depending of course on which country you are a citizen of.) 3.] The money can be withdrawn as cash via a debit card from most ATM machines worldwide if your own company allows you an expense account. We will discuss the secure movement of money in a separate article.

Selling A Product From Offshore - Finding A Product To Sell
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The number of things you can sell from offshore more or less corresponds to the number of  commodities in the world. In fact you can sell more products from offshore than you can from inside nations with restrictive legislation.  A good example might be life-extension drugs and smart drugs.  Neither can be sold in the USA, but they can be legally purchased online and delivered to USA from an online dealer in pharmaceutical products who sells them from outside of the USA. 

The reason?  The FDA does not view ignorance nor aging as a disease, hence they cannot be approved by the FDA.  But the FDA will allow their purchase if they have passed the approval of an overseas equivalent of the FDA, which they have.  These drugs have been thoroughly tested in Europe, many have a thirty year history of scientific testing affirming their safety and effectiveness. 

I mention this only as an example, and I could give you dozens of examples. In a scenario using smart drugs as a product line, one would set up a Panamanian IBC, an offshore billing system or merchant account, a website and a offshore fulfillment service. Something like this could be made to run automatically, once it was up and running. If it were done correctly it could yield upwards of $15,000+ a month in profit. (I am not pretending to recommend this, I am using it only as an example.  There are easier businesses to set up.)

In many nations, if not most nations, there are handicrafts, clothing, unique local products and foodstuffs, that can be purchased at local prices and resold over the internet. This works especially well from Latin America, including both Mexico, Central and South America.  It will also work very well in Asia.  It works less well in Western Europe, slightly better in the Balkans with wines and foodstuffs.  The Pacific and the Caribbean Islands may be a source of handicrafts, music, art. Africa would be a source of hadicrafts.  In fact most regions of the world could be utilized if approached correctly and some market research is done.

Every time I travel I make it a point to look for products to be sold online, something we are going to start doing this year from EscapeArtist.com.  Unique products from around the world. We intend to set up a system for those who web host with us and who wish to sell international products to receive advertising and promotion via our upcoming international marketplace.  I am now starting to go to international trade shows; all nations have them, they are used to put the products of that nation before international buyers. I have not met any internet entrepreneurs at these trade shows....  it is obvious that the potential of international products is not being recognized.  The Internet has already bogged down into the same old thing syndrome, it's time for a wake up call.

There are billions of commodities in the world. Just about any product can be sold from offshore cheaper than they can in other nations because one can work from a tax free Free Trade Zone, and one does not have to pay taxes to Panama on products sold from Panama via the internet. One can buy products in China, Bulgaria, Hungary, or anywhere on the planet and ship them to a Free Trade Zone duty free for redistribution to your customers when they place their order. One does even not have to be at the Free Trade Zone to do the distribution. Contracting with a shipping service from most Free Trade Zones is relatively easy. That said, the setting up a Fulfillment Service and/or Call Center in Panama is something that is sorely needed. All of the infrastructure is in place and the laws and incentives are favorable.  I would certainly make use of such a service and if I had the time, I'd set one up myself. It is the sort of service that EscapeArtist.com would enjoy having as a strategic partner. We will discuss services on the next page of this article. 

If one sells products manufactured by a company in another nation, such as Gino, (read about Gino below,) one can also have the manufacture drop-ship the product. In this scenario, you would sell the product from your offshore website, the money would go into your offshore merchant account. You would keep the profit, send the wholesale price to the manufacturer who would then ship the article directly from the factory in your behalf. This entire process can be set up seamlessly online, so that it all happens automatically when the order is placed.  Talk about a money machine, this would turn your computer into a money machine that would be making you money even while you are asleep. 

Finding Unusual Products From Around The World

My friend Gino is a genius at finding products. He travels the world going to product conventions and fairs. In China he found several products, and ended up designing a product and having it manufactured in China. It's a winner.  Most of what he sells he sells online.  He now sells products ranging from electric scooters to human skeletons.  When I first met Gino, his computer expertise was so poor that he didn't even know how to send email. His knowledge of computers and the internet was zero. He had a successful boat rental business and he was pretty content.  When someone offered him a good price for his boat rental business he found himself free to pursue other interests. He turned his attention to the internet and decided to find some products to sell online. His ability to find and/or manufacture unique products is amazing. Reading what he has to say, will loosen the log jams in our own thinking when it comes to the art of product selection.  I asked Gino to describe some of his products. 
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Electric scooter sales are growing exponentially. I feel they are a fad just starting. Just like roller blading and skateboarding went crazy for awhile. Electric scooters are next. The demand in Japan has been astonishing. They are X tremely quiet and clean not to mention a cool $300 toy. (Same price as a nice bike) Retired people are the biggest market and we also sell many to police officers for some reason. Children are also a big client.  Like all products that catch my eye I researched the amount of hits and evaluated the future competitors. Next was a feasibility study.  Can we wholesale these and keep the retailer making over 35 percent on every sale and still put money in my pocket?  The answer was yes, and off I went. We then designed our scooter and went to china and found a factory to manufacture them for us. We have been selling scooters for almost two years and the hardest part has been keeping inventory. We will have several more scooters that we've designed and they are very popular. (See image on right) Electric Scooters  Retail Website: www.electric-scooters-motorized-bicycles.com -  Electric Scooters Wholesale Website - www.x-tremescooters.com -    Human Skeletons -  PVC skeletons. I bought them from China. My biggest clients were teachers. I sold grade 2 skeletons so it was not higher education displays. The best sellers were the 36 inch and the 5 foot 6 inch, bonecolour, numbered, flexible spine, with removable stands. This I used as an eBay product. I go to the trade shows and skeletons caught my eye. I buy quantity and just do the assembly line shipping and selling.  I haven't done this in awhile but it was a winner. About 300 percent return in 3 months.

X-Treme Electric Scooters X-Treme Electric Scooters Manufactures & Wholesale Distributors currently offers several models of electric scooters with plans to launch a scooter later this year capable of 65 MPH with a maximum distance of 45 Miles per charge. http://www.x-tremescooters.com

Cable Converters - www.api-cable-descramblers.com  A gray area. The most lucrative . We sell raw cable converters to people. These are Universal units that work on 96 Percent of cable systems. I suspect that  some purchasers have a 12 dollar board installed to descramble all channels. We do not sell descrambler boards but they can be installed in our boxes in less than 1 min. 

Those are just a few of the products that Gino has. Gino shared some tips with me in how he finds these products to begin with. Gino says that it is best to find products from companies where the manufacturer is not a good advertiser. Look for products overseas from less developed nations. Advertising is far behind in many nations and most companies in such nations don't have their own website. Those that do have websites that usually are handicapped by slow servers, poor advertising techniques, terrible websites and low search engine rankings because of language difficulties. The result is that potential customers never get to see their products.  Someone with English language skills who has, or can develop a basic understanding of advertising techniques, can take a good product that is being poorly promoted and make excellent money by promoting it correctly.  The internet is the perfect modality for this process, which will allow anyone with native intelligence to build an offshore, online business of their own. 

There are hundreds of thousands of good original products out there that no one is trying to sell.  There is a huge market for them, but they simply are not being advertised online. Creating a website is now within anyone's range of expertise. Placing such products on our offshore servers and using offshore eCommerce allows everyone the opportunity to make a tax-free, duty free income from offshore. (In effect, doubling the income one could make in a high-tax jurisdiction like Libya.) 

And of course there is also X-Rated & risqué products & services - See footnote below.

Go To The Next Page - Making Money Offering Services Offshore and Putting It All Together -
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Footnote: X-Rated & Risqué Products & Services . Yes, there are also the X-Rated and the risqué products and services.  While I'm not big on them and I won't recommend them, it is impossible to deny that they are money makers. I think that there enough good products in the world that one should not have to resort to risqué products, but I would be remiss if didn't give mention to them,  In most cases and within reason, x-rated & risqueé products can and are marketed from offshore.