The no-man's-land created by mono-countries
The Borderless Advantage
Note: this is part 4 of a series on How to break the shackles of monocountrism and become free
Here are the 3 articles in the series:
"In theory, everything is well-organized, but in practice, as soon as borders come into play, many procedures stop working properly—or fail altogether.”
- A lawyer specializing in international tax law, in a private conversation as part of the research for this book.
The overwhelming majority of people are mono-country.
As a reminder, a mono-country person is someone who is born in a country, study and graduate in that country, make his career in that country, marry in that country, raise his children in that country, retire in that country and die in that country, and who probably is also only fluent in the language of that country.
This includes accountants, lawyers... and tax inspectors .
This means that they are limited in their ability to analyze and understand the laws and rules of other countries, and how these laws and rules interact with those of their own country.
In theory, this mono-countrism can be compensated for by proper training and procedures, but in reality, it stems mainly from the fact that most people spend the overwhelming majority of their time, from birth to death, in a single country.
This creates a mono-culture and unbalanced focus on the native country that is extremely difficult to change with just procedures.
The only real way to change this is to live for a significant length of time in other countries, which most people don't do and won't do.
This means that certain things, which are theoretically true, are not true in practice, for lack of competent people who can give an informed opinion - including among government officials.
Where the power of one law is limited by another law of another country, or by the absence of a physical presence up to that point commonly accepted, there is indeed a void, a no-man's-land where few people venture, and where guides are scarce.
This can be a bad thing (if you suffer the situation) or a good thing (if you know how to take advantage of it).
For example, if you have an Internet business with many customers outside your country, most accountants will ignore the laws of the countries where your customers are located and focus solely on those of their country .
In theory, this could put you in an illegal situation in some countries where your customers1 are located - but in practice, the risk is infinitesimal , as these countries, , generally have no idea that you exist.
And even if by some miracle these countries learn of your existence :
They have no cheap, effective way of forcing you to follow their laws, because of your lack of physical presence (remember : the basis of any government's power is the monopoly of violence - if you don't comply with their judgments, they'll send someone with a gun to put you in jail. Difficult when you never set foot in a place where the person with a gun has the right to go).
You're probably a small fish compared to the big fish who live in the country in question, and so you present a "cost & complexity/potential benefit" ratio that's unfavorable to them (in other words, they'll probably get more results, and at lower cost, by going after local players, rather than you).
The percentage of civil servants and lawyers with a good grasp of international elements is (very) low compared to that of single-country civil servants and lawyers, which means that "recruiting" people to tackle your case has a high opportunity cost: there is much less talent than cases to tackle.
Again, I'm not encouraging anyone to deliberately break the law, but I just want to describe two realities:
It's impossible to know all the laws of your own country, and it's even less possible to know the laws of all countries.
There are people who deliberately look for loopholes in the system's interstices, particularly numerous in the international space that governs relations between countries , and the Internet now enables many more individuals to find them.
Coming soon
This allows me to make a smooth transition to the next article, on how you can defend yourself against overaching governments by integrating asymmetrical defenses.
Stay tuned ! In the meantime, feel free to follow Disruptive Horizons on X/Twitter & Linkedin, and join the tribe of Intelligent Rebels by subscribing to the newsletter :
And here are the first 3 articles of this series :
Because you and your accountant will be unaware of certain laws that affect you - for example, the obligation to register in certain countries if you reach a certain customer quota.