Factually! with Adam Conover - How the Wealthy Hack the World with Atossa Araxia Abrahamian

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

We all know the ultra-wealthy look for ways to dodge paying taxes, but when you have enough money, this game goes global. From Swiss bank accounts to international business consultants, there’s an entire network dedicated to helping the rich hide their money and avoid paying their fair share. This week, Adam sits down with journalist and author Atossa Araxia Abrahamian to discuss her book, The Hidden Globe: How Wealth Hacks the World, and uncover the shady tricks the wealthy are using on a global scale. Find Atossa's book at factuallypod.com/booksSUPPORT THE SHOW ON PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/adamconoverSEE ADAM ON TOUR: https://www.adamconover.net/tourdates/SUBSCRIBE to and RATE Factually! on:» Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/factually-with-adam-conover/id1463460577» Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0fK8WJw4ffMc2NWydBlDyJAbout Headgum: Headgum is an LA & NY-based podcast network creating premium podcasts with the funniest, most engaging voices in comedy to achieve one goal: Making our audience and ourselves laugh. Listen to our shows at https://www.headgum.com.» SUBSCRIBE to Headgum: https://www.youtube.com/c/HeadGum?sub_confirmation=1» FOLLOW us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/headgum» FOLLOW us on Instagram: https://instagram.com/headgum/» FOLLOW us on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@headgum» Advertise on Factually! via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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Hello and welcome to Factually. I'm Adam Conover. Thank you so much for joining me on the show again. I'm Adam Conover. I'm a music critic. I'm a music critic. I'm a music critic. I'm a music critic.

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You know, the wealthy avoid taxes on a massive scale. Everybody knows it. It's not just an American problem, it's also a global one. The rich avoid income taxes to the tune of $200 billion every year. And this burden, like pretty much all burdens, falls most heavily on those in less developed countries. According to Oxfam, countries in Africa could afford enough teachers to send every single child to school if it weren't for the ultra wealthy

of those countries avoiding taxes. But just where does all this money go? I mean, you as an average person have to pay your taxes because you live in a country and you can't go anywhere else. But if you have enough cash, well, you can go international and become a citizen of nowhere or anywhere along with all your money. It's basically an international VIP room for the wealthy. There's a global network of business consultants and lawyers operating in polities designed explicitly to skirt the regular rules of nationhood and citizenship in the name of helping the rich.

There's offshoring, tax havens, and secretive Swiss banks. But just how does this system fit together? Where does it come from? And who's responsible for it? Well, today on the show, we have an incredible guest to take you through all of that. But before we get into it, I just want to remind you that you can support this show on Patreon. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of this show ad free. We have a lot of other great community features as well.

Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover to sign up and chip in. And just a reminder, if you like stand-up comedy, I have a new stand-up special out on Dropout. Go to dropout.tv and use the code ADAM33 to get 33% off a year subscription and watch my new stand-up special unmedicated. If you wanna come see me do stand-up comedy on the road, I have a brand new hour. Almost nobody has seen it before.

And coming soon, I am taking it to Portland, Seattle, Denver, Austin, Batavia, Illinois, San Francisco, Toronto, Chicago, Boston, and Providence, Rhode Island. Head to AdamConover.net for tickets and tour dates. I would love to see you there and give you a hug at the meet and greet after the show. And now let's get to this week's episode. You know, there's a whole system out there that helps the ultra wealthy protect their ill-gotten gains. It operates at the edges of the law and the fringes of sovereignty.

And our guest today has written a fascinating book on where it comes from and how it really works. Ahtusa Araxia Abrahamian is a journalist and the author of the incredibly well-reviewed new book, The Hidden Globe, How Wealth Hacks the World. Please welcome Ahtusa Araxia Abrahamian. Ahtusa, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Adam, thank you for having me.

Okay, so let's say I'm some kind of corrupt oligarch from some country in the world. I got hundreds of millions of dollars I've siphoned from like a state-owned natural gas company. I got a wife with luxury tastes. I got a daughter who's into rhythmic gymnastics. Maybe she wants to compete in the Olympics. The coaches say she's very talented.

Why would I want to park my money and my family in Geneva specifically, your hometown? Well, Geneva's a great place if you have a lot of money. It's also a great place if you are or an oligarch who is not Swiss. The country is very accommodating of these types of people. They will probably give you a pretty good tax agreement, which means that you're not paying a rate

so much as paying an agreed upon flat fee. There are excellent schools. You can send your daughter to a place like La Rose Institute, which is in the mountains, but in the summer has a summer campus where she can ride horses. So there's lots of amenities for the fam. And on top of that, you're just gonna be surrounded

by lawyers and bankers and accountants and consultants and all kinds of people who will make sure that you're taken care of and your money is taken care of too, in the most anonymous way possible. This sounds like a paradise for the rich that's been set up there. Yeah, I mean a paradise, it's a haven. It's a haven for people and things and money.

And so what is Geneva getting out of this arrangement if people are not paying, if they're negotiating some kind of low tax rate on a one-to-one basis is this being negotiated? What does Geneva get out of it? Well, Geneva and more broadly the Swiss cantons and Switzerland as a nation is getting a lot out of it because when people move to a place, they spend a lot of money and they hire the lawyers and bankers and doctors and accountants that are working for them.

They pay for the tuition. They might give money to charities. So, you know, the wealth, it does get spread around somewhat, nowhere near as much as it needs to be, and definitely not in a systematic way, but the money is there, it's parked there, and that has been the business model of Switzerland for a very long time.

So they've really perfected it. It sounds a little bit like when a city or state says they want to lure businesses in here in the U.S. and they had promised low tax rates and lots of accommodations to try to get some company to just, you know, throw a lot of money around and generally improve the area. Obviously the company is getting the better benefit, but you know, I don't know, a factory is built,

people get jobs or whatever. Sounds like the equivalent of that, but for people, like, hey, let's just attract rich people and then we'll have a rich country. That's correct. And Switzerland is rich for other reasons. They do invest in things like scientific research and they have great universities. So I don't want to, you know, completely discredit Switzerland's initiatives in other areas. But the other thing is that when there's a number of rich people who come, the place starts to develop a reputation for being good for rich people.

And so more people come. There was just an article in the Times about Pavel Durov's estranged ex-wife. And I clicked on it and then I was like, wait a minute, of course she lives in Geneva. Like, this is just where these people go. Wait, who's Pavel Durov? I actually don't know.

The Telegram founder who has been in some legal trouble. Of course, the founder of Telegram, very wealthy guy, is in a lot of legal trouble for a lot of very good reasons. His wife is now just what, lying low in Geneva? Not lying low, she's lying high. But she is in Geneva. Got it. Um, and so what is bad about this? I mean, if we're going to concentrate all the wealthy assholes in one place and they can

all, you know, drink expensive wine and go riding on horseback together, um, that, you know, maybe keep them out of the rest of our hair. What's bad about this for the rest of the world? Well, first and foremost, if you're kind of taking all of the wealth out of the places it came from and concentrating it in a tiny already rich place, again, there isn't very much redistribution going on.

It hampers the ability of other states to collect tax. It certainly takes a certain amount of talent away. I don't want to get into the whole brain drain conversation. Like that is a much bigger problem and it's definitely not only billionaires who have brains. But- In fact, most billionaires are pretty stupid in my experience.

They have a lot of smart people around them helping them do things like move to Geneva. Right. But you know, I think that if you look at it in a macro scale, not just people moving, but money moving out of places where it is produced or came from to places where it's being hidden and hidden here is the operative term, right? It's not accountable to anybody.

It's not being taxed. It's not being redistributed. That's the problem. Right. The famous Swiss bank account. I've heard that phrase my entire life as being something that will hide your money. You said that this is a business model that Switzerland has developed for a long time. What's the origins of that and how did they do it? And why aren't other countries pissed that,

you know, all of their tax revenue is fleeing to this one little country in Europe? So, a small correction, it's not the only one that does this. There are many Switzerland's around the world and to their credit, Swiss bank secrecy has, it's not over, but it's been neutered. So, Switzerland is by far not the worst offender anymore, but I do think they were maybe the first offender here. If we go way back to the Middle Ages, Switzerland

had a really interesting way of raising money when it had nothing. It was very poor. It trained mercenaries to go fight abroad or warring monarchs next to us, so the French, for example. And so if this doesn't sound like anything to do with taxes, think of it in this way. Switzerland didn't have a lot of natural resources. So it said, okay, we're gonna export or we're gonna create a kind of out of our state capacity, out of our capacity as a nation or as a, you know, out of our ability to create an army, we're just gonna make that and send it out

for somebody else to use. We're gonna like sell our sovereign army to other countries. We're gonna rent it out. Yeah, something like that. And so if there is an out there is a similarity here with the tax laws, let's create a law that other governments, other people, even our people can then take advantage of. So that's the that's the line I'm drawing. It's not a straight line. It's a squiggly line, but you can see the spirit of the thing. You can see kind of the MO, right? And, you know, Switzerland was very

successful in this regard. But the tax stuff started in the early 20th century, not because it was lowering taxes, but because other countries were imposing them and were more successfully collecting tax. And so Switzerland thought, well, let's just, let's not do that. Like, let's give them an exit. Let's give them an option. And after Switzerland started to provide a haven for tax money, other countries started to follow suit.

So Luxembourg is an example of that as well. Got it. This seems connected also to, and again, I'm sort of naive about a lot of European history. It's not my forte or not a specialty of mine at any rate, but I also know along with Swiss bank account, I also know there's the famous phrase of Swiss neutrality. Those things seem a little bit linked to me,

that like, it helps if you want to be neutral to be the safe space for all the rich people, because no one wants to invade that, they'd piss off all of their wealthy citizens. Absolutely. Swiss neutrality has been incredibly convenient for Switzerland. It means they don't have to get involved.

It means that they can say, well, we're not gonna intervene one way or another. And so all are welcome if they're rich enough. This was also really useful during wars because Switzerland, while it does have a military, and in fact there is compulsory military service, I don't think that they could necessarily, you know, get involved in a world war and come out doing too well. So they were also able to avoid getting invaded during the World Wars. And that was really obviously good for them as well.

So again, why do other countries, I mean this is a trivial way to put it, but why do they not get pissed about this? That there's this one country that is allowing all of these tax dollars to flee and end up in the coffers of another nation. Well, really broadly, other countries are doing it. Everyone's kind of doing it, and everyone kind of wants in on it. So just to take Europe,

let me just give you a laundry list of other countries that are doing things along the same lines. There's Switzerland, there's Liechtenstein, there's Luxembourg, there's Malta, there's Cyprus. These tend to be smaller countries with maybe a little less going for them from the start. Maybe not a lot of people, maybe not a lot of fertile ground

to have agricultural exports. I mean, Liechtenstein is the size of a city, right? It's one of the smallest countries on earth. Yeah, Liechtenstein is really a blip. It's really a blip and they, in fact, they use the Swiss franc. So, but you get the picture, right? Like small countries don't really have a lot of resources.

They've got to stick around somehow. And so this is the way that they do it. This reminds me of Delaware, right? Like Delaware has made a business in the United States of attracting large corporations to be headquartered in Delaware, because, I mean, why else would anyone be in Delaware? Like, it's a small state, it has not that,

I mean, it's a fine state, right? But it has no particular natural resource, or it's not like Hollywood is in Delaware, it's not like auto manufacturing's in Delaware, so they sort of make themselves attractive to outside comers because of their sort of smallness and otherwise insignificance. Yeah, and their court system actually,

the Chancery Court of Delaware is considered incredibly reliable for businesses. And it has some favorable, I think bankruptcy laws and other types of stipulations. And so it is a place that countries like to be headquartered in companies, sorry, like to be headquartered in, because it's favorable to them from a legal perspective. And so, yeah, it's very much in keeping with this kind of arbitrage business model

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for AI training purposes, which is huge. So get started with Notion for free and unlock their new features for only $10 a month using my special link in the show description. Well, look, your book is called The Hidden Globe, How Wealth Hacks the World. That's the subtitle. And I have to say, I'm a fan of subtitles

on non-fiction books. I think the subtitle is better than the title usually. Yours is how wealth hacks the world. I love that. Tell me how this sort of process hacks the world. What powers does this give the wealthy? So let's take a step back. But the idea is we have this world

that we can see on a map, and it's divided into 192 nation states. And most of us will go through life thinking, well it's divided into 192 nation states. And most of us will go through life thinking, well, that is the geography of our world, that is the political geography of the place, the planet where we live. And we won't really think too much further than that

because that's the story that we're always taught. Yeah. But if you zoom out and you look at everything that's above and beneath and between nations, you wind up with a much more complex picture of the types of country or entities that exist and that we live in. So, to use one example, within a country you can have a cornered off zone called a special economic zone that has its own sets of laws, some of which are the same as the

country's, but others are not. So for tax purposes or imports or exports and customs, this zone will have a different set of laws than the country. You will have a warehouse, just a warehouse that has these same exemptions. You can have even oceans, if we're talking about the places between nations, the law of the sea is not the same as the law of where you live in the US or where someone might live in Jamaica. It's another regime. And so we have so many more jurisdictions than we have countries. And I think that many of these are defined or kind of determined less, I mean, definitely not by democratic input

or any kind of lofty ideas, but by commercial incentives, by wealth. This reminds me of, this is not a perfect comparison, but it's just front of mind because it just happened in California. A bill was just passed, signed by the governor in California, uh, that changed how late you can serve an alcoholic drink, but only in Steve Balmer's new stadium in Inglewood for the Los Angeles Clippers bar owners around California.

Enormous state would love to sell drinks after 2 a.m. The only person who can do it is Steve Balmer. You know who else is doing this exact same thing? Yeah, who? Saudi Arabia. Tell me why. Saudi Arabia is a very religious country where you cannot buy alcohol, except. They are building a whole zone, a whole development

and along the Red Sea called Neom, and they've renamed it the line and then go back to Neom. Anyway, it's a brand new city and it's gonna have a different set of rules and you're gonna be able to buy booze. Wow. And that's because it's supposed to be a playground for the wealthy.

It's got some kind of playground for someone, I'm clear. I'm, I kind of think it's not gonna pan out, but don't take my word for it. Well, you don't build an entire city with different rules for poor people. That's not, you don't expect folks who are, you know, making minimum wage to go to a city like that. Well, you need them to build it, actually.

Sure, absolutely. But maybe, are they gonna be the ones buying the booze? The point is that rich people, or the extremely wealthy, are able to get their own rules passed. What are some of the most egregious examples of these sort of separate jurisdictions, as you call it? The most egregious examples, well, so I'd mention a warehouse with its own set of rules.

One of them, there are many, they're called freeports. And in Geneva, there's a freeport that is, you know, like maybe a city block or two. And apparently there's just billions of dollars of art and wine and cars and gold and like, like Alibaba's cave. Wow. And no one can really say what's in there, what's not in there.

And you might think, okay, it's a storage unit for rich people, it is. But then what are we being deprived of if like some of the greatest artworks in the world aren't being exposed that we can't see? Like what are we losing from all of this wealth that's maybe hiding from the tax man? There are consequences, you know?

Right, and whenever you hear about something like this, at first, there is a little bit of fun to hear, oh my God, there's a warehouse that has all this hidden, expensive art in it, that the wealthy store, oh wow, how cool. And then you realize, wait, what are the rest of us missing out on? Not just the art, but the taxes generated

from those assets, et cetera. There must be some huge financial gain to keeping it sequestered away like that. Yeah, but I do think the art piece, like that offended me a little bit more because what is the point of art if like no one can see it? Yeah. Well, I mean, they could put it into a museum,

although, you know, at least here in Los Angeles, most of the museums we have are literally named after the billionaires who founded them. So you know, like the Broad or the Getty, you feel like you're walking around a billionaire's private house that they let you into for the day. But at least you can go.

At least you can attend and see a Roman statue or two rather than it being held as an asset in a mysterious place. It sounds like what you're describing is, we're all familiar with the idea of first class or VIP. Again, there's an excitement when you hear about it. If you've ever had the experience of getting to go into a VIP area when you didn't expect to, it's very fun. Oh my God, the drinks are free, whatever.

Very appealing. Maybe I'd write a hip hop song about it. But what you're describing is sort of a VIP of the world, like a VIP area, four nations that you can get into. Does that sound right? Yeah, you can definitely think of it in that way. And look, we all know that the 0.1%, they're not like you and me,

they navigate a completely different universe. They just live very differently. But it turns out that even the laws and even the places in the world are designed for them. Mm, keep elaborate on that, please. Okay, so beyond being able to stash your things in a numbered account, sorry, being able to stash your expensive things in a warehouse or have your money behind a numbered account, sorry, being of the stash, your expensive things in a warehouse,

or have your money behind a numbered account. You know, you might have, say you have a yacht, right? And say you have a yacht and you're from France. Your yacht doesn't have to have the French flag. You can go buy a flag for your yacht from any number of countries that will not intervene at all in your affairs. So just to back up a little bit, when we're talking about what happens on vessels on the high seas, the jurisdiction of the vessel is that of the flag. And there's a whole market for buying flags that are known as flags of convenience. Flags of convenience are flags that the vessel and the owner or the company that owns it have really no meaningful connection

to beyond their being willing to buy the flag. And it's usually by tonnage. And there's a whole formula that goes into how much it costs. But much like these small European countries who decided, oh, well, we're just going to have better taxes to make a little money off of that, you have landlocked countries that are like, well, we're a country, we're allowed to have a flag. We can sell it to people who just want us to be hands off on the high seas. And whether we're talking about a billionaire's yacht

or we're talking about a massive, a massive container ship or a cruise ship or a fishing vessel. So this is another way that owners of these vessels can essentially achieve impunity or some degree of impunity by purchasing these flags. Got it. So I'm a billionaire, I have a yacht, I wanna do some really dirty business on my yacht

that's not allowed under US maritime law. But hey, guess what, my boat's actually from Kazakhstan. Or whatever, I just pay off whatever that country is, no shade to Kazakhstan, unless you know of them as being one of these countries. You can shade to Kazakhstan, it's cool. Okay, so Kazakhstan says I give them however much money and they give me a flag and I fly, and then I'm literally operating

under a different set of laws than I would be otherwise. You're under Kazakh jurisdiction. So this talk of yachts and billionaires and stuff, that's one thing, right? Again, there's only so many of them and yes, their carbon footprint is much larger than ours and yes, they're like, they can get up to some shenanigans. But what I talked about in the book and what actually I think is really important here is also that these flags can allow ship owners to get around some really, really much more consequential regulations around pollution and ship breaking and also overfishing and labor for sure. But something I talk about in the book is that basically the only way around regulation, the regulation of breaking down an old vessel, if you're from Europe, is by

going through a bunch of shell companies, buying a flag of Halau or Comoros or Cameroon, and then having your dying ship, your decrepit ship that needs to be broken down, instead of sending it to an accredited shipyard that's gonna do this in a way that's like environmentally friendly, you're just gonna sail this ship on its last journey with one of these flags to a ship breaking yard in Pakistan, for example, where it can be done at a fraction of the cost with virtually no environmental standards.

So yeah. So this is, yeah, I mean, I love to talk shit on billionaires, but what we're really talking about is like large companies using this as a way to get around like important regulations around labor, fishing. I mean, that would be a huge one. So you could like just fish differently

if you fly the flag of a different country. But you can probably get away with more because the country isn't gonna come and get in your business in the same way that maybe the US or France or any number of other countries would. And all of this is legal under international maritime law. Yeah, it's legal.

I mean, countries can, they have sovereign powers, right? They can basically pass the laws that they want. And, um, that's their prerogative. Now other countries can. Fight back. They can have sanctions. They can retaliate politically. There are ways to keep that in check.

Um, but it's like whack-a-mole, you know, one flag. Closes up shop. There's going to be another one that's going to replace it. Yeah. And what you're talking about all these areas, uh, you know, one flag closes up shop, there's gonna be another one that's gonna replace it. Yeah, and what you're talking about, all these areas, the trading places like Geneva, et cetera, maritime law, these are all places where countries bump up against each other, where their laws interact.

And it seems like wherever that seam is, that's a really good place for money to work its way in and like blow open a hole between the laws of two countries because while the US or whatever can pass whatever laws it wants, but while they do have to interact with these other countries when talking, maritime law is like a whole international

like order of law, right? That has been negotiated over centuries and is so detailed that I wouldn't even begin to know where to start learning about it. But I can imagine how if you are a lawyer with a lot of money, that's a really good place to like put your crowbar in and start jimmying away to make a safe space for your wealthy clients.

Right, and in a way though, I mean, the oceans, that's old news. Now people are talking about space. Ah, oh, that's old news. Now people are talking about space. Ah, oh, oh is that why the wealthy are talking about space? Because it's a new place where they can do whatever they want. Listen, I think of space as like the ultimate offshore location.

Of course, well of course it is. Oh my God, tell me more. You gotta think like an accountant. Holy shit. So the story with space is that it's supposed to under international agreements from the UN from like the 60s, the nations of the world agreed that no country would claim any part of space as part as their own, right? So there might be a flag, but it's not US territory. Yeah, or not Chinese territory. It's not Russian territory. Like you can't just be like, that's ours. Whether it's the moon or an asteroid or what have you. Right.

However, there's always a there's always a however. Yeah. The countries of the world did not precisely agree on what happens to the things you find in space that might be worth money. And so, if you were to go to space, if you were an American who were to go to space and mine an asteroid and find a pot of gold at the bottom of it, what is the status of that gold? Like, does it belong to you? Because remember, ownership is something that needs to be recognized by a nation or a government

or some kind of regime, otherwise, it's kind of meaningless, right? And then its value, like can it be traded? Can you exchange money for it? So in the beginning, I mean, initially, outer space resources, it was just, this is like sci-fi, like what are you smoking? But as time passed, it became clear that in fact, the technology is evolving to the point

where I think there will be asteroid mining possibly in our lifetime. And it might even be lucrative, like the economics might even shake out such that if you go to an asteroid and you mine it and you bring it back, it'll actually be worth more than the rocket launch and all of the payload and everything that it costs to get up there. So this leaves a whole, right, of jurisdiction and of property rights.

And surprise, surprise, you have countries on earth that are coming in in the past 10, 15 years saying, well, we're going to recognize that and we're going to use our laws on Earth to recognize that gold out there, even though we can't claim it as our land and we definitely can't claim control over the universe. This is something that's really happening. Then you can have all kinds of scenarios. If you mine an asteroid and I have a spaceship and you give it to me, you give the gold to me in outer space and it stays in outer space.

Who whose jurisdiction is this? Right. Doesn't get taxed. Will there be customs charges when you bring it back to Earth? Like, what does all this mean? Go to the IRS. You're like, you can't tax me on that billion dollars I made. I made it in space, man. That space money. You don't have jurisdiction over that.

I did it in Kazakhstan space dollars. Right. Right. And so you can imagine that, uh, countries are, are just clamoring to, first of all, bring some clarity to this business because, because companies really want to operate in a, in a legal environment that they can kind of predict for understandable reasons. Um, uh, but also it opens the door to, to all kinds of stuff, weird tech stuff and evasion and avoidance and, uh, yeah.

Yeah. And I can imagine how, if you have a couple of countries that decide they want to cater to the needs of corporations or to the wealthy, then those needs are going to be catered to just like they were in maritime law or in the needs of corporations or to the wealthy, then those needs are gonna be catered to, just like they were in maritime law or in the case of the warehouse that you were talking about, that like, it'll be the same dynamic again, most likely. That is wild. Yeah, that's right.

And again, you know, one country, or one or two countries do this. So the example that I have in the book is Luxembourg, yet again, has, you know, built its whole economy on being an offshore center and allowing corporations to sort of funnel money through it to send to even more offshore places. And now it is trying to be a leader in space companies and to be... It's just funny because it's not like they have a space program, but for them to go like,

but you know, we want to be involved in space too. You know what they're doing. It's very obvious. They're not on a humanitarian mission to explore the stars. Right? This is the Kachin country. Yeah. Yeah, you got it.

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I mean, this also puts into perspective a lot of the obsessions of the wealthy. You know, when you look at why do people like Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk have giant yachts and why are they obsessed with space exploration? And I don't know, people like Peter Thiel talking about seasteading and building islands on the ocean, stuff like that.

What do all those things have in common? Oh, they're all places with unclear legal jurisdiction where they can escape the laws of whatever country they were born into. That's what it starts to look like as a pattern. Do you agree? I mean, I don't think it's even speculation. Peter Thiel is somebody who bought a passport

from New Zealand while, you know, supporting Trump's America first nationalism. Like, you can see that in a way it's super critical, but it's also extremely consistent with something like sea studying. Wanna talk about sea studying? Yeah, let's talk about sea studying. I love talking about sea studying.

It's fucking fascinating. Sea studying is this notion that we can build settlements, cities in international waters that have their own jurisdictions. So the Seasteading Institute used to say something like, let a thousand nations bloom. The idea there is that if there's more countries, people will have more choice, they'll be able to go between the countries more easily, and this will lead to a freer world. It's a very sort of free market idea of how the world should work. Yeah, yeah, just more countries.

That'll solve the problems in the world is if we add more countries. Right, and I'm sympathetic in theory, but then in practice, when you do create new countries, it's really messy. So it's not as easy, like South Sudan, Israel, it's really messy. So it's not as easy, like South Sudan, Israel, it gets really messy. And then you have to live with, then the world has to live with that for however long. But for the sake of argument, let's say, okay, we're going to create all these new

countries, they're going to be floating in international waters, and they will give people more options to pick a country that they believe in and whose values align with theirs. The subtext here is maybe the values that align with yours are the ones that don't. Let me tax this. I know it always comes down to tax. Or they might have a particular kind of political regime that maybe they'll have an anti-woke seastead or what have you. And so C-STEDing is really about expanding options and expanding places where you can exit to.

So you can vote with your feet, quote unquote. And it's a wonderful thought experiment. It's zany and it maybe is not gonna happen in our lifetime, but I do think it's fun to think through. It requires building like new land masses, like on the ocean, right? Which is, do we know how to do that? Does anybody have, you know, close to the technology

you would need to build an actual, you know, place that could be even as large as Liechtenstein on the open sea or in international waters? So I don't think the goal right away is to create landmass. I think floating platforms and like, yeah. That's what I meant. Like something that you could stand on and live on. Yeah, I mean, they say the technology exists. It seems a little bit,

it doesn't seem like very much fun, to be honest. Cause when you live on your sea-stead, you're surrounded by all these people that think like you and that have the same values, but then like, I don't know, where are you gonna go? What are you gonna do? Like, it's kind of boring. It sounds boring.

Exactly, I mean, even if Peter Thiel builds his sea-stead where he gets to have his libertarian fantasy land where he isn't taxed and he's the king and ruler, he's not gonna wanna fucking live there on a platform out in the middle of the ocean. He's gonna wanna go to New York because that's where he can get laid and get a good meal. Yeah, he's just gonna leave his accounts on the Seastead.

That's where his accountant is gonna have to live while they do his taxes, so he doesn't have to pay taxes to himself or whatever. The Seastead will offer another, and yet another set of loopholes that people can take advantage of. There'll be a good casino there. And the other thing is like, why bother?

Cause we already have so many of these in the world. And I think that if you take a look at the book, like you could read it as a how-to, I guess. There's lots of places that are going to accommodate wealth and power, and they're not hard to find and their doors are open. I mean, Dubai is another place that just rolls out the red carpet if you are a certain type of tech person or founder or entrepreneur. There's a really good side to that, which is that if you go to Dubai, you'll see it's unbelievably international. It's clean. It's peaceful.

It has a lot going for it. And there's a reason that people want to move there. But the flip side is that it's quite authoritarian. The UAE is not a democracy. And all of that is built on the backs of migrant workers who really are treated very well. Yeah. I mean, they, I'm reminded of one time when I went with a friend to a resort in Cancun, and it's one of those places where you fly in, you go right to the resort, and then you leave again.

And I was like, I wasn't even really in this country. I was just at the resort. I was in the nice place they made for people, for tourists. And that is what it is. A lot of people do that. I don't turn my nose up at that kind of vacation. But you can make like an entire city like that for only the extremely wealthy,

where everyone is being weighted on by the people who live under the authoritarian regime and don't have the VIP service that all of the extraordinarily wealthy do. That's a weird society to be built that way, right? Yeah, that's correct. And just to zoom out a little bit again, this idea of an enclave or a special zone

where the rules are different, it's a place where in theory you can experiment, see what works and then maybe expand the model to the rest of the country if it's working. But that doesn't always end up happening. You end up having ghettos for the wealthy, ghettos for money, just gated communities that really don't benefit everybody else

in the way that they could and should. Right, and you grew up in one of these places. You grew up in Geneva. What was that like? Yeah, I grew up in Geneva. I wouldn't say it's quite Dubai. No, Geneva is a very international place because there's a lot of companies,

but it is also the UN. There's a lot of international organizations, the WTO, the ILO, the WHO, all of those alphabet soups, they're in Geneva. And so that creates a kind of international community. I went to schools that were adjacent to that. A lot of my friends were kids of parents who worked at multinationals or diplomats or have you. And so that was a bit of a bubble. I wouldn't say it was like a billionaire bubble. Maybe I met one or two people who are related to billionaires,

but definitely an enclave and definitely the sort of out of touch with what was going on in Switzerland. And so we never really felt like part of it, you know? And writing this book, I kind of had to go back and be like, wow, I really don't know very much about this place I spent 18 years in that I'm a citizen of, right? That's not good either.

Yeah. And I find it very interesting that a place like Geneva that has so much wealth and caters to, makes those loopholes for the wealthy to come and play is also one of the central places for international government. It is one of the headquarters of the UN, all these other organizations, you know, the Geneva conventions are named after the city of Geneva.

And that does raise a red flag, right? If like, hold on a second, the playground for the wealthy is also the one of the places that makes our biggest international decisions, right? Or is the center of those organizations. Does that give you a hint as to who's really running the world? Well, yeah, as you say, it's full of contradictions. It's the place where you have a convention on torture,

and then it's also a place where, it turns out, the people who are behind a lot of torture have a villa. Look, this is the version of globalization that we have today. We have a globalization that benefits wealthy and powerful, that does not really put a premium on redistribution or social justice in a global context.

And it's a version of globalization where, okay, every nation in the world may have a seat at the table at the UN, but the power is just not distributed evenly at all. You know, this is all very obvious, but I think in Geneva, the contradictions just become so elevated because it's all there and it's really small place.

Yeah, but it's also probably a place where the regime makes sense to everybody who's within it. I can imagine growing up there and being like, oh, well, it's so nice here. You know? You do kind of get lulled into complacency. It's lovely. It's kind of boring.

It's really pretty. Yeah. And you know, it's, I've been ragging on Geneva. It is nowhere near the worst Swiss Canton when it comes to things like tax haven and like crypto fraud and stuff like that. Yeah. If you really want to, if you really want to see a place where the more shady types go, you should go to look at Zug, which for a long time was known for being the HQ of Glencore, but is now trying to create a crypto valley.

Oh God. I can't imagine anything worse. A crypto valley. Crypto. That's what they're calling it. They were, they were for a time trying to attract, you know, we started this conversation, attract the crypto set. Wow. And by, by passing some favorable rules and regulations for these people. That is absolutely wild. But again, this puts me in mind of, I always find when you move within wealthy places,

even if you fly first class on a flight one time, the feeling is always, oh, this is so nice. This is so great. What could be wrong with this? Everyone should get to do this. When you travel in the wealthy place, you don't see the contradictions directly. It's only when you see the flip side

or inhabit the flip side that you see the imbalance. How did you break out of that bubble personally? That's a good question. So there really isn't a lot of visible poverty in Geneva. So, but we always were told, And so there really isn't a lot of visible poverty in Geneva. But we always were told, because my parents worked at the UN, I grew up in the 90s, right? And so the line for kids in the 90s was always like, there's starving children in Africa, finish your dinner.

And so that was like, but that was like, scary. And we were like, oh, that's terrible. And we learned all about it. And like, because so many people I was around were in the humanitarian sector, there was always an awareness that we had it real good in Geneva at this international school. So I don't think I was ever blind to that particular aspect. But I guess when I really started thinking about inequality in a sort of geographical and political way

was when I was trying to get a visa to live in the US. And look, I'm Canadian and Swiss. Now I'm a US citizen, tiny violin. I'm not feeling sorry for myself, but I was 22. I really wanted to live in New York and a boyfriend. And then I just realized I was going to have to self-deport because I didn't have a work visa. And I was like, oh, this is so unfair. And I started thinking about it.

And then I realized, oh my God, nobody can move around freely. People are just stuck where they're born and they have absolutely no mobility. And that kind of set me down this path. So again, don't feel sorry for me. I certainly don't, but that was my first confrontation with it.

Yeah, I mean, I have a friend right now who desperately wants to work again in New York and has had trouble getting a visa, and as a United States citizen, you don't really feel that because A, the country's so big, you can go between so many different cities, and B, it's easy to leave the United States. It's hard to get in.

And so yeah, we, I mean, the United States is itself a wealthy locale where you don't feel that disparity. But yes, most people are, to a certain extent, trapped within the borders of the country that they're in, at least permanently. It's not easy to resettle someplace else unless you have a whole lot of money, right? Then you can just buy a passport. It's not easy to resettle someplace else unless you have a whole lot of money, right?

Then you can just buy a passport. Exactly, so my first book is called The Cosmopolites. It came out almost 10 years ago, and it's all about the market for passports, countries that sell them, people who buy them, and then this much darker side of passport sales, which is what happens to stateless people, because there are a few million state people in the world

who do not have a citizenship of any country. What do the places they live do with them? What do they do with themselves? Like, how do they live? And so on the one hand, you have countries like Malta, like St. Kitts and Nevis, like Dominica that are selling passports, just pretty much all cash transactions. like St. Kitts and Nevis, like Dominica, that are selling passports,

just pretty much all cash transactions, right, to billionaires. On the other side, you have millions of people who have no passport, and there's a kind of a subplot of that book, which is, and this takes us back to the United Arab Emirates, so UAE have a bunch of stateless people.

And what did UAE do? They didn't wanna document them with UAE citizenship because that would give them far too many privileges and rights. So they just went to another country and bought them passports from the Camorra Islands. Wow. So like, oh, we don't wanna make you citizens of UAE, but we'll buy you a cheap ass passport from somewhere else.

From a different, from an island. And UAE is not an island. From a different place than those people were actually at. Yeah. And I talked to a couple of these people and they're like, we hadn't really heard of this place before and then suddenly we were citizens of it. And so to me, like to me as somebody who like,

I think nationalism is very pernicious force. To me it was, what it said was like, wow, this is all a house of cards. Like this whole national identity thing is like a little fishy, right? If you could just like buy someone a passport and have them be a citizen overnight of someone that they've never heard of.

And you know, I think that's an important thing to keep in mind, especially as we go into another election season of rah rah America. Yeah, I love just a subtle, just let's just slip in, nationalism is fake, very briefly in the interview, among the many important things that we're talking about. I wanna talk more about the big business side of this.

Let's talk about, you use this phrase that countries commercialize their sovereignty. Can you tell me more about that? Yeah, well, we talked about the mercenaries, right? Switzerland was kind of creating something that only, I don't wanna say country, sovereign could do was create an army and send it abroad. Then you have the same thing with the tax

and the same thing with laws. And so countries are left, some countries don't have a lot of resources. They are sort of pushed by competition to create new forms of commercialization. So one example that I talk about in the book, and this is a little bit more coercive, a place like Noru. It's a country in the Pacific. It's very poor. And throughout its history, it has had a series of different statuses under international

law. It was a protectorate. It was a... I forget any word. Anyway, it became independent later because it was always exploited by other countries. And when it became independent, it just didn't really have a lot to go off of. And so at first it sold mining rights to phosphate, which is also happening before it was independent.

And then it ended up essentially ceding a part of its territory to become a prison camp for Australia to send people who were trying to arrive in Australia by boat. And so again, this is, it gets really dark, you know? Like on the one hand, you can say countries commercializing sovereignty by creating novelty postage stamps for collectors to make a few bucks. Yeah. Postage is something that countries can do or like sometimes,

sometimes countries that have a really good two letter, uh, you know, country code at the end of their URL will sell that off. Websites, phone numbers, postage. That's like fine. That's a fun one. It's cute, it's cute. It doesn't really harm people. But then when it's like, well, we're gonna create a prison

that another country can just offshore its refugee population or people that it doesn't wanna admit to its country, that's really messed up. And I'm sorry, we're not talking about big business here, but we are talking about much more powerful governments themselves taking advantage of other countries doing this. And I think we're going to see more and more of this, especially when it comes to sending migrants places that maybe they don't wanna go. There's multiple levels of exploitation here. There's the larger company, larger country, excuse me,

Australia, although companies, our country's companies, we could debate that. Larger countries like Australia, you know, warehousing these refugees because they don't want to let them in. And then they are doing it by exploiting a smaller country that, you know, hey, well, you don't have much going for you.

Why don't you like section off part of your sovereignty and we'll rent it from you to keep the, what we consider the trash of humanity that we don't want, is you're hiring a country that is worse off than you to do your dirty work, which is not a good deed on that other country's part either, but is also, there's multiple power relationships

that are causing this to happen. Yeah, and I think we're back at this question of like, what version of globalization do we have? Well, it's one where every country has quote unquote sovereignty and can quote unquote make their own rules, but they definitely don't have the same amount of power. And there's really no effort to rectify that. And so it ends up exploiting both the smaller

and weaker countries and creating these horrific circumstances for the people that get caught between them. Yeah. Well, one of the, the problem of power is one of the great problems of humanity, you know? Like we can try to rectify it. We often do try to rectify it

and try to, you know, change power imbalances, but at the end of the day, power wins, right? That's why it's power. Power is the ability to do what you want, despite what anybody else says. And so it's extremely difficult to constrain. So of course we would see those relationships, relationships based on power and equity

across world governments, but it's in contrast to the story that we tell about how the world government works. That, oh, we have a system of nations, there's a rules-based order, we try to reduce inequities, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. When if of nations, there's a rules-based order, we try to reduce inequities, da-da-da-da-da, when if you look at what's actually happening, no, the powerful run the show.

It's also just much weirder, right? It's much weirder and more interesting than just 192 countries on the map, each doing their thing. There's a lot of unexpected aspects of globalization. Mm-hmm, well, let's talk about, now let's get to big business. I know you write about how American consulting firms like McKinsey are involved in this, how so?

Yeah, so from the beginning, so from the beginning when, after decolonization or during decolonization, as the world map was sort of getting set again and new countries were forming. There were initiatives to boost the economies of some of these decolonized nations. And there's a lot of back and forth about this, but one of the solutions that materialized from this period was poor countries need to have more exports to make more money. And how are they going to do that?

Well, we're going to create special zones within those countries with easier paperwork, lower tax, fewer tariffs, maybe less labor regulation to put people to work to create products for export. And these are called special, they're interchangeably called special economic zones, foreign trade zones, export processing zones, we just call them zones. And the architects of many of these zones were in fact consulting companies or proto McKinsey's. Fast forward to the 20th century or even the 21st.

And if we go back to Luxembourg passing its little space law, who is behind that? Deloitte, right? These guys have always been kicking around and they've been really instrumental in identifying where and how you can get into the cracks between the nations and create a new kind of legal regime that benefits big business,

because that's who hires them ultimately. I need to do some kind of episode on one of big business, because that's who hires them ultimately. I need to do some kind of episode on one of my shows about these consultant companies, because there are so many stories around the world where you're like, why is this bad thing happening? And you drill down to the bottom of it, and you're like, oh, it was McKinsey's idea.

It was Deloitte's idea. Literally always, yeah. And what do they do other than just suggest bad ideas? They're just like, hey, here's something fucked up you could do that would make you a lot of money. But that gives them a lot of power. It's like they're everybody's, it's like they're the conciliary

to every mafia boss in the world, whispering in their ear about some evil shit that they could do. It's bizarre how often it comes up. Yeah, except they do it with spreadsheets or something really boring. Right, right. See, this is why,

and this is why everyone is skeptical of Pete Buttigieg for a long time. They're like, this guy comes from the rat's nest. You know what I mean? He's a guest on the show. You know what, we should cut that out. No, let's leave it in. It's fine.

Pete can handle it. He's heard it before. I have something to say about Mayor Pete. Please. I feel like four years ago, we were so people on the left. I was working at the Nation Magazine and we were so mean to him.

And then like a year ago, I was like, read a minute. Mayor Pete, what a nice guy. And what happened? Was he that bad? It was like, was he that bad? I don't know. I mean, I think everyone just got worse. And...

Everyone else got worse around him. Look, I'm a transit guy, you know, if you're trying to get more buses built, I can't get too mad at you. But you know, there is that sort of extremely technocratic background of, you know, hey, if we just do everything in the smartest way possible, we'll make the world a better place.

And we know from experience that that so often leads to outcomes like exactly the one that we're talking about. That's the McKinsey mindset. And so I think skepticism around that is good. And I think that he continues to deserve all the skepticism he gets, as does almost everybody in a position of power. Sure.

But yeah, what other companies are taking advantage of this system? Are there any other glaring examples from your book? So what if we talking about Luxembourg? Like Luxembourg was attracting a lot of the global tech companies first by having a lower value added tax rate. And they eventually had to walk that back.

So for where the companies go, again, it's always shifting, right? Because they'll be one loophole, they'll go to that company, people will get mad, the loophole will be closed, another country will come up. And I think what the effect this has, and that's good, that's good. Outrage is good. Legislative change is good. Closing loopholes is good. Like this is all very healthy. but the effect it does have is that it is probably going to push the opportunities, shall we say, for big business to get away with stuff further and further afield, which is why we're starting to

see business courts pop up in Dubai and Kazakhstan, you know, I think it's going to get maybe a little sound, a more exotic sounding than Ireland and Luxembourg. Right. So what can be done about any of this? Because, you know, you often hear, again, to come back to California, whenever there's talk about raising taxes on the wealthy or on businesses, everyone says, well, they're just going to leave. And part of that argument is because of exactly what we're talking about, that people who have power are able to pick up their bags and go,

and go to someplace that's offering them favorable terms, like a Switzerland or any of its compatriots doing that. So, yeah, what can be done? Great question. I don't have all the answers, but I do think that it's really important if the political will is there for countries to get together and really make a binding tax minimum, not just for companies,

but for individuals. For that to happen and not to be hopelessly naive internationalists, you have to have buy-in from everywhere. If you don't have buy-in from everywhere, you end up in a situation with sanctions and coercion and like, there's downsides to that too, right? It's really hard to get consensus. I'm not saying this is easy, but the only way to eliminate the holes is by having an airtight system. I don't know that we're ever going to get there truly a world without tight system. I don't know that we're ever going to get there. Um, truly a world without, without holes and without havens and ways to get around the rules. But I think that for the purposes of like taxing big business, like that is doable. That is doable. And you just need the political will. Unfortunately, that depends on, on a lot of things, including

the thing in November that we shall not speak about. Well, I mean, I'm thinking about it a lot. That's what we talk about here on the show all the time, but you're talking about something even more difficult than an election. You're talking about a treaty on taxation between 192 countries, when a couple of those countries have literally built

their entire business model as a country on not doing that, talking about Switzerland or whatever. And some of those countries are powerful. I mean, Saudi Arabia is an oil power. So how would you convince them to join such a scheme? So the good news is that some countries have joined such a scheme. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development

has proposed a minimum tax that even places like Luxembourg and Switzerland are on board with, right? The challenge is to just expand this as much as possible. And, you know, the other side of this is, as a loophole can be made to like, you get rid of the ones that exist, it doesn't mean that there won't be new ones that emerge. And so that also really depends on like curtailing the power of the McKinsey's and the Deloitte's and the sort of consultants and lobbyists that go in there and create them. It's really hard. It's really, really hard. But I think that a solid global minimum tax rate for corporations and individuals, as well as more transparency about where the money goes.

And this has been a proposal coming from Gabriel Zucman and Thomas Piketty and some other economists if we just had a better handle on where the money was going. Cause a lot of the appeal of these jurisdictions is the secrecy. Nobody can find the money. So yes, you need a global minimums and also just way better systems

of tracking and accountability. I mean, it sounds like the place to start is by asking these countries, I mean, who do you want to run the world? Do you want the world to be run by governments or by corporations and the wealthy? And there's always a push and pull there, but you would hope that anybody running a country,

whether they're a Democrat or an autocrat, would want governments to be in charge, not, I don't know, Exxon or a shipping company or McKinsey or Peter Thiel. Well, you'd think so, but. Ha ha ha ha! You'd think so, but less than we'd want, huh? You'd think so.

Ha ha ha ha! I'll leave it there. Well, normally I like to ask at the end, how can the average person help on this issue? This seems like a very difficult issue for the average person to affect in any way, but I'm curious if you have any thoughts. I think it's really important to see the world as it is. I think that we're walking around,

and I'm gonna go back to my pet topic, we're walking around with nationalism tinted glasses on. Because that's a story we've always been told. And I think that, I'm not saying that all of these parallel structures in any way challenge the nationalist regimes, right? But we have to see the world in all of its complexity in all of these jurisdictions,

just to understand the way it really works. And so once we see that, no, we're not just dealing with all of these nation states, we're dealing with all this stuff above, between, and beneath it, maybe we can start imagining what a better version of these in between places could look like. Like maybe I'm being too idealistic, but like, I don't think that many of the examples we've gone over are pretty, you know, insidious and that they definitely increase inequality and make the rich richer and more powerful.

But we've established that starting new countries is hard. It doesn't seem like a lot of the countries we have want to want to change it in any particular progressive way. So maybe there's a way to just harness all of these in between places to make them just better and like try new things that are progressive and positive and will help people thrive. It's really hard, it might fail,

but I think it's worth a shot because we don't have much else. But it starts with seeing the world as it is and I love that message. And if there's anything I try to impart on this show, it's the need to do exactly that. So, you know, Atoosa, I can't thank you enough for being on the show.

The name of the book again is The Hidden Globe, How Wealth Hacks the World. You can, of course, pick up a copy at our special bookshop, FactuallyPod.com slash books. Where else can people find you on the internet if they wanna follow your work? My Twitter handle and website and Instagram and everything is AtoosaAraxia, A-T-O-S-S-A-A-R-A-X-I-A.

And there's only one of me, so you can Google me and you will not find anyone else with my name. Hell yeah, thank you so much for being on the show, Atoosa. Thanks for having me, so fun, Adam. Well, thank you yeah. Thank you so much for being on the show, Atoosa. Thanks for having me. So fun, Adam. Well, thank you once again to Atoosa for coming on the show. And thank you to everybody who supports this show

on Patreon. Once again, patreon.com slash Adam Conover. Five bucks a month gets you every episode of the show ad free. For 15 bucks a month, I will read your name at the end of the show and put it in the credits of every single one of my video monologues.

This week, I wanna thank Rick J. Nash, Birdie Coat, G.D. Cillia, Howard and Kevin, Reed Spillman, Fatim Marekhan, and Michael Lurer. Thank you so much for your support. Head to patreon.com slash Adam Conover if you would like to join them. My producers are Tony Wilson and Sam Roudman. Thank you so much to everybody here at HeadGum for making the show possible and thank you for listening. Head to adamconover.net for my tickets and tour dates and I'll Thank you so much to everybody here at HeadGum for making the show possible. And thank you for listening. Head to adamconover.net for my tickets and tour dates.

And I'll see you on the road or next time on Factually. I don't know anything. That was a HeadGum podcast.