The rumors of my loss of sanity are greatly exaggerated

Anyone who has followed me for a while knows that I have lived an unconventional life, and have unconventional views. People commonly say, “I don’t agree with his political views, but the guy is a great investor.”

As in somehow my ability to find opportunity (truth) in markets is somehow completely uncorrelated to my ability to find truth in life.

Anyway, I recently made a post on Twitter saying something along the lines of “considering spending the rest of my days as a wandering, masterless Samurai”.

I announced to my Marhelm subscribers that I was taking steps to no longer be the controlling shareholder due to my wish to no longer personally comply with government regulations, and that I was transferring my assets out of my personal name.

I want to stress that my actions are driven completely by philosophical reasons. I find that the world we live in is vastly over regulated. We are not free. It’s true that the catalyst for me “going over the edge” was a bogus $50 speeding ticket. I refused to comply at a traffic stop and before I knew it there were over a dozen cops and two guys with machine guns. My wife paid the ticket. I kept my license. We went home. But the experience left its mark - if I failed to comply with giving up my license over a bogus speeding ticket - the state would shoot me for it. The only unforgivable sin in the eyes of the state is non compliance. Murder, rape, theft - all pardonable crimes. Many see very little prison time for heinous crimes - as long as they show their compliance.

My non compliance follows a pattern that has been with me throughout life. I was thrown out of primary school for refusing to paint within the lines. I had the top standardized test scores in my district, and I dropped out of high school because I didn’t want to submit to a drug test. I was always in trouble in school - and always for the same reason - I didn’t want to comply.

Two days ago, my rage at minor injustice once again took over and I was willing to fight four cops rather than hand over my driver’s license. It’s not the first time something like this has happened, and it’s not the first time my wife got me out of it. I’ve had for all of my life a pattern of refusing to comply with authority. After the altercation, it hit me that my nature presents a risk to those I love, and to my customers. While I was already in the process of transferring assets to my wife in case something happens to me, I hadn’t yet considered having nothing in my name. My experience a few days ago showed me that in order to protect what I love and what I’ve built from the state, it can’t be in my name. I don’t want to change my nature. I don’t want to comply with injustice. I want to allow myself the personal liberty to refuse to comply with all manner of regulations and injustices without putting at risk those who have placed trust in me.

The actions I’m taking

I want to reiterate that there were no consequences for my altercation with the police a few days ago. I am under no investigation, summons, or any type of legal action. I am simply protecting my family and business from “Calvin risk.”

I offered to give away my Marhelm shares in my newly formed Singapore entity, while reserving some for my wife, to others who offered to put in money, as well as employees and volunteer contributors who can make a difference.

Marhelm has grown to hundreds of subscribers and has caught the attention of even billionaire hedge funds and investors. We’ve been approached by shipping companies and ship brokers about partnerships.

I’ve set up the entity to be tax free - like many shipping companies. Singapore does not tax funds not remitted to Singapore. Combined with a jurisdiction that allows for  banking by non resident companies, like Switzerland, funds can be received in Switzerland, distributed globally, and not taxed at all at the corporate level. Singapore does not tax dividend distributions, even on funds remitted to Singapore. Singapore also doesn’t tax capital gains on shares.

Then, the only remaining issue becomes my large shareholding as a US person. A subscriber and potential 5% investor in the new entity sent the below message:

What’s the solution? Well, I’d already decided to reduce my shareholding to 50% to avoid CFC classification. But even with a loss of CFC status - if foreign banks still fear to deal with us, what to do? Put the shares in the name of my Panamanian wife and spread them out among more customers and affiliates who have helped us grow and deserve a stake in the entity.

I want Marhelm to succeed and I will continue to do my daily tasks, though I am already doing succession planning. I have a team of 5 now that does a number of the tasks that I used to do, which has freed me up for other things. In many ways, these individual team members are better in specific areas than I was.

I believe the actions I’m taking help ensure that Marhelm can continue as an entity without having me there.

My personal decision to stop compliance

Many observers have decided based on my tweets that I must be “abandoning my family”. Many have told me “I need help.” “Go get therapy like the rest of us”, said another. Yet many also understand where I’m coming from.

My grandmother died alone in a hospital room (not of covid) during the pandemic because “the rules” said that she couldn’t have anyone else with her. Her children were too busy with their own lives to care for her at home - and some of them couldn’t even leave due to lockdown policies. The most courageous and deserving woman I ever knew died alone and in pain because her children thought every problem was solvable with money and that being with their dying mother wasn’t a good enough reason to defy the rules of the authorities. At the funeral, as my grandmother was about to be lowered into the ground, an uncle walked up to me and demanded to know why I wasn’t wearing a mask.

This is an extreme example that had a deep effect on me. I was already considered extreme by many before covid, but seeing how families were torn apart, businesses were destroyed, the freedoms were extinguished - to stop a virus that we now know was a research experiment that escaped from an NIH funded lab in China - it made me even more resentful, untrusting, and angry towards governments globally.

So many decisions I’ve made in my life have been because I didn’t want to comply with the rules - I wanted more freedom. I became interested in software because I didn’t need anyone’s license or permission to do it. I dropped out of high school because I didn’t want to take a drug test. I didn’t go to college because I didn’t want my parents to pay for it and I didn’t want to put myself into debt without knowing that college would be a wise financial investment. I moved to Panama to take advantage of the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion and lower my US tax burden. I began putting assets in my wife’s name to avoid more reporting and tax requirements. The things I’m doing today are the continuation of a long history of moving further and further away from the mainstream.

Humans are not meant to live this way

I want you to stop and ask yourself, how reasonable is the world we all accept?

Scan your iris. Put your finger in the ink. Take the blood test. Inject this vaccine. Pay this fine. File these forms. You can’t walk there without this document. You can’t live there without paying a tax every year.

If you don’t, we will fine, imprison, and kill you, not necessarily in that order.

As Marcus Aurelius once stated, The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. The things that we are subjected to and accept are insane and getting worse.

The wisdom frequently heard is that “one must change the system from within. Become rich and powerful and you can change things.”

How did that work out for Elon?

If even the richest man in the world can’t change the system from within (he caved as soon as Tesla’s share price started tanking), what hope do I have?

Am I to strive to be richer (i.e. more system tokens) until the day that I die, meanwhile accepting every injustice life dishes out to me for the sake of providing a present father figure to my daughter?

What am I teaching my children? That the object of life is to acquire system tokens and live as livestock? That no matter what your values are, those should be cast aside if at any point they come into conflict with the whims of the authorities?

The United States was founded on the risks - and rejection of authority - of colonialists whose ancestors first went to foreign shores seeking more freedom - and eventually accepted that the King had followed them there and they needed to fight for independence.

India became an independent nation decades after Mahatma Gandhi - who trained as a lawyer in London - realized that non compliance was the only way to shake off the shackles of British rule. His fight against oversteps of the state began when he left London to represent an Indian merchant in South Africa.

The point is that if everyone accepts the system as it is, and complies with all requirements - not only do we lose respect for ourselves - we find ourselves living meaningless lives for the sake of not running afoul of the system.

Is a couple who spends all their time working to pay for their property taxes, childcare, and lifestyle really living their best life? Who is the parent, the people who are working, or the person providing the child care? And then when it’s the child’s turn to care for their parents - they put them in a care facility rather than care for them because - hey - gotta work till we’re 65, right?

We lost the ability for the wages of a single parent to provide for a family because of what we accepted. We accepted debasement of our currency. We accepted inflation of our national debt. We accepted the idea that we needed all the latest consumer products, multiple vehicles (a new one every three years), and a big house - and our children must attend the best schools and receive the most prestigious degrees.

We’ve sleep walked into lives where we making a living but we don’t live - and where we must bow, cower, and submit at every whim of every agent of the state.

I for one don’t think I’m the problem for not wanting

The haters

Of course, the idea that some eccentric millionaire would give up everything for a life of technical poverty in order to no longer do any paperwork is very unpopular with some.

After all, so many strive for the life of financial independence I’ve created for myself - no debt, multiple income streams, lower tax burdens. It’s the dream, right?

The idea that I could just reject that as “the end goal” due to some sense of what freedom should be is deeply offensive to some. To others, I’m a cautionary tale on “how quickly extreme libertarianism can take over your life.”

My response would be that I have every intention to fulfill promises I’ve made to my customers and my family. The idea that I’m somehow abandoning my family by “dropping off the grid” is something that was projected by observers, not something I said.

But speaking of dropping off the grid - I have eaten out of dumpsters before. I have slept outside hundreds of life during my life - including in extreme weather - both hot and cold. I have walked hundreds of miles per week. I have foraged for food when nearly starving. I have faced death. During those times I felt happier, more alive, and more fulfilled than at any other time.

In Panama, I have encountered countless individuals who, usually due to circumstance, are living in unconventional ways - without passports, without documents, without compliance. Venezuelans, Germans, Americans, Cubans - all somehow continuing to live their life without state sanction or approval. They make their living in the cash society - selling mostly things they made like food and beverages. Some work as day laborers for cash. A man I know who is technically stateless due to a legal issue in his home country in Europe is considered the best stone worker in the province.

So while I am passing on much of my systemic wealth on to my family and customers - who don’t agree philosophically with the changes I’m making - and trying to put a succession plan in place for my business so that it can exist as an entity without me - it doesn’t mean I’m abandoning either. I realize that most aren’t ready to leave the Matrix. I am.

Some have argued that this means “I’m abandoning my daughter.” How totally absurd. I’m simply preparing my family and business for the day in the future where I refuse to comply and it costs me my life.

And again - I would rather my daughter see her father as a man of conviction and integrity than as simply another of the countless NPCs who was too afraid of material loss, physical incarceration, and death to fight for what he believed in and set an example for others.

A coward fights only the battles he knows he can win. The brave fight the battles that must be fought. Every soldier who fights risks being taken from their loved ones - and most of them don’t even fight for something they believe in. They fight for a paycheck. I never hear soldiers accused of abandoning their families. I wish to fight for a world where we aren’t subjected to tyranny in even the most mundane areas of life.

I want a world where a farmer can sell raw milk. Where a bee keeper can offer raw honey. Where my sister can remodel her kitchen without a permit. Where a man can dig a septic tank by hand. Where I can start a company without submitting a bunch of ridiculous paperwork. Where people can freely engage in trade with each other. Where teenagers aren’t pulled off the streets to fight unjust wars. The number of unreasonable regulations we are subjected to are innumerable - and I can’t list them all here.

Conclusion

This idea on Twitter that I’m just going to disappear into the jungle was not an idea that came from me. It was projection by people who feel like if you don’t spread your butt cheeks for regular state probings, you’re going back to the stone age.

The reality is that I intend on Marhelm continuing, I will continue writing, and I will continue to write about investment opportunities. I find these things interesting and intellectually engaging and I have no intention of stopping them.

What I do want to stop doing is complying with unjust regulations. I am willing to risk imprisonment and death to do that. What I am going to start doing is practicing civil disobedience. I have taken the actions outlined to limit the collateral damage that occurs from my personal war on overregulation and arbitrary tyranny.

I don’t think it’s possible to change the system from within. I think the only hope we have is systemic rejection. I can practice systemic rejection by changing the way I live, by writing about it, by rejecting the idea that collecting assets and being wealthy in system tokens is the ultimate definition of success. You can never win a rigged game. The only rational choice, therefore, is to stop playing.

Even if it comes down to eating from dumpsters, fishing from steams, and sleeping under stars - I’ve done all those things before. They weren’t so bad - in fact - they were downright enjoyable. I’ll tell you what - even dumpster diving sure beats filling bullshit forms.