Actually, that spam you get is proof trant it’s still not all that hard getting a message relayed.
↓ Transcript
Ready
Will you not be staying? Kimi-chan exhibits improved synaptic and cardiorespiratory performance in your presence.
Ace
I’d love to, but I need to get with your comms people. I have an idea for using some older satellites to let us contact home.
Kimi
You are going to satellite hack?!
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Ace
Don’t need to. I have legitimate access, more or less. Mom once got me a satellite pager, but the company folded. Most of their satellites have failed or been deorbited, but last I checked, I still had access. I think I recall the protocols, but I’m not sure of the frequencies. The real trick is going to be getting the messages accepted by a downlink.
Kimi
Can you hack everything?
Ace
Huh? No. Not everything, I’m sure. I’m not really that much of a hacker. But you’d be surprised.
Kimi
You could put one million dollars in my bank?
Ace
Well, you’d be on your own explaining to the authorities where it came from.
Will you not be staying? Kimi-chan exhibits improved synaptic and cardiorespiratory performance in your presence.
Ace
I’d love to, but I need to get with your comms people. I have an idea for using some older satellites to let us contact home.
Kimi
You are going to satellite hack?!
---
Ace
Don’t need to. I have legitimate access, more or less. Mom once got me a satellite pager, but the company folded. Most of their satellites have failed or been deorbited, but last I checked, I still had access. I think I recall the protocols, but I’m not sure of the frequencies. The real trick is going to be getting the messages accepted by a downlink.
Kimi
Can you hack everything?
Ace
Huh? No. Not everything, I’m sure. I’m not really that much of a hacker. But you’d be surprised.
Kimi
You could put one million dollars in my bank?
Ace
Well, you’d be on your own explaining to the authorities where it came from.
Ace, put a million in MY bank. I know of a few countries on Earth where the authorities wont care where it came from.
Ah, but more to the point, do you LIVE in one of those countries?
For a million… I’d move. Plus those countries have warm water beaches and hot blooded women, and looking out my window right now makes me long for both.
Well let’s see.
Big tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Google, are known to funnel their money through places like The Cayman Islands, Luxembourg, and Ireland, to avoid properly paying their federal taxes. (You know, the the part where they would theoretically pay back the USA taxpayers for all the grant money and tech they accepted to become the giants they are today). So there’s three places. Switzerland has been famous for decades for their total unwillingness to share banking information with any outside party.
That’s three places in Europe (only one where English is the dominant language) and one tropical island that is both a popular tourist destination, and a British territory (so one can expect English to be widely spoken, even if it’s not the tongue of the original natives).
Of those, sounds like getting your sandals for a new life in a tropical island out would be the most fun. The food is probably better too.
I’m not sure if it is still around, but someone purchased a old oil platform out in international waters and declared it a soveriegn nation. Basically he runs banking services that can ignore any nation’s warrents or other legal trick to gain access to information.
Needless to say, while they couldn’t strip him of his nation, the big nations all agreed to block anyone else from pulling the same trick.
Heh. Of course they did.
How does that saying go?
“Governments pass laws against espionage, to protect their existing espionage monopolies.”
Most of those countries don’t care where it comes from because they take a healthy percentage for themselves.
It’s like those countries that don’t have extradition, you usually have to bribe someone regularly to not be kicked out, or have your location announced to people willing to kidnap you to a extradition country.
So while you can use them to skirt the law, there is an annual cost.
Yes, and the cost of living in such locations will eat through the million faster than you might think. And you can’t stretch it out by investing it and living off the interest.
A million dollars doesn’t really go as far as people think it does.
Indeed not. I was a Financial Advisor for some years, and I was typically recommending most people aim to grow their investments to at least 3-4M in order to have a comfortable retirement.
Here’s probably the most benefit you could get out of $1M:
Invest it in a mutual fund that reliably averages at or above 7% growth per year. Withdraw 5%. The remaining 2% is to offset inflation. It won’t be perfectly consistent, but the highs should compensate for the lows, and we’re leaving the initial $1M untouched.
That should give you a yearly income of $50,000/y, ($4,166/m) adjusted for inflation going forward, which should be able to afford you a reasonable middle-class lifestyle if you’re frugal.
If you’d like a bit more income than that, then keep your job, or get a low-stress part-time job, and your investment becomes like having an extra working family member bringing in paychecks but not adding to any of the expenses.