Bloomberg Odd Lots has a fascinating feature on the separate world inhabited by billionaires and other criminals. Normal laws can’t touch sanctuary zones of various types and sizes. Some are well known like the Caymans, Isle of Man, and Dubai; others are known only to the elites.
When I was a kid absorbed in old maps and atlases, I noticed many such sanctuary zones. Gdansk in Poland and Trieste in Yugoslavia were free ports where ships and traders could do business without paying customs duties to nations.
Odd Lots focuses on an old free port in Geneva, not shown on maps. It’s just one large warehouse, formerly holding grain and coal for companies using Switzerland as a transfer point. Shippers didn’t have to check in and out with Switzerland. The warehouse is still there, now storing more valuable cargo like gold bars and precious paintings for billionaires. In other words, it’s a Swiss Bank for non-money assets.
Island nations like Nauru and Palau base their entire economy on providing sanctuary for illegitimate transfers.
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Later, bouncing the other way… Islands of civilization also exist in the midst of the billionaire-controlled chaos of Share Value and Social Media. Some are well-known like the Amish and Mormons and Orthodox Jews.
Others are less obvious. Black folks are NOT falling into homelessness and fentanyl. Videos of fentanyl victims show very few black people. Why? Because black folks never left their extended families and churches. The same applies to immigrant communities like Vietnamese who have maintained family businesses where everyone works.
Poverty doesn’t break people. LACK OF PURPOSE breaks people. The intentional breakers of globalism and Wall Street and Silicon Valley break people.
Polistra's Mill 