Life in Chile

[Mercury]

Agricultural Property in Chile


May 12, 2011
Santiago, Chile

[Editor's Note: Dr. John Cobin, a long-time resident of Chile, is filling in for Simon today, who is out looking at property.]

I was driving through the Chilean countryside recently and it dawned on me that in most of Chile, even the relatively “dull and drab” parts are downright beautiful.

http://www.sovereignman.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Entre-Puerto-Guadal-y-Rio-Tranquilo-mirador-Lago-Gen-Carrera-23-dic-2010.jpg

I have been to 60 countries, including extended visits to Guatemala, Jordan, Iran, Italy, and New Zealand, and have lived in both the USA and Chile for many years. I have literally been almost everywhere in the latter two countries, seeing all the best spots, and I believe Chile to be far more beautiful.

Why Chile is so often neglected by tourists and expatriates compared to other countries is a mystery to me. Chile is a wonderful, modern, civilized place. It is great to live here, and the free market reforms continue to spur strong economic growth.

http://www.sovereignman.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Rio-Tranquilo-formaciones-de-marmol-cliffs-Lago-Gen-Carrera-23-dic-2010.jpg


Chile is a country of sprawling, magnanimous, diverse and ubiquitous beauty, and there is no place quite like it. It’s ironic that one of the ‘dullest’ places in Chile looks like California’s Central Valley. Imagine being in a country where the ‘ugliest’ part looks like central California!

So where is this paradise? The southern Central Valley is found from Los Andes, about 100 miles north of Santiago, down to Los Angeles, about 350 miles south of Santiago. It is basically a mirror image of California’s Central Valley from Bakersfield up to Red Bluff.

In this “Central Valley” of Chile, everything is grown. There are plenty of cows, chickens, pigs, horses and other livestock (mainly sheep and goats), too. Dairy is big business. Wine is an even bigger business. Oranges, pears, apples, avocados, cherries, plums, peaches, nectarines, grapes, watermelons, etc.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ang7UWDNf0s/Tcdmg-WLNOI/AAAAAAAAEGQ/tpZynF1NoWs/s1600/Imagen0408.jpg

The climate is quite nice too, so long as long, dry, often hot, summers are not a problem for you. You’ll hardly ever see a snowflake in winter unless you go up into the higher elevations nearby.

A person who likes central California’s scenery and weather ought to consider enjoying some choice property near Chile’s heartland of agricultural production. Great places to live and farm can be found within 2-3 hours of Santiago’s supplies, services, and great medical care.

But the most important aspect of the Chilean heartland is that it can be had for reasonable prices. Bear in mind, this is a developed, first world country… but you’re not paying first world prices.

To give you an example, I recently saw a 7-acre property with a modest home, about 2 hours south of Santiago, for $76,000. Larger farms (100+ acres) can be purchased for a few thousand dollars per acre.

In Chile, the thing to always remember is that water rights are separate to land rights; in other words, you purchase a property, and often have to separately purchase water rights.

To give you an example, Simon is out right now looking at a large property on one of Chile’s magnificent rivers. The property doesn’t automatically come with rights to use the water that’s in the river, though.

Chile has a market-based system to allocate water rights for a collective body of water– the owners of all the properties which border the river get together and bid for rights to a certain volume of water, essentially a certain number of gallons per minute that they can take from the river.

If one farmer expects to use more water, he or she must bid more. If the river has a limited capacity and demand for the water rights exceeds the river’s supply, then the price goes up… that’s how the market works. In this way, you can be use that the water will be put to its most economic use.

Furthermore, these water rights are held in a separate title and can be bought, sold, and transferred just like title to property. Typically, water rights and land rights are sold together in a package… but not always.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-38DhxNtQFeI/TcdmpXlnuLI/AAAAAAAAEGU/9aO3CzeyZc0/s1600/P5020064.JPG

This system is quickly becoming THE standard that many other countries are adopting to allocate their water rights– one of the many ways that Chile is becoming a model to the world.

Dr. Cobin’s book, Life in Chile: A Former American’s Guide for Newcomers, is the most comprehensive treatise on Chilean life ever written, designed to help newcomers get settled in Chile. He covers almost ever topic imaginable for immigrants. This knowledge is applied in his valet consulting service, where he guides expatriates through the process of finding a place to live and settle in Chile, helping them glide over the speed bumps that they would otherwise face in getting their visas, setting up businesses, buying real estate, investing in Chilean stocks or gold coins, etc.

http://www.sovereignman.com/expat/agricultural-property-in-chile/

[Mercury]

The following post is from our American-expat correspondent in Chile, Dr. John Cobin:

I echo the absolute vanity and hopelessness of relying on the Republican party to save America, even the relatively few dedicated “tea party” people that might now make up 10% of the 454 (with rare exception) evildoers in the House of Representatives. They will not be able to steer, veer or otherwise alter the course of the boat they are on. Public choice theory (correctly) precludes such a thing. There is a greater probability that our parents will find the fountain of youth by Christmas, than that the Republican party will “fix” America or restore its constitutional and Jeffersonian base.

Moreover, the idea that America is the global engine of the world is dubious at best. Sure, Americans have traditionally consumed more than any other nation. Consumerism is king. Prices of goods have been relatively low in America on account of the fierce competition it has (or at least used to have). So Americans buy. They also produce. Americans consume 30% of the world’s natural resources but also produce 35% of the world’s goods and services. There is no doubt that American is and has been an economic powerhouse.

Yet those facts do not mean that the rest of the world will rise or fall with America’s fortunes. The fact that Chile, for instance, has a current GDP growth rate of over 6%, low inflation and has seen unemployment drop over 3% in the last year (to 7.6%), while America stagnates at 1.8% GDP growth, beleaguered by idiotic monetary and fiscal policies (which the Republican House will in large measure leave untouched), rising inflation and 9.8% unemployment (both being curiously lower figures than American reality indicates), show that a country can go in the opposite direction of America. Chile has been largely untouched by America’s recent depression. Other natural resource-based and export-based economies have also been doing well during the northern hemisphere’s self-induced recession: Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong are a few other examples. The fact is that natural resource-based economies are going to prosper in the short run by the boost in metals prices, along with other commodities (in terms of dollars of course), and in the long run by increasing sales of products to feed the socialist and bailout projects of the USA and other countries.

What is there to do? The answer is quite clear. (1) Get your assets out of the USA. (2) Get a passport. (3) Get an escape route planned with adequate and realistic transportation. (4) Get to a suitable place as soon as you can.

Chile has pulled away from New Zealand and Panama recently, at least in my mind, as the leading place for most people to go. I still see virtue for brave souls to go to Hong Kong if they can afford it, ditto for European enclaves like Monaco, Guernsey, Andorra or Liechtenstein if they can afford it (and win the local immigration lottery), or even an island nation somewhere (if they like living on islands). Uruguay has never been on the radar screen as a freer place to go, even though it might be an okay place to get a second passport or park some money. One American immigrant here was recently asked why he came to Chile. He stated that, “because it is the best country in the Western Hemisphere.” He was mistaken only in that Chile is probably the best overall country, despite it many shortcomings, in the entire world. Some 30 years ago I might have said the same thing about America. I can no longer do so. If you will be honest, neither can you.

How much longer will “our kind” of people continue in their vain hope that America will right itself, especially via Republicans? No one has offered any reasonable reason for hope in the “land of the free.”

In terms of making an impact in Chile, while excellent “obscure” writers like Dr. Steven Yates (who deserves to be heard) are relegated to off-the-charts minor league newspapers like The Times Examiner in Greenville, South Carolina (where I dedicated much time writing as well), the impact that he and others would have in Chile is remarkably high. Libertarian-types (including constitutionalists and “real” Republicans) will find fertile ground in Chile to share their ideas with friends, acquaintances and students whom will often seriously consider their ideas and change their views to be more liberty-minded. They like gringos and by default appreciate our perspective.

Many of my frank or even “hard core” letters to the editor get published in national papers, and many people have asked me (after meeting me for the first time) “Are you the same Dr. Cobin who writes letters to the editor?” I have been able to speak at intellectuals’ dinner clubs which are designed to discuss and debate new ideas. I have made considerable inroads in promoting homeschooling in many places, for instance, as well as promoting free market capitalism, denouncing socialism and faith in the state, denouncing Lincoln and the War of Northern Aggression, blasting radical feminism and radical environmentalism or ecology, promoting market-based alternatives like free banking, and decrying abortion policies.

The other day a friend here heard some Marxist on the radio blasting me and my latest book A Primer on Modern Themes in Free Market Economics and Policy, a sure-tell sign that I am having an impact (or at least annoying the Left). I was pleased to hear of it. Perhaps most importantly, I have seen my students have life-changing experiences as they have thought through hard philosophical and economic issues. I have recently supervised their theses dealing with topics like Chilean free banking and using cases in Chile to debunk radical environmentalism. (For fear of not wanting to sound boastful or “narcissist,” I will not bore you with other details.) I only hope it can and will continue, by the grace of God.

I point out all of the aforementioned facts mainly to provide encouragement to those who drudge on in the USA hitting one brick wall after another and find themselves increasingly ostracized by the mainstream and even by some true conservatives or libertarians. There are some places in the world in which the ideas of liberty are being well-received. Chile is one of them. And if you have been able to “handle” putting up with the sins of the USA, then handling Chile’s relatively minor peccadilloes should be a piece of cake. Plus, I know many liberty-loving Americans not to be cowards. They have shown a willingness to fight for liberty and the truth at considerable personal cost. Now the time has come for them to make the next move: the move out of “the land of the free” to Chile.

I know there will be some exceptions and I feel badly for them. For instance, if you cannot pay for plane fare or food and shelter for awhile, there is no point in even thinking about leaving. Therefore, it is logical that people in such circumstances would try to make the best of their reality and even “believe” in what Republicans will do to “fix” America. Their only hope is to fix America. It may be a vain hope, but they must cling to it. Living without hope, like living in the former USSR, is simply too depressing.

Yet I would encourage those who face such unfortunate circumstances to not think that Republicans will fix things. I do not see any remedy for the insane financial policies of the central bank and the fiscal madness of Obama and his cronies. The public school and Draconian institutions in the USA: ATF, DSS, Family Court, IRS, TSA, etc. will continue to dominate the minds and hearts of most Americans, already too dull on account of their porn, sports, romance novel and TV addictions. America simply will end, sooner or later, even if the body (without the soul of the Founding Fathers) drifts on for a thousand years as a military might and totalitarian regime. Rome did, just as Simon Black recently reminded us in his Sovereign Man “Notes from the Field.” The American idea is over. Time to face the facts and deal with them.

You need to leave if you can. Instead of saving for retirement, start saving for plane fare and short term living expenses. Get TEFL qualified so you can teach English when you arrive in Chile. Bring a peanut butter machine so you can start a micro business when you get here, or something to help you survive. The writing is on the wall. Please do not be like so many hold outs in Eastern Europe under Hitler and Stalin who vainly believed that things would get better because they were too paralyzed to move and unable to face the facts, to their own demise. At least in coming to Chile you will have a support network and friends. You will find good or decent churches, wholesome family activities and a nice quality of life.

Like you, I take pride in being culturally American. Characteristics from American culture like generosity, following-through, and volunteerism are laudable. I cherish the nostalgia of what America, and especially the South, used to be. Indeed, like you, I still have the ingrained idea that people should be free. Many of us are Jeffersonian at heart in this sense. How sad it is for me to say to you, “Don’t waste all that good energy on a hopeless case like America!” And certainly do not trust Republicans to resolve America’s problems. Your window of opportunity will eventually close. So do not miss it.

Dr. Cobin’s book, Life in Chile: A Former American’s Guide for Newcomers, is the most comprehensive treatise on Chilean life ever written, designed to help newcomers get settled in Chile. He covers almost ever topic imaginable for immigrants. This knowledge is applied in his valet consulting service, where he guides expatriates through the process of finding a place to live and settle in Chile, helping them glide over the speed bumps that they would otherwise face in getting their visas, setting up businesses, buying real estate, investing in Chilean stocks or gold coins, etc.

http://www.sovereignman.com/correspondents/republicans-to-ashes-or-why-chile-might-be-the-best-country-in-the-world/

[Mercury]

Demographics of Chile:


Chile is a multiethnic society, which means that it is home to people of many different ethnic backgrounds. As a result, the people there usually treat their nationality as a citizenship, but not an ethnicity.

As in other Latin American countries, in Chile, from the onset of Spanish colonization and settlement, race mixing or mestizaje was the norm rather than the exception. Today, ethnic and racial self-identities are highly fluid and can differ between persons of the same family, including siblings of the same parentage. It is dictated not only by strict physical appearance, nor more loosely by ancestry (actual or presumed), but by cultural patterns, social class, wealth and access, language, and prevailing biases of the era. One social study conducted by Francisco Lizcano from UNAM suggested that people of European self-identity made up 52.7% of the population and that Mestizos made up 44% of the population.[6] Another social study suggested a self-identified white majority that would exceed 60% of the Chilean population.[7][8] However, a genetic study conducted by the University of Chile found that within the Chilean population, 30% are of European descent and Mestizos with mostly European ancestry are 65% of the population.[9]

European and, to a lesser extent, Middle Eastern emigration to Chile, chiefly during the second half of the 19th century and throughout the twentieth, was the most important in Latin America after emigrations to the Atlantic Coast of the Southern Cone (that is, to Argentina and southern Brazil).[10][11][12]

The Afro-Chilean population has always been tiny, reaching a high of 2,500 people during the colonial period; their current percentage of the population is less than 0.1%.[13] According to the 2002 Census, 4.6% of the Chilean population considered themselves indigenous.[14]

[European Loyalist]

It is a beautiful country.

One of my TA's (a native of Bulgaria) did her MA in Santiago and she wants to move back there after she finishes her PhD.

[Bard]

It looks like a nice country, and its economy will certainly improve, but the demographics are not too encouraging.

[Mercury]

It looks like a nice country, and its economy will certainly improve, but the demographics are not too encouraging.

Compared to other Latin American nations it's not so bad. Chilean mestizos are actually more like Castizos.

[Albion]

It's nice but still has a fair few problems. Besides, I can buy a little rural property in Loire Atlantique for the price of a terrace in England without having to go so far away from kin.
Being within driving distance of England and in easy distance of much of Europe is why I'd prefer France personally.

They don't need any more English there though, so Slovakia looks nice too.

Personally I'm hoping to stick with England. Property prices will have to fall eventually and that's when I'll grab a place in the countryside and establish my orchard. ;)

[European Loyalist]

Personally I'm hoping to stick with England. Property prices will have to fall eventually and that's when I'll grab a place in the countryside and establish my orchard. ;)

One of our neighbours of my families farm/rural property has a semi-commercial apple orchard. They sell apples but also make a bunch of stuff with them, like cider and apple pie. It's an interesting business to get into.

We also have some apple trees but we mostly leave the apples for the deers :D

[Phil75231]

Chile today is California 70 years ago, it seems. Also true in one terrifying way, too - earthquakes! The most powerful quake since accurate seismic records have been kept happened in Chile - a 9.5 on May 22, 1960.

[StonyArabia]

Yes Chile has largest amount of Palestinians outside of Palestine, this where most of their Middle Eastern immigrants came from and are quite integrated into Chilean society.

[SilverKnight]

Beautiful, Chile and Costa Rica are both prosperous nations and on the rise fast.

[Gamera]

Beautiful, Chile and Costa Rica are both prosperous nations and on the rise fast.

Most Peruvians dislike Chileans, however I see those two countries as an example for the rest of Latin America in several aspects.

[zack]

Most Peruvians dislike Chileans, however I see those two countries as an example for the rest of Latin America in several aspects.

Peru is also growing extremely fast.

The future of the western hemisphere is in Latin America i believe.

[Gamera]

Peru is also growing extremely fast.

The future of the western hemisphere is in Latin America i believe.

Economically yes, but we're still quite far from countries like Chile and Costa Rica.

[Óttar]

What about Argentina?

[Incal]

What about Argentina?

Socialism is killing it, but its beautiful women compensate it.

[SilverKnight]

Most Peruvians dislike Chileans, however I see those two countries as an example for the rest of Latin America in several aspects.

I think it's all due to the fact that they had mayor wars in the past as you know, and then this has escalated to conflicts with each other, plus lets not forget that there are many Peruvian immigrants in Chile so they might feel a some bias towards them.

[Black Sun Dimension]

What about Argentina?

Argentina has everything it needs to become a prosperous country:

-Lots of land (8th largest country in the world) and natural resources
-A nice climate, good for agriculture and self suficiency
-An educated population
-Modern infraestructure
-Ethnic pride

The negative side of Argentina are its shitty politicians and corruption.

Chile is nice but it's a boring country, in every aspect. If it werent for the earthquakes and the miners I dont think anyone would know it existed.

[Incal]

Chile is nice but it's a boring country, in every aspect.

Exactly. The average chilean is a boring person, nothing against them, I don't share the general dislike most peruvians have towards them and I have always been treated nicely by chileans I met. They are pretty organized, progressive, hardworking, etc but when it comes to attitude and stuff, they lack that 'spark' most LatAms have. Some chilenas are really fun tho :D

[Feral]

The negative side of Argentina are its shitty politicians and corruption.


Sorry to interrupt and make an off-topic comment. But I'm sadly agree with this. Although is not purely fault of the politicans, most argentinians are ignorants about what politics are and how important it is. This pseudo-democracy teach us, by not teaching us, to be blind with a lot of important stuff.
If the people have proven to be functional, there is a good chance to get a job. But that doesn't mean most of the population are truly educated; In my opinion, most of argentinians lacks of culture in general. The educational system is quite antiquated. It's hard for a lot of kids to adapt to it; Education should be guidance, not just conditioning. Because of this, education in Argentina is more about having luck and will, than anything else. And sadly, it's a "every man for himself" in almost everything.
And the ethnic pride is quite cuestionable in most of the cases. As an argentinian I believe there's a lot that needs to improve (and not just economically); But a lot of people, mosty politicians, won't let it happen --they appreciate too much the profit they get from it.