Choosing a place to live

Discussion started by Benjamin Davies

I am approaching a point in my life where I will soon have the financial freedom to choose where in the world I live. I want to discuss various criteria for criticising different places. I am currently a citizen of New Zealand and Britain.

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Benjamin DaviesOP, 12 days ago·#2288

I want superior water quality for drinking, bathing, etc.

This means I need to live somewhere sufficiently advanced to be able to provide and service high quality reverse-osmosis water filters. Otherwise I would need to be somewhere that I can directly access spring water, which I think is much more difficult.

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Benjamin DaviesOP revised 11 days ago·#2295

I could have multiple homes around the world that I move between throughout the year. This way I can make the most of geographical and seasonal advantages of different places.

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Benjamin DaviesOP, 11 days ago·#2290

I want to live close to thriving cities (say, no more than 60 minutes away on an average day).

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Benjamin DaviesOP, 11 days ago·#2291

I want access to good quality food, particularly good quality meat, dairy, and fruit. Ideally the place I live has a growing culture of eating well (for example, in Austin, many restaurants are now making it a point not to use any seed oils in their cooking.)

Dennis Hackethal’s avatar
Dennis Hackethal, 11 days ago·#2297

You may want to check out Instagram account jacbfoods. He used to be opposed to seed oils, but when he got his master’s degree in dietetics, he changed his mind.

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Benjamin DaviesOP, 11 days ago·#2302

Thank you for sharing. Skimming his content, I’m not finding any criticisms of the biological explanations I currently hold that reject polyunsaturated fats. I will dig deeper later on.

I haven’t yet found good criticisms of Ray Peat’s ideas regarding unsaturated fats, so those are the ideas I am currently living by.

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Benjamin DaviesOP revised 11 days ago·#2298

I want to live in places that are mostly sunny, most of the time. This is for health reasons.

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Benjamin DaviesOP, 11 days ago·#2293

I want to live somewhere with a more libertarian culture than average. I want to live somewhere where property rights are respected more than average, and people are left alone by the government more than average.

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Benjamin DaviesOP, 11 days ago·#2294

Ideally I would live at some altitude, for health reasons.

Dirk Meulenbelt’s avatar
Dirk Meulenbelt, 9 days ago·#2341

Switzerland near the Italian border might work.

Dennis Hackethal’s avatar
Dennis Hackethal, 9 days ago·#2342

If America is an option (you mention Austin), the non-coastal Western US could work.

A lot of those states get good water from the Sierra Nevada or the Rocky Mountains.

Those states have either no or low state income tax and largely leave residents alone. (For example, the difference between CA and NV during Covid was night and day.)

Southern NV gets a lot of sun throughout the year. NV has no state income tax.

I’ve heard good things about the area surrounding Las Vegas, though I haven’t been myself.

New Mexico could be good for high altitude (I think).