Silk Road forums

Discussion => Legal => Topic started by: SuckDick4Weed on September 21, 2013, 12:12 pm

Title: How do people effectively "live off the grid?"
Post by: SuckDick4Weed on September 21, 2013, 12:12 pm
Just wondering what are the legal implications of living "off-the-grid" First thought that comes to mind is you still need a drivers licence to get around (well I would anyway)

How do people manage things like this?
Title: Re: How do people effectively "live off the grid?"
Post by: nassy on September 21, 2013, 01:08 pm
huh....driving licence!!!!!! you're not off the grid with one of those.

get some huskies and a sled.
Title: Re: How do people effectively "live off the grid?"
Post by: weok83r8fd on September 21, 2013, 03:17 pm
Figuring out ways of getting paid without using the banking system or monitored anything.

Another consideration is living offshore, especially in places that don't care about your presence there (i.e. third world countries).

I.e. A nurse cannot live off the grind
A drug dealer could, depending on how they structure their livelihood

It also depends what you are up to.  If you want to drive around in the USA a bunch in a ferrari your hopes and dreams of being off the grid are pretty low.  Use some common sense, its not hard to figure out.
Title: Re: How do people effectively "live off the grid?"
Post by: thedogg on September 21, 2013, 03:25 pm
You are pretty much stuck on the grid if you have a ssn, drivers license and things like that I would imagine.   Best bet would be to just try to mask your identity irl by giving people a fake name or something.
Title: Re: How do people effectively "live off the grid?"
Post by: dudeism on September 22, 2013, 05:12 am
Fake your own death, obviously.  ::) Bonus points if you attend your own funeral incognito.
Title: Re: How do people effectively "live off the grid?"
Post by: Reason on September 22, 2013, 12:48 pm
huh....driving licence!!!!!! you're not off the grid with one of those.

get some huskies and a sled.

I doubt I could pull this off.  Don't get me wrong, I love dogs...but I also love a roof over my head.  You guys should watch the move "Into the Wild".  That guy was off the grid in a pretty big way....but it didn't end well for him.

I actually did live on the road for a few months, tenting it across the country.  It was really cool for a long time, but you do need a lot of $$ to stay comfortable even then.

:-)

R.
Title: Re: How do people effectively "live off the grid?"
Post by: SynthesisWizard on September 22, 2013, 05:04 pm
Fake your own death, obviously.  ::) Bonus points if you attend your own funeral incognito.
XD , made me laugh.

In my opinion, the best way would be take  a few months to learn some survival skills, perhaps how to live off the land, That way you require less food. You can make shelter, and if you are good very suitable and comfortable shelter actually.

Any money you need would need to be cash in hand, there could be any number of jobs like this, usually trade's, gardening mechanics plumbing etc the usual handyman jobs.

The less electronical things the better, your Driving license would not matter much unless you got pulled over. A fake Id may come in handy sometimes.

Things like that.

SW
Title: Re: How do people effectively "live off the grid?"
Post by: bluegreen23 on September 22, 2013, 08:59 pm
It sorta depends on what you mean by off grid.

If you mean simply not plugged into the power companies or if you mean like a mountain man in no where.

The greatest difficulty in all of this is where to live. You don't have to own property. You could pay rent in cash and that might work, however it seems to me that it's far easier to "disappear" if you owned the land. The only hitch to that is you can't own the land. It would need to be in an off shore companies name that was in a nominees name to pay the taxes on it. Then you take care of your own power and food needs on your property as best you can. everything you have that connects you to the outside world needs to be in an off shore company name. In theory this would include your cable, internet and possibly phone, and of course car/insurance.  Then have to live in a cash world whenever you venture to civilization.

You will need a mail service that can receive all of your mail (preferably 2, one on shore that forwards mail to a second off shore that will scan everything and email you) Tormail was great for this. Not sure what alternative you have now for receiving email and not having the IP tracked.

At this point even with a drivers license and SSN you are pretty far removed. I'm not sure the laws regarding your DL and the address on it at your location. Usually you can get away with just having an old (unchanged) former address on there and leaving it. I'm not sure if it's possible to use a po box or the like for an address. As for the ssn, if you only ever work for cash then it won't be an issue. The tax man may come looking at some point. You will have to still keep up paying taxes. This can be difficult without a bank account depending on which country you are in (did i mention you will have to get rid of your bank accounts, credit cards, etc). It's complicated but if you manage this you might be able to give up citizenship in your home country, as long as you more or less stay on your own land that the offshore company owns. the only issue with this becomes if the law ever shows up you are then an illegal alien.

there's some other things you'll have to deal with along the way. Basically think of yourself removed from society, you can't really do this in any major city, and it won't happen if you don't move far away from your current location. The less contact you have (especially physically) with people the easier this will be simply due to not having questions asked or having little connections to you made. It may also be wise when you do move to tell everyone a different name. perhaps not full name but if you were say  John adam smith, and you've gone by john all your life you might want to be introducing yourself as adam. simple shit like that can help with the day to day of separating your new life/identity and your old on grid life.

Anyways thats the tip of the conversation. There is a lot of planning involved and it's hard to disconnect entirely but with some effort you can sorta slip under the radar.
Title: Re: How do people effectively "live off the grid?"
Post by: SuckDick4Weed on September 22, 2013, 11:58 pm
Reason and SW,

Think I might have to try for a few months to live away. Actually heard about this one guy that hit the road and has been living off roadkill for 15 years. No joke. Don't think I could handle that extreme. I would still be needing some cash flow to keep some basics and just grow most of my own food.
Title: Re: How do people effectively "live off the grid?"
Post by: SuckDick4Weed on September 23, 2013, 12:08 am
bluegreen

You gave the most complete answer so far. I was actually thinking a) work just all cash jobs but this becomes hard to manage b) an offshore account would definitely make it easier for larger purchases such as land, but could you also do the same with an onshore company?

I've also thought about the citizenship thing. Couldn't you claim to be indigenous and born in the country, thus citizenship isn't actually a requirement ?
Title: Re: How do people effectively "live off the grid?"
Post by: bluegreen23 on September 23, 2013, 06:52 am
Working all cash jobs can be difficult on a few levels, if you remain as a citizen then the government will expect that you earn some level of income and therefore have to file tax returns, even if you aren't paying. You could just stop filing and that might be fine for some time, slipping through the cracks in the government machine but eventually your name will show up somewhere saying that you haven't filed. So then they will have to investigate and audit. Even if you don't owe anything at this point due to low level income from low level cash jobs they will most likely try to hit you with some sort of fines. This is more of a financial issue than an "off grid" issue. The government knows you exist now and until a death certificate shows you don't exist they will always assume you do. So even if you were to disappear from the world the government will still assume you are here somewhere.
Another issue in this is who your employer is. The most likely get to write your wages off as a business expense. If you are being paid cash they might have a hard time with that so there is little reason for them to do it.
As for trying to manage the finances of it, that really depends on the jobs, the required income to live the life style you want, and budgeting. For example some very nature orientated people in Cali. decided to grow weed out in the bush and live off of the earnings from that. They also made a very large and conscious choice to live very simple lives. So for them they could (in my mind) probably sustain there lives quite nicely from as little as 1-2 lbs a month. If you want a more extravagant life style or require certain things (medication, a newer car, child care costs etcetc) then your bills obviously go up and so does your potential exposure. Lets face it the DEA isn't likely to be spending tens of thousands of dollars to hunt down a guy that flips a lb or two. Nor is anyone all that likely to rob him, or to violently threaten his business as it's on a small scale, hell even local law enforcement may not really be overly concerned or become aware of the business.  Anyways I'm getting off topic.

So there are a great many things to consider with offshore accounts and a lot of research to be done. I'm far from an expert, I've tried to learn for my own interest and out of a small need to be a little more safe and cautious as business grows for me. But everything that I'm about to say should be taken as an extremely limited understanding of a very large and complex system that can and does change frequently.
That warning aside, if you are a US citizen you are required to report any offshore accounts in your name. Not doing so is breaking some tax law. Most offshore havens seem to cater to tax breaks which you (much like myself) probably don't care about because you're interested in privacy and anonymity which is harder to find and if you are a US citizen extremely difficult to find and to open, especially for a small amount of wealth. Repatriating that wealth is also a problem later on as you need money to live in this world. None the less onward with the sort of answer.

The reason why you want an offshore company is because there are offshore havens that allow for anonymous or near anonymous ownership of a company. In the global world a corporation is considered it's own entity and therefore it can earn an income, own assets, and sell/buy other assets. Now there are difficulties in this and it can get very costly and time consuming but it is the best bet for trying to remove yourself from the government and other peoples radar. You don't own the car, or the land, or the bank accounts etcetcetc. Anyways there's a lot more to it and every step gets complicated. Something as simple as how does this company purchase land, someone at some point has to send money and sign paper work. A nominee director can but there is a cost for that and only certain jurisdictions (countries) allow for nominee directors. There's far to much to try and write here but that is merely an example of how things can still be connected back. The reason you wouldn't want to use an onshore company (especially in the US, EU, Canada, etcetcetc) is that the owner and more importantly the beneficial owner of the company have to be listed. This means that even though onshore company xyz owns the property you are staying on, the companies registry will contain your name. This may be useful on multilevel corporations protecting there assets but it does nothing for you to hide yourself.

To my understanding (again, not an authority on this in any way shape or form) you can't just renounce citizenship. it's more a long process of trading citizenships. There is no unclaimed land left. If you exist you must therefore be a resident of somewhere and a belong to some nation. This way big brother keeps tabs. You may not be a US citizen anymore but it is clearly listed what day your citizenship ended and what your new citizenship is. Then you begin to face the same issues of "going off grid" in that country. If you return to the US you are now going through immigration and all that. The US (and i think most other countries if not all) will not end your citizenship unless you can prove that you are a full time resident of another nation. I think there might even be a time period that you have to live in another country. Or you may need to prove that you have citizenship of another country in order to give up your "home" citizenship.