Technology friendly countries

There are many lists out there that rank countries by various metrics and try to find which ones are the best to live in. Unfortunately, these aren't very useful, because there is heavy bias along political agendas (liberals will rank countries like Sweden highly even though they're objectively shit), censorship due to political correctness, very strong pressure from government propaganda machines to influence results, and much information is either irrelevant to a normal person, or presented in a useless way.

This page attempts to honestly list the meaningful pros and cons of living in various countries, which would relevant to a normal /tech/ user.

Note: Please try to stay objective and impartial, avoid political proselytizing. While political and social climate of a country is important, /pol/ is best kept at /pol/.

North America

USA

• Part of Five Eyes
• Spying, but no censorship
• Decent internet if you're in a good state
  • In many cities ISPs offer fairly high speed internet (50-300 Mbps) but it's very expensive (typically $70/mo with hard/soft caps and shitty laws like having to rent their router or not allowing home servers) and you often get 10% or less of the speed promised
  • In less populated areas it can be very hard to get internet, usually you end up with very expensive and slow satellite internet
  • Some few places like Kansas City or Provo have very nice ISP market (Google Fiber)
• Some states (mostly "developed" liberal coasts, especially dense cities where all the rich elite concentrate) are liberal shitholes with very high tax and fee burden and consequent high cost of living
• Others (midwest, south, rural areas) are very cheap and nice to live in
• Tough tech job market, you compete with strong jobseekers both domestic and foreign (everyone wants to come to America)

Canada

• Part of Five Eyes
• Lower population density
• Even more socialist than US, even more political correctness
• Higher taxes than US
• High cost of living in big cities without correspondingly high income

South and Central America

General trend is low cost of living, low income, welcoming to foreigners. Infrastructure, law, organization aren't great but serviceable. Very comfortable living can be obtained by telecommuting to earn a mediocre First World salary, which is makes you fucking rich by local standards.

Mexico

• Ok internet, worse than USA
• Cheap as fuck
• No censorship

Brazil

• HUE HUE HUE I REPORT U
• Very poor but also very low cost of living
• Very sharp rich/poor divide - you're either in a ghetto or in live like a fabled king
• Growing social divide between elites and common people, the former isolate themselves and treat the latter as if they're not even human

Western Europe

UK

• Part of Five Eyes

Switzerland

• Very nice place to live in, very high standard of living, high tech economy
• Very high per capita income (proportionally huge numbers of rich bankers) but also very high cost of living ($5 for a coke)
• Permissive gun laws
• Swiss are very autistic rulefaggots, even the Germans think they have a stick up their ass
• Swiss don't want immigrants, except maybe if they're African refugees

Scandinavia

All scandinavian countries are very cold and snowy for many months in a year. People spend a lot of time inside. There are often very few hours of daylight. This makes some people very depressed (light has a huge effect on your psychology).

Sweden

• SWEDEN YES

Eastern Europe

Russia

• One of few countries that aren't third world shitholes (eg. have electricity and running water in most places) yet aren't socially dominated by Western progressivism
• No SJW
• Government probably spies on everyone but they only care about going after political opponents
• Economy, rule of law, corruption, infrastructure (having nice stores and decent houses) improved dramatically over last 15 years
• Cheap currency, low cost of living - very nice if you have dollar income
• Very low population density, lots of secluded wilderness
  • Unfortunately such areas are really removed from civilization, it's very hard to obtain modern amenities like internet
• Cheap, fast internet with no caps or retarded restrictions, ISPs don't give a fuck what you do
• Westerners who want to visit require an invitation from a Russian (can usually be bought for a few $100) before they can even apply for a visa

Romania

• God tier internet
• Shit tier government and infrastructure
• Uses Euro unfortunately

Estonia

• God tier internet
• E-government
• Cheap
• Everyone is /g/ as fuck
• Uses Euro sadly

Far East

Japan

• Lightning fast internet, cheap too
• Government has literally no idea how to technology
• Just visit USA sites for uncensored porn
• Piracy is treated seriously, fair number of cases where people got big jail time for torrenting

Singapore

• Monarchic city states, very different political environment than a Western liberal democracy
• Sharp class divide: A few rich Chinese live in very nice apartments, everyone else has trouble affording rent
• Very strict laws, drug offenders get executed, littering can get you jailed
  • Laws are mostly apolitical, concerned with enforcing civilized behavior
  • Government does not tolerate disrespect to itself (such as insulting the King) but otherwise doesn't care much about ideology
• Strong software, banking and biotech sectors. Startups flourish because of favorable legislation.

Philippines

• Muh wheels

Oceania

Australia

• Has Attourney General in charge of metadata laws who gave an infamous "trainwreck" interview showing that he's computer illiterate.
• Shithouse National Broadband Network which is more about political blame than laying fiber optics.
• Part of Five Eyes
  • spies on indonesia
  • spied on east timor and bugged their government's Cabinet. Raided offices of journalists who reported it, cancelled passport of whistleblower so he couldn't travel to court in the Hague.
• Retarded government with insane big brother tendencies
• data retention coming in 2016.
• Pirate website blocking laws very likely in 2015.
• Many attempts at web filtering.
• Absurd censorship laws, like banning small tits in porn because of muh child porn (even if they are clearly adult)
  • .com.au domains cannot host porn either. Abby Winters even left the country.
• Software, games, electronics are insanely overpriced due to shitty tarif system
• Australian iTunes has much higher prices
• It is cheaper to fly to US than buy Adobe software in Australia
• Netflix took until March 2015 to launch in Australia.
• Games banned for sexual or violent content:
  • GTA:SA (Hot Coffee), later re-released
  • Saints Row IV banned for sex and drugs. Edited version was released.
  • Manhunt banned for good.
  • Postal
  • Postal 2
  • Hotline Miami 2
  • Risen. YES! Fucking Risen!
  • Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude. YES! A cartoon comedy game!
  • Phantasmagoria. YES!!! A game from 1995 is STILL BANNED IN AUSTRALIA!!!
  • Witcher 2
  • So fucking many there is an entire wikipedia page
  • An R18+ rating was finally added in 2013, after M15+ being the highest possible classification, yet games are still banned.

New Zealand

• Part of Five Eyes
• Spies on tiny island neighbours for the US
• Military style raid on Kimdotcom as show of force/salad tossing for US.