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Technology friendly countries

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Revision as of 05:35, 5 May 2015 by Echelon1 (talk | contribs) (→‎Mexico)
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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 always rank Sweden at the top of their list despite being 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/.

General indicators

Internet service quality

  • The company running speedtest.net aggregates statistics about internet speed (down and up separately), quality, cost, whether ISPs deliver the rate promised, and so on. The statistics can be viewed by country or by city.

Cost of living

Anglo America

USA

  • Part of Five Eyes
  • The spearhead of international mass surveillance and domestic spying. The US government knows the people you wish you had sex with, which is your favorite hentai fetish and your favorite H-doujinshi, can trace back to you every single shitpost you have written in your lifetime, and knows exactly where you have lived, eaten, studied and worked. Censorship is almost non-existent, but discussing questionable stuff like CP, household pyrotechnics or computer hacking will raise the red flag within the government and could get you in trouble if you're careless.
  • Freedom: Huxleyian dictatorship. You are technically free, but the economy and key institutions like the healthcare system are rigged to make you not free, and the mass media are manipulated to make sure you always believe that's normal.
  • 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

Latin 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

  • Liveable second world country in general, not too bad but there are serious problems you must be careful about in your everyday life.
  • OK internet, worse than USA, but there are never any monthly caps or usage restrictions; TCP port 25 (SMTP) is blocked by default, but you can have it opened if you want your own mail server. At one point you will curse Carlos Slim and his unsurpassed monopoly on telecommunications.
  • You get American prices if you live in a border city (Tijuana, Mexicali, Ciudad Juárez). Elsewhere, prices are higher but sane: as of April 2015, a Samsung Galaxy S5 will cost you $600 dollars in the States and $650 in central Mexico. In Mexico City you will find absolutely everything; in Guadalajara and Monterrey, general stuff is easy to find but specialized stuff (e.g. headphones that are not Beats, Bose or Skullcandy) is much harder to come across.
  • Freedom: Huxleyian dictatorship. You are technically free, but the economy and key institutions like the taxing authorities are rigged to make you not free, the mass media are manipulated to make sure you always believe that's normal, and the elite will ax any threat to the status quo before it rears its head.
  • Tech jobs are in high demand and nobody works them. It's not uncommon for fresh engineering graduates to afford a basic family sedan right off the bat. If you're poor, an engineering diploma is almost literally your ticket to the middle class.
  • American-like mass surveillance is in effect; government has the right to intercept your calls, location, and ISPs must maintain 2-year-long logs. There is some censorship. Anti-establishment social media big shots have been silenced. Government, organized crime and businesses are just the three faces of the elite and mesh together seamlessly, so being the spearhead of a large media attack against any one of these three institutions is likely to get you in trouble. Average joes are usually safe, but if you're doing anything that could draw unwanted attention, pull out your crypto, your Linux and your custom smartphone ROM.
  • Unlike the USA, there is usually little difference between the governments of different states save for hot issues (e.g. abortion is only legal in Mexico City). General political alignment is liberal in Mexico City, center in the North, and conservative in states like Jalisco, Guanajuato and Puebla.
  • SJWs are very active online but are much more focused on hard issues than their First World counterparts. They fucking love their Native Mexican cultures and fucking hate American "culture". Tumblr feminism sometimes rears its head but its focus on retarded First World problems makes it pale before Mexico's Second World problems.
  • Government is serviceable but there is always a streak of corruption on anything but the most basic functions. 2000 pesos can buy your way out of a DUI outside of a sobriety checkpoint. If you have a million pesos, the law is your bitch.
  • Safety is down the shitter and beyond. You have to be always careful at all times.
    • Don't publish your personal data on your social networks. Be careful with what you post there; keep your pictures at a minimum, don't say the places you usually go to, and keep your friend list locked down from other friends. Kidnapper gang stalkers have been known to scour Facebook tracking down the whereabouts of some people, and if they can't get them by themselves they will try to befriend your friends and see who coughs up information about you.
    • Don't trust businesses; you never know if their owners are criminals, have been threatened into collaborating with them, or if some of their key employees are spies or have been sold out. If you're doing slightly advanced shopping (e.g. you're buying a cell phone), one trick that works is to pretend that you're doing it in someone else's name so you can feign ignorance when they ask for your address and phone number.
    • If you have 4000 monthly pesos to spare, consider renting a second apartment in a middle-class-ish place just to have an alternative address.
    • Most cities have people on Twitter that post about current events in the city. It is a very good idea to follow them and check your Twitter before leaving your home, you never know if there's a shooting or a narco-blockade in progress.
    • Trust nobody, not even your friends: don't make announcements that hint about your income level like trips abroad or buying a new car, regardless of whether they're in person or on your social networks, don't go around wearing flashy clothes and drinking expensive shit at expensive bars, and always keep a distant relationship with your peers until you get to know them for at least 2-3 years; you never know who they actually are, what they actually work on, whether they're kidnapper gang spies, whether they make stints on the wrong side of the law, and you know even less about their own friends with whom they probably share information about you. Yes, you will have a very hard time making friends, none of them will be intimate, and all you will know about them will be a few accidental hints about themselves plus the generic, unidimensional façade they will put up for their own safety. Public danger breaks society. Deal with it. (Protip: joining a local niche interest club in your city can go a long way in making friends).
  • Low income, low-ish but rising cost of living. A middle class lifestyle on a rented apartment will usually cost you at least $500 monthly dollars. There are tons of beggars everywhere. A lot of people live off informal employment. Gas is slowly reaching European prices despite being an oil producer. Average citizen debt is rampant among the lower classes.

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

Chile

Argentina

Western Europe

UK

Scotland

Ireland

France

Belgium

Germany

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

Norway

Finland

Denmark

Netherlands

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
  • Freedom: Corrupt dictatorship. Vladimir Putin is either the president or the man behind the president, the worst thing you can do is being the political opponent of a powerful person, and being publicly outspoken against the government or the official ideology can get you in trouble. Personal freedoms are proportional to your money: if you're poor you're not allowed to do anything, but if you have 3 million roubles the law is your bitch.
  • Cheap currency, low cost of living - very nice if you have dollar income
  • Very low population density, lots of secluded wilderness
    • By wilderness we mean wild, wild wilderness. These places are so far away from civilization there are literally no paved roads. Forget modern amenities like non-satellite internet, you're lucky if you buy more than one kind of cheese within 50 miles. Electricity and running water is probably readily available everywhere by now, but this definitely wasn't the case in, say, early 2000s.
    • A few large cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg are hardly any different from a typical western metropolis like New York or London, aside from culture and politics. The prices and cost of living are also very high. Muscovites are infamous in Russia for being extremely rude, but Petersburg is regarded as a very nice place to live.
  • 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
  • Country in general is run by old geezers with literally no idea of how to technology. Old-ass technologies like faxes are still in use. New technologies are for today's kids who are glued to their iPhones.
  • Just visit USA sites for uncensored porn
  • Piracy is treated seriously, fair number of cases where people got big jail time for torrenting
  • SJWs there are those crazy 'murrcan wymyn who like to scribble over themselves and flash their titties to ask people not to look at their titties.

China (mainland)

Hong Kong

Taiwan

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
  • Freedom: Asian dictatorship. Very strict laws with an old-ass justice system. Drug offenders get executed, burglars still have their hands cut off, 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.
  • Cheap.
  • Government
  • If foreign blood, best advice is to stay in places where foreign people reside than in urban places just to avoid any intrusions and risks to get yourself get rekt.
  • Internet is basically below average but more on two local ISP giants, PLDT and Globe (others still pending for information).
  • You can acquire gun license from different cities depending on the city you're staying or living at.
  • There are a flips, particularly the less-informed masses, who are very nice yet dumb somehow; don't even know that some articles are satire written.
  • High population especially when you're sightseeing on many squatter areas in cities.
  • No spying because the police don't know how to do those things unfortunately; still trying to ever since a volunteers from other countries are shutting down and arresting other malicious users who are into CP over the internet.
  • No censorship; [unless the bill is implemented heavily enough https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/04/philippines-inching-toward-censorship]

Oceania

Australia

New Zealand

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