As someone who recently did permanently move to another country (and previously lived for work reasons on nearly all continents of this world at least for 6 months+ ), I thought about this a lot.
And the Netherlands came up pretty low on the list ;) Overpopulated, relatively high living expenses and high climate change related risk factors. The weather is also really terrible (warmish long winters, that are just grey and rainy).
Pretty high on the list are legal considerations. If there is no easy way to get naturalized or some other realistic way of attaining legal rights similar to a native, your life is going to be pretty difficult (unless you are a highly skilled foreign expert that was specifically invited to live in the country). So if you are a EU citizen, look for EU countries. Countries with official immigration policies like Canada / Australia can be options, but you have to jump through a lot of hoops to get accepted. Easier might be if you have a spouse from the country and they offer fast-track citizenship…
Political reasons (short of actual dictatorships) are not so much about ideological considerations, as you as an foreigner will always be a bit on the side of things, even if you attain voting rights and such. This is both because locals will always consider you a foreigner and more importantly you yourself will always see politics differently than in the country you grew up in IMHO. But it is worth looking for countries where the governments don’t have a recent history of complete f*ckups (example Spain or UK).
But really right now the most important factor you should think about is CLIMATE CHANGE. And I don’t mean that primarily in actual natural risk factors like hurricanes or droughts, but in human factors on how the population will react and how well they are prepared for it. For example countries highly dependent on food imports (example Japan) will face serious issues in a few years and already expensive food will become an every day problem for you. Or countries with likely high immigration pressures, how will the native population react? Will they turn against all foreigners? Or agriculture, is it mainly rain-fed and will face serious disruptions because of changing weather patterns? Yes for a while a rich country will be able to offset such problems, but they will compound over time and have highly undesirable political side effects. Also don’t think things like ocean level rise are too slow to have an effect on your lifetime. Long before the average ocean level rises to a level that is becomes a problem, stuff like surge-floods and salt-water intrusion become an issue in costal areas.
P.S.: No I will not tell which place I moved to. I prefer it to stay somewhat of a secret tip for people that do the above research :p
As someone who recently did permanently move to another country (and previously lived for work reasons on nearly all continents of this world at least for 6 months+ ), I thought about this a lot.
And the Netherlands came up pretty low on the list ;) Overpopulated, relatively high living expenses and high climate change related risk factors. The weather is also really terrible (warmish long winters, that are just grey and rainy).
Pretty high on the list are legal considerations. If there is no easy way to get naturalized or some other realistic way of attaining legal rights similar to a native, your life is going to be pretty difficult (unless you are a highly skilled foreign expert that was specifically invited to live in the country). So if you are a EU citizen, look for EU countries. Countries with official immigration policies like Canada / Australia can be options, but you have to jump through a lot of hoops to get accepted. Easier might be if you have a spouse from the country and they offer fast-track citizenship…
Political reasons (short of actual dictatorships) are not so much about ideological considerations, as you as an foreigner will always be a bit on the side of things, even if you attain voting rights and such. This is both because locals will always consider you a foreigner and more importantly you yourself will always see politics differently than in the country you grew up in IMHO. But it is worth looking for countries where the governments don’t have a recent history of complete f*ckups (example Spain or UK).
But really right now the most important factor you should think about is CLIMATE CHANGE. And I don’t mean that primarily in actual natural risk factors like hurricanes or droughts, but in human factors on how the population will react and how well they are prepared for it. For example countries highly dependent on food imports (example Japan) will face serious issues in a few years and already expensive food will become an every day problem for you. Or countries with likely high immigration pressures, how will the native population react? Will they turn against all foreigners? Or agriculture, is it mainly rain-fed and will face serious disruptions because of changing weather patterns? Yes for a while a rich country will be able to offset such problems, but they will compound over time and have highly undesirable political side effects. Also don’t think things like ocean level rise are too slow to have an effect on your lifetime. Long before the average ocean level rises to a level that is becomes a problem, stuff like surge-floods and salt-water intrusion become an issue in costal areas.
P.S.: No I will not tell which place I moved to. I prefer it to stay somewhat of a secret tip for people that do the above research :p