In this hypothetical question, even countries with no official immigration system are a possibility.
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
netherlands
bike infrastructure, loose psychedelics regulations
The Netherlands
Since this question is hypothetical, I can just assume what I read on Wikipedia and other sources are correct and it indeed is a free country.
The only other country I know would be a rather good fit for me would be Austria. Not because of its politics but because I enjoy the landscapes and the language.
I don’t know enough about countries more politically in line with my views. They’re always sabotaged by foreign powers so it would probably be less comfortable than where I am now (Sweden).
Edit: I might be rather content in Scotland if they were to ever regain independence. The UK gives the impression of being one step ahead of Sweden in the dismantling of their welfare state, so unfortunately I wouldn’t consider that an option right now. Aside from that, I do like the landscapes and accents of northern England.
Out of the loop, is Sweden dismantling their welfare state? I thought the Swedish social democracy was doing pretty well.
Pressure from the right has resulted in a lot of compromises and our social democratic party has become more or less centrist. Sweden has been a neo-liberal country for a while now.
I’m disabled, and the lack of support and resources has me living entirely dependent on my partner. No social or economical assistance whatsoever because of how hard they try to find any details they can use to disqualify you.
canada
Japan. The language is flexible, sound so good and their writing is so beautiful.The food is colorful and delicious. But their politics about immigrants and other stuff are awful.
Apparently Japanese is one of the hardest languages to learn for English-only speakers (harder than Chinese), and my own experience with Chinese can tell you that the writing system is extremely hard to learn and there are no clues from the spoken language that can help you figure out how it’s written. Obviously it doesn’t affect a hypothetical scenario, but since you mentioned the language I thought it’d chime in. No argument that the Japanese language is pretty though.
I just like to think Japanese is easy. There are paterns for the presence of kanji in words, for example: 漫画, 絵画 and 映画 or 楽しい and 音楽. The words sharing the same kanji have related meanings.
Canada, Ireland or Scotland if they leave UK
i think i shall go to somewhere with fast post system.
China, of course.
Interestingly, I can in theory move back to China despite no longer being a citizen because I have a Chinese birth certificate, but I can’t read and write Chinese so I doubt I’d succeed there 🤷
Apparently a lot of countries do this, where they will reinstate your citizenship if you were born there, or at least you don’t have to go through the normal immigration process.
Taiwan would be indeed an interesting option if it wasn’t for the constant threat from the CCP :p
