Vote with Your Residency: The Expat's Voice 🇳🇮

[@ScottAlanMillerVlog]

We often think of being an expat as being a statement about or to where we end up. But in reality, it's often a strong vote of no confidence, an act of giving up or desperation, with the place that we are leaving. Have you considered becoming an expat as an act of policital expression? Are politics or a lack of voice in your community (or maybe just a community that doesn't share your values) contributing to your interest in looking abroad? Or are you considering moving abroad for solely other reasons?

[@BbTenn]

Politics definitely plays a major role in my decision about where I to live. Ideally, I would love for government to make so little difference to my life that I would rarely have to think about politics. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.

[@kevinadams9468]

"Voting with your feet" is the most powerful, individual statement a citizen can make.

[@muradhasanjoy19]

What an empowering perspective on expat life! It's a great reminder of the impact we can have when we 'vote' through our residency and lifestyle choices.

[@janetsweeney1574]

I tell everyone I came here for the weather, number one. And I hoped I could stay, for the weather and the low cost of living, looking towards retirement. Then I found a second husband I didn't know I needed, and a good online job so I could have a nice place to live and some good food, plus live music for fun. But now I do hope I don't need to go anywhere else because moving with a dog and 10 cats is hard to coordinate! 🙃 (I also watched until the end, Scott)

[@deanna3277]

Hi Janet, haven't seen you since the bus tour to Esteli, maybe 9 or 10 yrs ago. Not too many of us still here. Hope your doing well!

[@lananoble5801]

Similar to people who have chosen to live in remote areas

[@JoeClara]

Scott, we recently spent 10 days traveling Nicaragua with friends in a rental van. We went to MANY popular locations throughout the country. Spent time in Managua, SJDS, Granada, Esteli, Jinotega, Masaya, Rivas, Ometepe Island Diriamba + many small towns along the way. We were able to see many national parks and volcanos as well. We noticed food, services, lodging and tours were relatively inexpensive. No Leon or Matagalpa on this trip since the non stop rain hindered some of our travel plans. Years of watching your channel prepared us well for what to expect. I do agree that Granada and SJDS has many expat enclaves, probably not my preference if I had to live there. I loved the north region the most. Esteli and Jinotega were so cool. I’m sure Matagalpa is also awesome. We do plan to make another visit in 2025. The food was so good and fresh. We were spending on avg $3.50 for Nica breakfast with coffee. Between $4-8 for lunch/dinner plates. Fancy coffee shops were much cheaper than the US, $3 for a large fancy latte. If you want to eat fancy for a nice dinner it is substantially cheaper than US. For example, we ate at Los Ranchos Steakhouse 5 ⭐️ in downtown Managua. $16 for an amazing steak dinner. steak dinner, appetizers, bottle of wine, dessert and coffee my wife and I paid a total of $65. We felt very safe throughout the entire country. Nicaraguans are welcoming and eager to make you feel at home. Next time we visit we will make it a point to reach out to you. We owe you more than a coffee.

[@doddulrich4129]

Thank you for the 'validation'. Our plan, to leave Canada gives me feelings of guilt. Joking, not joking, I tell my friends "Sorry. Your taxes will need to increase just a little more, as I won't be contributing any longer."

[@1stLukecifer]

“Political impotency” If only there was a pill you could talk to your doctor/electorate to see if Political Erection is right for you. Side effects include: feelings of integration, community, self-esteem, & personal accountability.

[@1stLukecifer]

A Vote of No Confidence is my favorite parliamentary rule; wish it was incorporated in US law making.

[@livingabroadwitheric]

We gotta vote to put more stop signs in downtown areas of Granada and Leon, right? Hahaha 😂😂😂

[@ScottAlanMillerVlog]

We really do.

[@ScottAlanMillerVlog]

And label the one way streets!

You will eventually be unhappy if (1) you are accustomed to attending a City Council meeting to raise your issues, (2) you would attend a public county Board of Supervisor meeting to let your views be considered, (3) you would call either your State or National Senator or Representative about a complaint or request you want their staffs to investigate and respond, (4) if you count on Grand Juries and an independent media to investigate government malfeasance, (5) if you look forward to critical journalism reporting both sides of issues like the League of Women Voters, MADD, etc., (6) the community-based organizations and Special District elected Boards that look out for your interests and provide services (7)if you want to volunteer for an Elections Office or (8) you want to influence your elected school board. Since most US Citizens don't understand local government and how it works, really won't be bothered here. People in the USA who feel disempowered do not get involved inlocal government ...yes, impacting national government is pretty messed up by the eecotral college system gerrymandering and the over influence of paid lobbyists. But local government works..

[@ScottAlanMillerVlog]

Local government sometimes works, but for example, I have a friend who won his local election, but the local municipality just... didn't let him take the position. The vote was ignored because... who is going to stop them? There's little visibility, reporting, or information at a local level. Local politicians often operate with impunity and invisibility. When it works, it works, but it's unique to every locality. But the things that really matter... safety, rights, and most importantly foreign policy, taxes, healthcare, education are 100% out of the control of the voters. What good does getting to complain about a stop sign matter if you are in jail for a law that isn't on the books or you die because no healthcare is provided to you when you need it or you can't influence the local elections because you aren't rich enough to have the idle time to do so? I grew up in a very small town of 450 and my mother was an elected politician. I started getting involved in government at a very, very young age. I knew my state elected officials by name, personally. I've worked for the US Senate office (Schumer's office.) I've seen the total lack of power and influence that even putting in a stop sign means. Seems like "being involved locally" would mean we could do something, But no, goes to the state and there is no influence. Even things like contracts for road repair were opaque and just ways to make money handing jobs to buddies. It's one of the "most local" situations you can imagine, and local influence was pointless. We had no reporting, no agencies, no non-profits, none of those things existed for us. Nor exist today. Maybe Twitter now. But that's all. So from experience, being someone willing to and wanting to be involved in those things in the US.... that's one of the reasons I want out. Zero influence. It feels like in some places it exists, and maybe in some places it does. But it's not consistent or reliable. ANd never is it meaningful.

[@ScottAlanMillerVlog]

MADD is a great example of problems with the US system. A supposed non-profit that claims to be about stopping drunk driving, yet promotes toxic alcoholism and binge drinking (temperance movement has always about religious control of the populace in ways that promotes unhealthy alcohol consumption and organized crime.) It's essentially an arm of organized crime AND it's not truly a business, it's partially funded with tax dollars. It's a government agency doing work almost no voter would accept. That MADD is allowed to operate legally to me is deep seated corruption and something a healthy country wouldn't just refuse to fund, but would censor or ban because it avoids paying taxes while operating against the safety, freedom and interest of the public. Even the founder left long ago because she lost control. After decades, MADD hasn't made drunk driving less in the US. The US continues to keep moderately drunk driving both legal and promoted heavily through government zoning initiatives that the voters rarely get any real say on. Compare to most other countries that avoid MADD-like promotion where drinking styles are healthier, drunk driving is universally a crime and government programs actively promote healthy zoning to avoid the promotion of binge drinking and drunk driving. WHile MADD has, presumably, done some good things, they are also used as an excuse not to do great things. For example, when MADD was formed, BAC limits for DUI was .1, which is insane. MADD pushed for and stands behind a limit of .08, which is ALSO insane and totally incompatible with any actual drunk driving avoidance organization. MADD can't accept .08 and actually be anti-drunk driving. THere are many countries that share the .08, but it is the nearly the highest in the world. MADD is used as an excuse not to lower it to international standards or to even think of going to zero tolerance like Brazil, Colombia or Argentina. Organizations like MADD and the way that they act as unsupervised arms of the federal government to get around voter oversight, media reporting and scrutiny is exactly why I want to be elsewhere. Now of course, for me, I'm not a citizen where I am now so I get no vote at all. It doesn't matter HOW the system works, it's not my system. But in the US, I'm 100% not okay with the "results" of how the system works, regardless of how the sausage is made. I'm not okay with how my tax dollars are spent at a fundamental human rights and ethics level. ANd I have literally zero influence on that, the thing I feel matters most as a voter. The very core of the purpose of a democracy. Instead I have to choose to live in a place that, regardless of how the sausage is made, makes good sausage. Foreign policies and how tax dollars are spent go to good things and make a mostly positive impact. If anything, the US is an example that all those mechanisms 1) are generally fake to make it seem more valid than it is and 2) that whether they are real or not, the result is that they don't help and the system is among the worst in the developed world. In real world testing, all those mechanisms taken together produce the worst results. Now why is that the case? That's a deep dive thing to hypothesize about. My personal guess is because they all are funded by and that means are part of, the government. The government is its own watcher, in most cases. Even if real independent organizations exist, they have no voice as the government controls the "volume" of media out there. The American version of "Freedom of speech" includes the ability for the government or whomever they choose to have unlimited ability to "drown out" any actual voices of oversight.

[@ScottAlanMillerVlog]

I know that there are some local government things here in Nicaragua. I've been invited to go film at some point. I can't get involved, but I'm allowed to document. It would be interesting to see in action. One thing that is VERY different between Nicaragua and the US is scale. In your example, your votes for things in your locality, Broward County, is a vote for a region of 2 million people. Dallas level city / metro votes would be for even larger. NYC or LA or Chicago, even more. That's not the same as, but is very similar to, national votes in Nicaragua. THe mayor of NYC, for example, is the same scale as voting for president in Nicaragua. By US perspective, ALL of Nicaragua is a local election. All the things more local than the national level are hyper-local for the US. For example, a Nicaragua national vote is like a metropolitan area vote or maybe a state vote for many, if not most, americans. Then a departmento vote would be like a county or town vote. The city votes would be like neighborhood elections in the US - city wards or village oversight. It sounds much more local when we describe it in the US. But I'm not sure the granularity is all that different. Maybe Florida has a lot more items on the ballots. In places I've lived as a voter in the US, the line items were few and mostly meaningless. We got little to no insight or say on specific topics, only positions. I have an interesting story on that...

[@ScottAlanMillerVlog]

When I was young, maybe 14, I was the local activist working with the EPA to block nuclear waste dumping under my high school. We worked together and presented to the state and local officials, showed the risks to the water supply for a major region of three million people and risk of exposing Canada as well via Lake Ontario. The federal government argued against us. It was agreed it was dangerous and could not move forward. They secretly dumped the nuclear waste anyway even though it was turned down by the voters. It resulted in two major incidents. One where a truck load of nuclear dust overturned and filled our school yard with low grade nuclear waste. The second was a water exposure in an area the government argued was "below the existence of the water table" where a lake drained into the nuclear waste and created a nuclear sludge in the region. It was cool being hyper-involved with local politics. It also taught be that the federal government was not a democracy, honest, or working for Americans - it was openly an enemy of the populace; and that the entire concept of local politics was a facade to keep people from feeling powerless while in reality, being a placebo.

[@billybussey]

show don't tell. people will be more interested. I love latin america but I need to see it to be interested and watch 38 minutes.

[@janetsweeney1574]

Oh, I'm always interested in anything Scott talks about here. There will be a LOT more of Latin America, I'm sure, so stay tuned!

[@ScottAlanMillerVlog]

I do a video every day, often two. A lot of them show the country / countries. Walking tour of Palermo Norte in Buenos Aires just yesterday. I can't pull off traveling every day unfortunately. And sometimes with topics like this, I'm not sure what to show while covering a very specific topic.

[@BbTenn]

It depends on what you want from any particular video. I enjoy videos that show what Nicaragua has to offer, but I am equally(or perhaps even more) interested in this kind of presentation that is packed with information. I can easily absorb this for 38 minutes and still want more.

[@ScottAlanMillerVlog]

In this case my editing window was very tiny. In most cases when time allows I'm trying to at least have B roll to add during these kinds of videos. But the editing schedule doesn't always allow it.

[@Brent-ox8lk]

I follow Scott for the info, not the scenery. Even though the views in his lovely yard are nice, as are the walkabouts through the barrios.

[@beanis8624]

I can't help but wonder if this is Scott sort of admitting he leans communist ;) Overall good video and I agree with a lot of it. My political philosophy can be summed up with one sentence: "You do not speak for me." When you really think about it, the idea that because your neighbors might all think something is good and desirable they can, morally, impose that on you is something so nonsensical that it would never be considered legitimate unless we were trained from a young age to accept it in government schools. You are right. Voting ultimately means nothing, and that's by design. The only real legitimate vote you have is with your feet. When the US started out, moving around to different states really did mean something. But in the modern era, the federal government is big enough that it matters little.

[@ScottAlanMillerVlog]

Not a good place to live in you lean communist. The communist party here was famously the arm of the US, both currently and the first implementation of communism in the region was the US colony under Walker with the US backed dictator taking complete ownership of all production in the 1800s.