Haha yeah, but I could do even better:

Tariffs bad because history

Yup, a fire sale for oligarchs.

Nor does the US need to make everything.

The US is a service economy. It makes money through capital and intellectual property. Being the first to innovate means also having the opportunity to wedge yourself as a permanent middle man and charge people around the world to pass go.

Think Uber eats for example. If I order food in Toronto from a Toronto based restaurant fulfilled by a courier in Toronto, 30% of my payment is going to them in silicon valley for managing that order.

Similarly, when you purchase an app on Google or Apple store, they are collecting 30%.

If I am in Norway purchasing a game on Steam from a Norwegian developer, you guessed it, 30% is going to Steam.

This is America's strength now, not making t shirts, shoes or cars entirely domesticallty.

Most of the world was ok with paying the markup for convenience.

Since the US have gone rogue, many are calling for an end for respect to US intellectual property. Perhaps each country should have its own Uber, app store etc so that the cut can stay within our borders.

One case: Uber was charging 30% commission for managing rickshaw rides in India (a country with relatively low purchasing power per capita).

It was only after domestic options like Rapido or Namma Yatri undercut them that they moved to a subscription based model, charging drivers 20 to 40 rupees daily, rather than taking an exorbitant commission of 30% per ride. To India's credit, it has a robust IT sector located in one of its major cities (Bangalore) which helps promote competition in this case.

There is a reason why this is not the case already. It's more expensive.

at this point, visas are very easy to get in general, but Thailand is still one of the easiest and is one of the friendliest and most affordable countries around.

if you're a US citizen, you have visa-free travel in Thailand for 60 days.

if you need a visa, go to the evisa website, thaievisa.go.th, fill out the form, pay the fee, they'll email you the visa in a couple days.

I usually recommend Thailand or somewhere in Southeast Asia as a first destination. good food, great healthcare, cheap living, great people, beautiful environment, and they're very used to travelers so there are local and expat support systems nationwide.

another nice thing about Southeast asia is that there are tons of other friendly places close by.

it's about as easy to live there as anywhere else, but the support systems and the country being very used to travelers might make first time travelers more comfortable.

oh PS thailand has a lot a lot of really good all you can eat buffets for 3 to 10 dollars per person.

I've read in some unsubstantiated comments that the state of the authorities of Hungary is so fucked up, they barely check if you can bribe a family tree researcher to make up some BS that your grandparents were Hungarian.

Pretend they were 1956 refugees that never had papers in the US, find some people who actually got lost in 1956 that have birth certs in Hungary - like maybe killed by the Soviets - learn some elementary Hungarian, be white, and boom, EU citizenship.

I take no responsibility for this harebrained idea and reiterate that this is just some ridiculous thing I read back on Reddit way back when.

Cyprus sells passports, so if you have the money you can instantly become an EU citizen

people usually ship their belongings by sea or air(ocean freight is cheaper and slower, but I'm not sure by how much with Costa Rica being so near) with a company like DHL, I've used them and found them to be a reliable international shipping company, FedEx and UPS are also options.

I wouldn't worry about customs taking your stuff, especially if you have insurance or tracking or anything like that on the ticket, and especially with a wealthier country like Costa Rica where paper trails are more important.

I've actually never heard of customs taking anything legal in real life from anyone who's shipped belongings overseas(my friend's yak jerky got confiscated because it's illegal to import a lot of international meat products into the US) so I personally don't believe customs pocketing things is very common.

Legos aren't apparently valuable on their face and with the paper trail of receipts/documents I wouldn't think you have to worry about anything getting lifted by customs. plus, if you add some fragile notices and insurance on there the agents responsible for transporting the packages will be a lot more careful, for sure.