Eliminated Variables

Systems reveal themselves through exit costs. Stay and watch extraction continue, or leave and measure what you lost against what you kept. The calculation isn't universal. It's personal. What I can afford to lose isn't what you can afford to lose. What binds you might not bind me. The structure only becomes visible when you test it.

I tested it. The cost of remaining in Europe was quantifiable, half my income disappeared into systems I wouldn't access, programs I didn't request, insurance against risks I'd already mitigated through competence. The cost of leaving was different. Less financial, more structural. Distance from family, permanent foreigner status, shallow relationships in every location, cultural disconnection, inability to participate in events that require physical presence. I chose the second set of costs because they were more tolerable than the first.

That choice isn't available to everyone. I know that. People with sick parents, custody arrangements, professional credentials that don't transfer across borders, language limitations, health conditions requiring specific healthcare systems, they can't make the same calculation. Their constraints are different. The exit isn't blocked by lack of will. It's blocked by circumstances that don't yield to preference. I had no dependents, portable skills, functional English, decent health, no legal obligations tying me to territory. That's not virtue. It's circumstance that permitted choice.

The accusation arrives anyway. Privilege. Class blindness. Ignoring structural inequality. Fine. I'm not prescribing universal behavior. I'm describing one path that worked under specific conditions. The model doesn't scale. It can't. If everyone with marketable skills left high-tax jurisdictions, those jurisdictions would collapse or adjust. The whole structure depends on enough people staying, continuing to fund the systems, accepting the extraction as inevitable. I'm not claiming moral superiority for leaving. I'm claiming better math.

People interpret this as coldness toward those who can't leave. Wrong reading. It's acceptance that different circumstances produce different options. A single parent with two children and aging parents can't relocate to Southeast Asia and operate from hotel rooms. The costs they'd incur, family disintegration, guilt, severed support networks, exceed any financial benefit. Their optimal choice is probably to stay and optimize within constraints. Mine wasn't. The difference isn't character. It's situation.

The family cost gets mentioned but not explored. That's deliberate. Exploring it would require emotional processing I don't perform publicly, narrative arcs I don't construct, reconciliation I haven't achieved. The distance costs something. I know it costs something because people mention it, because holidays reveal the gap, because certain conversations can't happen across time zones and video calls. But measuring that cost against financial independence and geographic freedom produces the same answer every time. I'd choose the same trade again.

That's not denial. It's preference. Some people can't tolerate distance from family. It produces psychological damage that outweighs financial advantage. For them, staying near family is correct even if it means higher taxation, lower income, geographic restriction. Their hierarchy of values is different. I'm not arguing they're wrong. I'm saying my hierarchy produced departure, and the costs incurred were acceptable relative to costs avoided.

The emotional flatness isn't suppression. It's accurate reflection of how I experience the trade. I don't feel profound loss. I feel mild inconvenience when coordination becomes difficult, slight absence during events I can't attend, occasional curiosity about how people have changed. But nothing approaching regret. If that seems impossible, if it reads as denial or emotional damage, that's interpretation I can't control. The internal experience doesn't match what observers expect. I'm not performing grief over a choice I'd remake identically.

Structural inequality exists. Obviously. People born into poverty, unstable regions, oppressive governments, discriminatory systems, they're operating under constraints I never faced. My ability to leave Europe and establish income streams from Asia required education I accessed cheaply, infrastructure that functioned, legal frameworks that permitted movement, currency that held value. That's not replicable for someone born in a collapsing state with no passport and no internet access. I'm not claiming otherwise.

But pointing out privilege doesn't invalidate the underlying analysis. High taxation still extracts value. Forced redistribution still creates dependency. Package deals still obscure true costs. Those mechanisms operate regardless of who's analyzing them. The fact that I could leave doesn't mean the system functioned well. It means the exit was available to people with certain resources. That's information, not justification.

The critique wants me to either universalize the model or abandon it as elitist. I'm doing neither. It worked for me. It would work for others with similar circumstances, portable skills, no dependents, tolerance for displacement, low overhead requirements, ability to function in English or learn local languages. That's not everyone. It's not most people. It's a subset. I'm part of that subset. The model describes what that subset can do, not what everyone should do.

Some will read this as lack of solidarity. Correct. I'm not carrying weight for others. I'm not funding systems because collective responsibility demands it. I'm paying for what I use, refusing what I don't, optimizing for my situation. That's not noble. It's self-interested. The entire structure is self-interested. People who stay and pay taxes aren't doing it from altruism. They're doing it because leaving costs more than staying, because their constraints don't permit exit, because they've calculated differently. Everyone's optimizing. I'm just explicit about it.

The accusation of coldness toward family loss assumes I should feel what I don't feel, or that admitting absence of feeling constitutes psychological damage. Maybe it does. Maybe sustained geographic isolation produces emotional numbing I can't self-diagnose. Or maybe I genuinely value autonomy over proximity, prefer weak ties over strong obligations, function better with distance than closeness. I can't determine which from inside the experience. The external judgment doesn't change the internal reality. Distance costs something. That cost remains acceptable. The trade persists.

The model has weak points. It requires circumstances most people don't have. It produces isolation some people can't tolerate. It trades family connection for financial independence, cultural belonging for geographic freedom, deep relationships for transactional clarity. Those aren't minor costs. For many people, they're prohibitive. I'm not denying that. I'm saying I paid them and kept operating.

This isn't scalable advice. It's documentation of a specific path under specific conditions. The lesson isn't "everyone should leave." The lesson is "measure your actual costs against your actual constraints and choose accordingly." Some will calculate toward staying. Some toward leaving. Some toward partial compromise, lower cost cities within the same country, remote work that permits geographic flexibility without full displacement, reduced consumption that creates savings without relocation. Each version carries different costs. None are wrong. They're just optimized for different variables.

The machinery continues without resolution. Distance persists. Family remains distant. Obligations stay eliminated. Overhead stays low. Autonomy remains purchased. The costs don't disappear. They just remain more tolerable than the alternative. That's all.