More than anything else, attracting rich foreigners to poor countries is a business model for local elites. Poor countries nowadays have a competitive edge in trading in freedom. It is something local elites in poor countries can sell to rich people in developed countries where freedom is increasingly curtailed.
Local elites can sell life in safe enclaves of not-so-safe countries if, at the same time, there is a high degree of personal freedom, or an absence of liberty-restricting laws.
This doesn’t have to benefit local poor populations, or if it does, then only on a superficial level. It is not about local or national development.
In the world today, if the elites of a poor country want to attract foreign money, they may consider attracting foreign people with money.
If local elites make a country as attractive as possible to rich foreigners, they will come, even if it costs them more money than being somewhere else. After all, money is what they have, and they can’t take it with them when they die. Therefore, the idea is to be an attractive destination, and then to let them pay substantially for being there.
The idea is not new. Switzerland, which some 200 years ago was a relatively poor country in Europe, thrived on it when it became a favorite destination for the rich from imperial powers such as England and France. And in Switzerland, they remain, to this day, more concerned about attracting rich foreigners than the factories owned by rich foreigners (they don’t mind the offices, though).
But more can be done to attract rich foreigners than what the Swiss have practiced for more than a century. This is something that, on the other hand, would have made little sense some 100 or 200 years ago.
A country that in today’s world wants to draw rich foreigners should not just be attractive, but sexually attractive. This recommendation would have been meaningless some 100 or 200 years ago because much of the world was not as heavily sexually regulated as it is today.
Yes, in Victorian Britain (and in Britain ever since), sexual conduct was regulated to a considerable extent. And yes, in many Islamic communities even centuries ago, the same can be assumed. But for much of the rest of the world, sexual conduct, as long as it was not violent, was of little interest to governments.
This doesn’t mean that these societies were sexually freewheeling. While there were fewer government-issued limitations, nature imposed its own in the form of hardship and disease, and a low level of self-awareness meant that people were restricted by beliefs in gods and ghosts.
Today, governments concern themselves with the marriage and divorce behavior of citizens, and with whether a married person can have sex with somebody else. Governments also regulate the age of consent and which age discrepancies constitute a criminal act. Governments also go to great lengths to evaluate the conditions under which people in a sexual relationship exchange material items.
Furthermore, government policies in an increasing number of countries undermine the privacy of sexual relationships, actively by spying on citizens and passively by allowing unrestricted press coverage of people’s private lives, thus inciting sexuality-based hatred on a mass scale.
Hand in hand with all of the above goes the erosion of the sovereignty of an increasing number of smaller countries. Not only do larger Western countries pass and enforce ever more extraterritorial laws dealing specifically with sexual conduct, but the police forces of Western countries are also, to an ever-larger degree, directly involved in prosecuting their citizens in poorer countries for breaking the laws of their home countries, rather than the laws of the country where they are being prosecuted.
A business model for local elites in poor countries could be to attract comparatively wealthy foreign residents by providing an environment that is best suited for an optimal sexual experience. Wealthy foreign residents could pay substantially for the privilege of being there.
The country should not be a direct democracy where envy toward rich foreign residents could be exploited by local populists.
Agents of moral imperialism should not be allowed to operate within the country: no foreign NGOs, no UN, and no foreign police.
The press should be kept under control. The press should be held responsible for any unfavorable social conditions it causes through irresponsible reporting.
Permits to stay for foreigners involved in religious activities should not be renewed.
Apart from legislation on violent sexual offenses, other sexual legislation should be kept at a minimum.
Allowing marriages at a local registrar without requiring any information other than the names of the two people who want to get married would be attractive.
Allowing divorces by any party appearing before the registrar and stating the wish that a previously registered marriage be dissolved would be attractive, too.
All necessary measures to ensure sexual health within the population increase a country’s overall attractiveness. For governments that have the will to do so, the technologies are readily available to keep sexually transmitted infections at near-zero levels.
All birth control methods could be made available free of charge. Other healthcare must not be free.
No commercial nightlife (brothels, nightclubs, sex bars) should be allowed. They would not attract high-quality foreign residents, but only lowbrow individuals. However, other entertainment venues where people can mingle and start sexual relationships should not be restricted.
No artificial limitations on the extent to which men and women engage in sexual relationships for material benefits are needed. It is natural that in a sexual relationship, the wealthier partner provides material support for the less wealthy partner.
The business model outlined here should make it easy, but expensive, for foreigners to become permanent residents.
Foreigners could be allowed to run businesses under low, flat taxes categorized by the kind and size of the business.