In South Korea, the elderly live in a state of perpetual fear. “What if the National Pension runs dry?” “If you don’t have $750k in retirement savings, you’ll end up picking up cardboard on the streets.” Even the youth spend their prime years obsessed with “preparing” for a retirement that seems to never arrive. But the life of a 75-year-old former math teacher I met in Gori, Georgia, tells a different story—a story of Sovereign Independence.
The conclusion is simple: When the state limits itself to maintaining basic order, a market emerges spontaneously. And it is this very market that allows the elderly to lead autonomous, purposeful lives. For the final years of life to be truly peaceful, the taxes, regulations, and artificial labor costs justified in the name of “democracy” must be slaughtered.
1. The Unregulated Pension: A Wild Rental Frontier
My landlady was a math teacher during the Soviet era. Her government pension is a pittance. Yet, she secures a monthly income of 750 GEL ($280)—roughly half the starting salary of a college graduate in Georgia. How? Through an “informal” rental business, leasing a single room to foreigners like me.
The Georgian government does not force her to register with Airbnb. There is no red tape. No “HACCP-level” inspections. She pays a minimal income tax, and the state’s only “job” is to keep the borders open so foreigners can flow in freely.
She speaks no English. I speak no Georgian. Yet, the deal was struck. Where there is supply and demand, the market spontaneously generates a broker. All three parties are satisfied. No one lost—except, perhaps, a government denied its chance to over-regulate.
2. The Zero-Cost BM: Achieving the 99% Margin
Look at the landlady’s balance sheet.
- CAPEX: $0. The house was inherited through three generations since the Soviet era, mortgage-free. Depreciation ended decades ago.
- OPEX: $0. When a lightbulb goes out, she calls her grandson. The “labor cost” is a home-cooked dinner. No one complains.
- Net Profit: Revenue equals net profit. This is a business model with a 99% margin.
3. The Paradox of Regulation: How Korea Smothers Its Own Market
(1) Why is “Unlicensed Rental” a Crime in Korea?
In South Korea, leasing a spare room without “official registration” is a criminal act. The stated justifications are “safety” and “hygiene.” But peel back the skin, and you find the rotting remains of tax collection obsession and the protection of vested cartels. Even more bizarre: In Korean urban areas, hosting locals on Airbnb is strictly illegal. A country where it’s a crime to house your own citizens on your own land—this is a “Galapagos” anomaly rare even by OECD standards. These regulations skyrocket prices and butcher the opportunities of small-scale producers dreaming of a modest $200 monthly income.
The government knows these regulations stifle new markets and hurt both producers and consumers. But they fear the backlash of the “established cartels” (the incumbents with high sunk costs) more than they care about the prosperity of new entrants. So, they demand sprinklers, evacuation kits, and sensors—all requiring a government “stamp” before a single cent can be earned.
The result is predictable: The poor pay more for rent and get poorer. The producer cannot utilize idle assets and fails to create wealth. The culprit is the state, masked in “good intentions,” inflating production costs and banning the freedom to trade at lower prices. The legal risks they tout as a pretext—be it hygiene or safety—can be hedged through private insurance; yet, the state refuses to grant its ‘permission.
(2) The Guardians of Galapagos: Administrative Overreach as a Market Killer
[Registration Fetish: The Digital Panopticon]
South Korea’s administrative power is bloated beyond reason. From age 18, every citizen is assigned a number, fingerprinted, and tracked in real-time. This “National Digital Management System” is efficient for the state but a prison for the producer.
This system creates a pathological fear of “Uncertainty.” A foreigner without a permanent registered address becomes a “threat” to the bureaucracy. The logic of “Who will take responsibility if something happens?” allows a culture of “Safety-First-ism” to slaughter market dynamism. While Korean provinces face total extinction with overflowing vacant houses, the state refuses to follow the “Portuguese Model” of aggressively attracting foreigners to revitalize local commerce.
I have resided in Gori for over seven months without ever needing to step foot near a government office. This stands in contrast to the behavior of South Korean crypto exchanges, which demand identity verification every three months even from a tax non-resident like me.
[The Phantom of Illegal Immigration]
The stated reason for Korea’s hostility toward foreigners is “public safety.” The facts, however, prove otherwise.
- Local Crime Rate: ~3,120 cases per 100k people.
- Foreigner Crime Rate: ~1,384 cases per 100k (less than half of locals).
Incentives make the foreigner “better” than the local. An outsider with no roots and no place to hide faces the ultimate loss upon deportation. This incentive structure naturally enforces “good behavior.”
The real issue is economic. The “Employment Permit System” cuts off supply. Even if someone is willing to work for a lower wage (Subjective Utility), they are barred from the market to protect the “Wage Cartels” built by powerful labor unions. The consumer pays the higher price, losing access to affordable services, while business owners who could have created value through foreign labor simply shut down.
Korean administrative power isn’t protecting safety; it is butchering the consumer’s right to choose and the producer’s right to survive. Let’s be honest. Aren’t many factories, farms, and restaurants in Korea currently run by undocumented foreign nationals? The government is aware of this. If that is the case, why not allow them to stay freely to revitalize the local economy and commercial districts?
(3) The Happiness of the Elderly: Why the Wild Outlives the Protected
The average elderly person in South Korea has no path to survival. The state throws them a $180 basic pension—a pittance that functions as anesthesia while blocking all routes to self-generated value. The sight of an elderly person running a rental business for foreigners or hiring other seniors in a rural city? In Korea, this is an unthinkable hallucination.
Instead, they wither away on park benches, reminiscing about a past that no longer exists, or spend their mornings on free subways that lead to nowhere. If this is the reality of “30 years of retirement preparation,” it is a tragedy beyond words. The culprit making them poor is the very government that screams for “welfare.” Their web of regulations criminalizes spontaneous economic activity and forces dependency, effectively slaughtering the individual’s “Wild Spirit.” In a regulated society, only the capitalists can vault over the barriers; those without the capital to clear the hurdles are disqualified from the game before it even begins.
The landlady in Gori is different. She negotiates with brokers. She deals with foreigners like me. She kicks the stray dogs away from her gate. She manages the facility and spends the money she earns with sovereign pride. She is healthy without any artificial “exercise” because her brain and muscles are deployed every single day. When the government stops harassing them, individuals who know themselves best take care of their own welfare.
While the Korean elderly asphyxiate under the name of “protection,” the Georgian elderly thrive thanks to the blessing of “neglect.”
4. Masters of the Clan: How Taxes Slaughter the Dignity of Old Age
(1) The Severance of Assets: The Blade that Turns Descendants into Serfs
South Korean seniors look at their children’s eyes and mockingly call themselves “luggage.” Their children, gears in a high-cost society, have no room to care for their parents; they are already drowning in a battlefield of individual survival. I believe the root of this tragedy lies in the “Triple Bombardment”: Inheritance Tax + Property Tax + Health Insurance Premiums. The state extracts so much that assets must be liquidated. Consequently, children cannot nurture or inherit the means of production. They are forced to become urban wage-laborers.
In Georgia, this “Triple Bombardment” does not exist. A house or an apple orchard built by one generation passes intact to the next. Assets ripen into “family businesses” over generations, serving as the economic gravity that holds families and relatives together. In Korea, with an inheritance tax reaching up to 50%, the asset base is cannibalized with every passing generation. Where the family’s means of production vanish, only the lonely survival struggle of fragmented individuals remains.
(2) The Pain of Unemployment: Youth Without a Foothold
Statistically, Georgia’s unemployment rate is higher than Korea’s. Yet, the youth here are relaxed. At first, I didn’t understand it—how can they be so leisurely while unemployed? It’s because the weight of the fear is different. They have an “Ancestral Foothold” (비빌 언덕). They have homes, vineyards, and wine cellars passed down since the Soviet era. Because the kinship network is alive, unemployment does not mean starvation.
Korean youth are different. The moment they are not “chosen” by a corporation, a “Social Death Sentence” is issued. There is no apple orchard to return to, no family shop to inherit. There is no foothold anywhere. Thus, the same “unemployment” is a rest in Gori but a terror in Seoul.
(3) The Conditions for a Respected Old Age
The landlady bakes bread in a house she has protected since the Soviet era while watching her grandchildren. Her children visit every weekend for her bread, her homemade Chacha (brandy), and her cheese. She enjoys authority and respect as the Matriarch of the clan. She has a clear “Purpose” and controls the assets at the center of her relationships. Living such a sovereign life, she never truly ages because she is perpetually filled with vitality.
Meanwhile, the Korean government strips the elderly of their means of production and injects them with the anesthesia of basic pensions, isolating them from their families. Who is the real criminal making old age miserable, dissolving families, and robbing seniors of the respect they deserve? It is the state that criminalizes the transmission of production.
5. Conclusion: The Market’s Neglect is Warmer than the State’s Protection
(1) The Mask of Benevolence
The state collects taxes but never works efficiently. No bureaucrat strives for capital efficiency in a project where their own skin isn’t in the game. Even the leftists who shout about “human rights” and “welfare” change once they open their own shops. They split shifts to avoid weekly holiday pay and terminate contracts before two years to avoid severance pay. The moment their own money is on the line, their true nature emerges. They aren’t “evil”—they are simply responding to incentives. You can only act “generous” with other people’s money. We must discard the delusion that the state is either benevolent or competent.
(2) Spontaneous Order
The Georgian government has no inheritance tax, no property tax, no income tax (on most levels), and no suffocating barriers to entry. In this administrative vacuum, the Spontaneous Order of the market has rushed in. Ironically, even in a former Soviet state where Stalin was born, a market flourishes. Here, 70-year-olds negotiate with brokers and manage their reputations with neighbors. Sovereignty over one’s own life maximizes dignity and happiness. This is “Real Welfare,” bloomed in the wild without the iron bars of regulation.
(3) The Warden Named “The Paternal Overseer” (Jam-Papa)
The comfortable retirement promised by the state is a lie. Even now, the system is unsustainable without astronomical debt. And has the life of the Korean elderly truly become serene in exchange for that fake promise? They have nothing to do but kill time in park pavilions. They see their children once or twice a year.
South Korea’s elderly poverty rate is the highest in the world. What if the government hadn’t forced them to sell the assets they built over a lifetime through inheritance and property taxes? What if they hadn’t provided “welfare” but instead encouraged producer innovation while keeping prices low? The entity dissolving families, murdering respected old age, and castrating the power of self-survival is the very person Korean masses call “Jam-Papa,” appealing for more “rations” (redistribution).
“The government is greatest when it does nothing.” It’s an idea from 2,000 years ago. It remains the only truth today.
For more,
- See: [An article on the importance of inheritance of the means of production]
- See: [🇬🇪 The Dancing Milk Prices: Why a “Weak” Government Makes Us Happier (Field Report)]
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