Locos on the Patio

Chilean Chit-Chat
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In honor of CS, who brought us all together over a decade ago, I propose a topic about Chile then and Chile now. And how our golden meeting place in the sky crashed and burned because of a religious zealot… ie) micro/macro?

Could this happen on a larger scale in the future?

Has anyone had good, bad, indifferent experiences with his law firm?

Am I the only one who misses his wit?

How many of us met virtually because of that web site? I chose Chile from several other countries because I saw a refreshing spark of intelligence and independence of thought in those amazing expat forum members who chose to take the road less travelled.

Now that the zealot is poisoning minds in Colombia? Venezuela? can that golden meeting place return with its years of data on every subject imagineable or is it gone forever?

Thank you, lost, for bringing this tattered group back together. (heart emoticon)

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(1) Most of those expats have left (remember the 10 year or even 5 year rule) and the ones planning to come never completed the move.
(2) The lefty ones think we are fachos and can’t stand being in a forum where they are a minority.
(3) I’m sure 18O was a wakeup call/reality check for some as I know one PR who started the process of repatriation the next day.
(4) Also because of 18O and downstream effects, Chile disappeared from the expat build a dream industry’s list of desirable destinations.
(5) And the COVID scam no doubt impacted the expat from the developed world movement as I recall even Charles saying they were mainly doing domestic Chile legal stuff.

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I’ve been in and out of Chile since the 1970s, initially as a journalist. Some American magazines carried my first stories dealing with Chile, and the patagonia.

And I was staying in Providencia on 18-19 October 2019, Ground Zero for the beginning of Red October (not far from Parrilla del Chef, if it matters).

What followed was a series of events that convinced me that this country has no hope of ever being meaningfully successful, save for an improbable coup and 50 years of reprogramming.

Chile simply lacks the will to control its enormous (and increasing) corrupt and criminal nature. And to delinquency we add the measures of stupidity in the Common Citizen, el Fulano en la calle, that resulted in the election of El Merluzo. Though I must say, that election, and the subsequent Boric government, opened the eyes of the chilenitos and the world to finally see and admit just how immensely corrupt the country is, after years of pretending otherwise.

For ineptitude, there has never been the need to doubt.

Quite frankly, in some ways the years of the late seventies reflected a better Chile than what we see today. For a time, there was hope.

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An expat friend’s opinion is that period represented a blip in Chile’s human progress chart, from its normal position at the bottom of the table, where it has languished for the past 100 years or more. Chile never had a Golden Age, and has been steadily reverting to its native state of mediocrity over the past 20 years.

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eeuu, findes and feargle I asked Google “Is chile an good investment?” and got this answer " Chile is highly regarded as one of the strongest investment destinations in Latin America and the country has made progress in facilitating starting business procedures over the last few years by enabling online registration of closed corporations."

Rumor has it that Musk and his bro bought a vineyard for 20 mil US in 2020. His bro is in the restaurant business, both visited in 2017, Musk has been back and forth multiple times, including and since 2020. And Musk does not like Boric so adios to that lefty.

I personally think the southern hemisphere is going to become more attractive as the Northern Hemisphere goes through a long, overdue economic and societal collapse.

Also try asking Chat GPT for 10 reasons to invest in Chie.. no wait, I already did. Here is the answer:
Here are 10 compelling reasons to invest in Chile:

  1. Stable and Transparent Economy

Chile boasts one of Latin America’s most stable and open economies, with strong institutions, low corruption, and a solid legal framework. It’s ranked high in the region for ease of doing business.

  1. Strong Trade Agreements

Chile has over 30 trade agreements covering more than 60 countries, including the U.S., EU, China, and Japan, giving investors access to 86% of the global GDP with preferential terms.

  1. Strategic Location

Positioned as a gateway to Asia-Pacific markets, Chile is ideal for companies looking to operate across both South America and Asia, with modern ports and logistics infrastructure.

  1. Abundant Natural Resources

Chile is the world’s largest copper producer and also rich in lithium, silver, and other key minerals, making it a hub for mining and clean energy investment.

  1. Renewable Energy Leadership

With vast potential in solar, wind, and hydro energy, Chile is leading the region’s energy transition. Its Atacama Desert has the highest solar radiation on Earth.

  1. Growing Tech and Innovation Hub

Chile’s Startup Chile program is globally recognized for supporting entrepreneurs. Santiago is becoming a major Latin American tech and innovation hub.

  1. Sound Fiscal Policy

The country maintains prudent fiscal management and inflation control, supported by an independent Central Bank and long-term sovereign wealth funds.

  1. Skilled Workforce

Chile has a well-educated and highly skilled workforce, with a strong focus on STEM fields, bilingual education, and digital literacy.

  1. Investor-Friendly Regulations

Foreign investors are treated on equal footing with locals, with strong protections for property rights and a clear, streamlined process for setting up businesses.

  1. Sustainability and ESG Focus

Chile is pushing ahead on Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) fronts, becoming a top destination for green investment, including green hydrogen and sustainable agriculture.

And then I asked for 10 reasons to NOT invest in Chile:

Sure — here are 10 reasons someone might be cautious or choose not to invest in Chile, depending on their risk tolerance and investment goals:

  1. Political Instability
    Recent years have seen significant social unrest and political uncertainty, including debates around constitutional reform, which can create unpredictability for investors.
  2. Regulatory and Legal Changes
    Potential reforms in mining laws, labor regulations, and tax policy could affect profitability, especially in sectors like natural resources.
  3. Dependence on Commodities
    Chile’s economy is heavily reliant on copper exports. A downturn in global copper prices can significantly impact the country’s economic performance.
  4. Currency Volatility
    The Chilean peso has experienced periods of instability, which can erode returns for foreign investors.
  5. Environmental Risks
    Chile is prone to natural disasters like earthquakes and droughts, which can disrupt infrastructure and supply chains.
  6. Limited Market Size
    With a relatively small population (around 19 million), Chile offers a limited consumer base compared to larger emerging markets.
  7. High Corporate Concentration
    Certain industries are dominated by a few large players, which can stifle competition and innovation.
  8. Social Inequality
    High levels of income inequality can fuel unrest and hinder long-term economic development.
  9. Pension Reform Uncertainty
    Ongoing debates around the future of the pension system could have implications for domestic investment flows and financial sector stability.
  10. Regional Risks
    While Chile is considered relatively stable compared to some of its neighbors, regional instability in Latin America can still have spillover effects.

As far as I know chat GPT has no alliances but does have a voracious hunger to collect and analyze data.

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That last just confirms what I feel about easy internet answers.

Here’s an article by a well-respected human economist, Sebastián Edwards entitled “Reasons for not investing in Chile”, where he interviewed a leading New York investor following Mario Marcel’s failed attempt to secure more foreign investment there, in 2022.

Nadie habló de un país en una curva ascendente que se acercaba a paso seguro hacia el desarrollo. Al contrario, se dijo que Chile tenía un buen performance histórico, un muy mediocre performance actual, y un futuro nebuloso y de gradual decadencia.

En lo inmediato, me dijo, hay preocupación por las políticas y la
visión del gobierno. El problema, afirmó, es que la mayoría de las
autoridades – empezando por el mismo presidente – no entienden
cómo funcionan las economías modernas. Tienen un esquema
mental en el que conviven la nostalgia nacionalista-proteccionista
del siglo XX con las buenas intenciones y el buenismo de los
millenials.

¿Y el largo plazo?
Según mi amigo, es ahí donde posiblemente haya mayores
debilidades. La mano de obra chilena es cara y no tiene las
calificaciones requeridas para una economía moderna. El sistema
educativo es anticuado, la educación pública es disfuncional, y la
educación a adultos es prácticamente inexistente. Según un
informe reciente de la Ocde (Skill Matters, 2019), los trabajadores
chilenos están en uno de los últimos lugares en comprensión de
lectura y habilidades analíticas. Con esta situación paupérrima
será imposible cambiar en forma eficiente la matriz productiva. ¿Y
qué han hecho las autoridades al respecto? Hasta ahora, nada

This article only addressed Chile’s financial outlook, and nothing has changed for the better since then. Nor with the multitude of other failings seen every day in this increasingly dysfunctional country.

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what is best country in south america for investment

2/2

ChatGPT said:

Good question — and it really depends on what kind of investment you’re thinking about (real estate, startups, agriculture, mining, stocks, etc.). But in general, here are a few strong contenders for 2025:

  • Chile: Very stable politically and economically compared to neighbors. Big in mining (especially lithium and copper), green energy, and tech startups. Strong rule of law.
  • Uruguay: Small, but extremely stable. Great for real estate, tech, and finance. Very pro-business and transparent.
  • Colombia: Growing fast, especially in cities like Bogotá and Medellín. Good for real estate, tourism, agriculture, and tech.
  • Brazil: Massive economy, lots of opportunities (especially energy, agribusiness, fintech), but more bureaucracy and risk.
  • Peru: Strong mining sector, decent growth, but political instability can be a factor.

If you want low risk and steady returns, Uruguay or Chile are usually top picks.
If you want higher risk, higher reward, Colombia or Brazil might be better.

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That was the first error.

Even worse.

“Compared to neighbors.” Compared to Caracas, Mogadishu is a shining example.
Now, let’s deal with absolutes and not comparing Third World backwaters to Third World backwaters.

“Strong rule of law” … I think you have personally suffered from the corruption in this country in the legal arena, enough to know that this “strong rule of law” is simply rubbish.

There are a few private institutions that produce a few capable graduates, but this is in general not a country with “a well-educated and highly skilled workforce” and it is a conspicuous failure in its attempts at becoming “bilingual.” Unless by bilingual you mean conversing in both Flaite and Chilensis.

We used to think that Argentina was the worst in the region for “loaded labor cost” – that is, not just salaries but all the other compensation, employee overhead, and bureaucratic costs. Coupled with low worker productivity, low trainability and skill levels, poor work habits, high absenteeism, and other worker factors, Chile is not your choice for cost-effective labor.

Chile is just another Latin American country.

Remember this silliness, back in 2005:

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It was a total disaster. A monumental and expensive failure. Last time I looked, out of 60 countries studied for proficiency in English as a second language, Chile skated in at 44. By 2021, Paraguay and Bolivia were showing better English language proficiency than Chile. Now that has to be disturbing. And embarrassing. Except this is a country that has no shame.

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One notable Fail, from which no lessons were ever learnt was Maersk, who walked away from a USD$150M investment building refrigerated containers in San Antonio.

From Day1, they were plagued with serious labour problems and never reached their target production, a situation exacerbated by long supply lines given the inability of local suppliers to provide the necessary raw materials.

afaik, that was the last serious attempt to bring manufacturing to Chile

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Would be interesting to see charts including 2016 - 2024 if possible, definitely need stats under the current admin to compare to pre-2020 period for:

Foreign investment
Government debt
Crisis funds if any left
Violent crime
Unemployment
Inflation
Poverty
Waiting list for the public health system
Number of Chilean kids that cannot attend school due to no space (being they are not at risk compared to, you guessed it)
Number of Chilean waiting for housing (being they are not at risk compared to, you guessed it).

Getting ready for a major trip so don’t have time at the moment to see if AI has access to real current Chile data vs. skimming the idiot English speaking international media which still hasn’t a clue to what happened here from 2019 onwards (remember when Time was set to put Boric on one of their covers?

Of course, tons of anecdotal data points and stories to embellish the objective numbers to the above. Also, opinion polls regarding the above topics and the general mood and lastly personal experiences of government overreach to generate more money to steal before they get kicked out of office - property revaluations, huge crackdown on online money generating activities of the common person, more financial surveillance of the common person, false notices from the SII or Treasury, taxing more and more and eliminating exemptions and now Chileans are getting surprise 5 year old COVID fines with interest amounting to millions for each fine.

Perhaps, I follow the in-country alternative news too much, perhaps…

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Writing this like a cuico from the SCL airport.

Does anyone remember how CLOSE Chile was to losing it all with the New Constitution vote?

If this vote wasn’t mandatory vs. the Boric election, we might really be in a no-return route to Cuba-Venezuela. The fact is that this vote forced the more or less honorable small business owners, working people and heads of households to go to the poll in a historic rechazo. Things could have been a lot different if the vote was not mandatory. How did the international English speaking media report on that?

We could have stopped most of this shit two votes afterwards with a vote for a populist right new constitucion, but no, it was rejected thanks to the likes of Chile Fuimos, the anti-Kast right and left lies especially to the women vote, so here we are…

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Regarding feargle’s post on Maersk.

Yes, a major blow to what could have been the beginning of assembly to manufacturing work to complement a resource extraction only economy.

It was the commie CUT that was 100% wholly responsible for this coming into the factory of primarily women trained from 0, earning well above Chile salaries along with benefits whose minds were polluted by the CUT.

Commie San Antonio is still commie but no longer as ignorant regarding CUT except for drunk fishermen. Even in the last Lider strike, it was noticeable the absecense of CUT.

San Antonio was one of the two or three provinces where RECHAZO lost. My intent is to move out of this commie stronghold.

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you would think Musk would be aware of this, yet he may have bought a vineyard for 20 Mil US in 2020, and he is totally anti-commies and is keen on “green energy”. Also think he has visited multiple times since 2017, including in 2020 when the 20 Mil US vineyard sold.

I agree with each of you, feargle, eeuu and findes but I think you are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

previous links about Musk wanting to get rid X of the Chile commies . Go figure.

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The bathwater is filthy and the baby is ugly, but the government here says you have to satisfy its wants and habits until it is 26.

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*** warning. Do not read while eating***

Sigh, life is hard as a perfectionist in an imperfect world. Wherever you go there are problems. I’d rather have a dysfunctional but benign country than a country full of homeless fentanyl addicts or a country ruled by drug overlords or rampant with mass shooters or a place where children kill children with handguns.

One must choose what they can abide, however distasteful. Everyday I get another example of the dysfunctionality, I cannot even flush a large poop segment down the toilet without cutting it into smaller pieces because the plumbing system is so anemic. Not everyday but if I eat a lot of nuts and the poop segment is larger than usual and solid, it will block the plumbing. And i like walnuts.

But the kind-heartedness of MOST of the Chilean people over-rides the plumbing system and other inadequacies that one encounters everyday in our adopted country and definitely trumps the random acts of violence permeating the psyches of Western countries.

Today a car rammed into a crowd in Canada, once a safe and sane country, And watch as the healthcare systems of Western countries collapse in slow motion because of their unbalanced demographics (burgeoning baby boom numbers collapsing health care) where as countries who didn’t participate in WW2 have more balanced demographics.

Bottom line, give me dysfunctionality over random acts of violence, murder and mayhem and a collapsing health care system anyday, Plus US is probably going to collapse societally or financially, better to observe from a distance.

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While you were sleeping, Chile’s cities also filled with their quotient of children with drugs and guns and Colombian and Venezuelan delincuentes and the exciting new sport of portanazo.

Chile’s homicide rate in recent years has grown to the point of equaling that of the US (it was higher than the US for a time recently). And Chile wins other crime prizes now, with some of the world’s highest robbery rates. You know you can’t let your belongings out of your sight for more than nanoseconds in the bus stations and other places.

We’re amused that some shops now have more security anti-robo people than cashiers. High retail prices for goods? Robo hormiga.

And let’s not forget the costs, both direct and indirect, of the periodic uprisings. Priced commercial fire insurance lately? No matter – you’re paying for it at the caja. About half of the hipers in this country were looted and/or torched in that last uprising. Nobody is willing to admit to the ultimate costs of the 2019 Red October and subsequent events, but there is a reasonable estimate of US$5 billion – unaffordable for a tiny toy country with only 17 million legal residents. and its 34 million street dogs.

Homicides? Maule had 55 homicides in 2023. That’s three times the rate for Ontario Oh Canada.

¿Sabes qué significa De guatemala a guatepeor ? ¿Huir del fuego para caer en las brasas? ¿ escapar del trueno y dar en el relámpago? Porque abandonar Canadá y esperar algo mejor en Chile Mierda es francamente una boludez. Y no hay peor ciega que ella que no quiere ver.

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Unlike the US, currently willing to prosecute at least some of its malcontents, Chile is high on ignoring the victim and releasing the perp, even reimbursing that perp with bonos and the like. In Chile, criminal wrongdoing is not just a core value of the culture, but it is fooking rewarded.

In violent crime, Chile as a whole is now no better than the US. If you can stick to the countryside, and the wildfires don’t get you, and the violentistas from the cities haven’t yet found you…yet… and the effects of another estallido miss you for a time, then you may be able to hold out for a while.

For a while.

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I need to also point out other major failures of the the recent left and center right regimes.

All this decade plus talk about the megapuerto in San Antonio for the next era of trade and economic expansion, but what really happened? Only partially expanded due to private firms of the port of San Antonio and it seems like NADA from the government except pretty animated presentations.

The competing China-Peru Chancay megaport is already functioning and was built super rapido, again what is the status of the San Antonio Megaport?

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A great deal of the failure of the San Antonio port was due to eco-terrorism, in the sense that the eco-greenie ambiental types threw up obstacles, in over-protection of the wetlands, the so-called humedales.

So to the earlier list of why Chile will not be successful we can add it is in part by letting the ni-ni greenies prevent meaningful development and economic progress and expecting the nation to make its living off of sustainable sand candles, vegan copper mining, and OVNI tourism.

It will take another coup to bring this country around, and that’s a bit unlikely at the moment.

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Yes, I have heard of more crime in the two cities, both 2 hours or more away but I have not seen any increase in our rural area,
Lots of places a lot worse to live in than Chile and would still choose Chile over the US

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thanks for the heads up but still feel safer here than North America. Most crimes here are based on theft and motivated by opportunistic situations. Many crimes in North America are based on pure violence and blood lust. Random acts of violence are not part of the psyche here but definitely in US and Canada. Random acts of violence are a manifestation of cultural psychosis, robbery is a manifestation of opportunistic greed. Psychosis scares me. Greed not so much.