April 12 2008
It is an interesting question: Because of the world climate and the falling dollar, at what point does our current global “world is flat” mentality go from U.S. city epicenter to overnight flight to France and instead become more grounded, more domestically insular?
A provocative, if only slightly pop culture and zeitgeist-oriented book called The 4-Hour Work Week came out last year and went on to become a massively popular best seller. At its core, the book advocates “lifestyle design” which means tailoring your work around your life and not the other way around and it goes on in some practical depth to tell you how to do that.
Therefore, instead of vacationing in Italy or France for a week a year, you could actually live in Paris for a few months at a time, or at least a destination where your money is going to be favorably advantageous for you.
One of the words the author, Timothy Ferriss, coins is “geoarbitage” – a hybrid word of “geo” from geography and arbitrage. According to Wikipedia, “arbitrage” means:
The practice of taking advantage of a price differential between two or more markets: combinations of matching deals are struck that capitalize upon the imbalance, the profit being the difference between the market prices.
So, using arbitrage as its base, “geoarbitrage” means:
Leveraging the appropriate areas of the world that give the best value for a particular need and then taking advantage of the service/product.
I have been thinking about this a lot, mostly because of the cost of living in California versus other parts of the country, particularly the Midwest, where I am from. Maybe it is because I traveled to California close to 30 times last year, picking up the benefits of being there frequently, without the mortgage and cost of living headaches.
As related to wine, well, I am wondering when the Midwest is going to see a flight of folks from out west looking to buy houses. Mortgages are low and Southwest Air tickets are cheap … wine country is only a flight away with a big bank account difference.
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