There's also just the creeps who really enjoy being served by other humans, but can't really afford to own a full time servant class anywhere but SE Asia so that's where they live. Something really rubs me the wrong way about the white people who do this, lots of really creepy stuff going on.
By contrast, in the US, I'm forced to pay people not to work.
Why is preferring the former "creepy"?
White Americans have a very odd bias against personal service. Honestly I think it is a major obstacle to economic growth - image how much more productive the average upper middle class family could be if they could employ servants to get things done at home.
Instead USG pays a big portion of "poor" people not to work, and also insists that they cannot work for low (market clearing) wages.
Well yes. Following orders is always a sacrifice of dignity, even when we make it a small, subtle one.
> What does equality even mean with respect to one's work role?
That you can give input and have as much voice in the group's direction as anyone else.
Maybe the problem is that both 'following orders' and 'dignity' (and perhaps even 'sacrifice') are ill-defined, but I can name countless examples from my life, as well as from a cursory look at the life of friends of mine, where 'following orders' provided joy and satifsaction and where it didn't affect my (sense of) dignity. Especially in small, subtle cases.
Any kind of assistant is also pretty expensive in the USA, at least $2-3k full time per month, from post tax income. A very upper middle class family making $15k/month, that would be %15/%20 of their income, very expensive!
Indeed, because the US government heavily disincentives selling labor via steep and onerous labor taxes.
To further discourage selling labor, the US government spends a sizable portion of the taxes collected from labor-sellers to encourage people not to sell labor.
Hi, I've been doing the digital nomad thing (I don't like this term either) for about a year and a half with two close friends. I'm not the way you describe, and neither are my friends.
Could you give more information about where your perspective comes from? Is this something you've seen while working as a nomad? Or something you imagine happening?
But to me employing local people to do some very noble tasks like attending to kids is quite ok, and in fact a very healthy way to share your wealth with people that have good use for it.
As for the term, I don't like it either, but this is how languages work, I guess. There is little we can do at that point.