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Comment by glofish | Hacker News Reader

This is a really good point,

when an American (or other rich Westerner) shows up in remote area, they are treated like a king,

basically you are treated as people treat ridiculously good looking and popular people around them that they want to be around,

that generosity you feel is nothing more than being popular and center of attention

start living there, all of a sudden that generosity is not so obvious, families are at each other's throats for that bushel of corn one guys grandfather stole from the other fifty years ago, random shit gets stolen, the whole garden is trampled because someone is stealing a few of your tomatoes, trash is thrown over your yard because the neighbor wants to "save" on trash collection fees, people cut ahead of you around in the queues, people have untrained dangerous dogs that are a menace to the whole community ...

etc

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It reminds me the old joke https://www.anekdot.ru/id/309796/

>start living there, all of a sudden that generosity is not so obvious, families are at each other's throats for that bushel of corn one guys grandfather stole from the other fifty years ago, random shit gets stolen, the garden is trampled, trash is thrown over your yard because the neighbor wants to "save" on trash collection fees, people cut ahead of you around in the queues,

So basically all the same petty BS that you get in the urbanized inner suburbs HN raves about without the bickering being laundered through lawyers and local officials to give it a veneer of acceptability?

Humans gonna human.

You could reframe your point without it being an attack on "HN" as a unit, and without making yourself sound above it.

Yeah, my Berkeley neighbor has been on my case for that bushel of corn for the last two decades

I'm sure if you borrowed some power tool and half broke it he'd be more than happy to call the city on you every time you violate one of the million rules for the next few decades. Of course nobody is fighting over corn but there is no shortage of fairly obvious parallels.

I come from a rural environment. Sometimes it was literally about corn. But yeah, most often it was about mechanical stuff.

A lot of his examples though depend on his observations, as a 3rd party, such as the accident. That wouldn't have any dependency on him being the center of attention. His observation in Morrocco also without his involvement.

> families are at each other's throats for that bushel of corn one guys grandfather stole from the other fifty years ago, random shit gets stolen, the garden is trampled, trash is thrown over your yard because the neighbor wants to "save" on trash collection fees, people cut ahead of you around in the queues

If this is supposed to be the description of Kazakhstan, I haven't seen a post with more bullshit in my life. Like "bushel of corn ... fifty years ago", "the garden is trampled", "save on trash collection fees", "people cut ahead of you in the queues" gee.

My sentiment is not about Kazakhstan in particular,

It is about the rich westerner's naive gushing when visiting African, Eastern European, Central American remote villages etc

"Everybody is so nice and generous around here ... not like back home in the civilized world"

They confuse how people treat them in particular with what it is like living there.

One possible explanation for the pattern of generous hospitality in poor countries I find quite interesting (I'm sure it's only one component of many in the motivational environment) is that hosting the traveler from afar is the closest thing they can do to traveling themselves.

They're tourists in an area where they're uncommon. Outside places where they are very numerous, people always treat tourists well. It's simple, really.

Note that generosity to travelers is a common virtue in many societies throughout history, and violating this can bring severe consequences if only in myth (e.g. a traveling stranger might actually be a god in disguise checking up on you).

And after all, next time it might be you looking for a bite to eat and a place out of the wind and rain for the night. There's not a lot of Holiday Inns on the steppe or in ancient Greece.

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