Right, it's part of how society works. In some places, having a housekeeper is a critical part of the economy and its incredibly impolite not to have one, if you are part of the expat class.
What I meant to say is that those people who the locals consider not "expat" anymore, but "backpacker" instead, must really have fallen low.
The USA is exceptional because almost every visa that allows for work is considered an immigration visa (eg H1 leads to a greencard, eventually). But in other countries that is most definitely not true.
I came to the US as an expat, but became an immigrant.
If you tend to see racism behind every raised eyebrow, you can of course also see this terminology as racist.
Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light
Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan.My wife's parents worked in Kenya for a few years in the 70s and they where advised that having a maid and a nanny was expected.
(we are Swedish)
- rent a house
- hire a house guardian
- hire at last one maid
- hire a chauffeur if you own a car
It was also recommended than they come form the local neighborhood.
It was a social norm, and if you do not do it you can expect the local policemen to "fine you" every time you take the car, the food cost to be x5 the price (or more), and many other additional costs and life inconvenience than just made more easy and cheaper to just hire the people.
That said the work was real. A good chauffeur, will negotiate prices and bribes for you, and recommend you the good places. The house guardian was also your speaker with the neighborhood committee (with was in fact a government organization). (I will avoid the more complicated subject of the maid...)
This was OK if you where a man, a couple or a family. If you where a young woman... good luck with this.
There was a way to avoid all this: living in a flat in the city center and use taxis.
(For Addis Ababa this may not be true anymore because the city was changed a lot from the big shantytown it was then)
I'm really curious now. Why is the maid a more complicated subject?
I really hope that's not the case. But we (rich white people) don't exactly have a good track record in these types of situation. :(
Curiously, you said “rich white people” forgoing the one prejudice that actually does predict sexual exploitation - men!
The topic of race was already raised in the grandparent post, I quote (emphasis mine):
> I have heard of the same in Ethiopia around the 90's. For white worker it was expected to:
While I'm sure exploitation happens in most cultures I'm mostly familiar with it happening in white culture and given that context was already specified and my education being based on that context I decided to keep my reply specific to that context which I already knew.
Sorry if I offended anyone -- I just figured being a white male myself it was more offensive to drag other cultures into the discussion when they were previously outside the scope.
> Curiously, you said “rich white people” forgoing the one prejudice that actually does predict sexual exploitation - men!
I didn't need to specify men because that context was already defined in the post I was responding to. To quote the GP again:
> This was OK if you where a man, a couple or a family. If you where a young woman... good luck with this.
Frankly though, moaning about other cultures doing it too feels a little like trying to pull others down so we don't look so bad instead of acknowledging our own failings. Maybe that's an uncomfortable opinion for people to hear but as the saying goes "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones".
I do not think that behavior is or was restricted to skin color.
Wow, nice generalization - do you get all your 'facts' from the movies?
Bare in mind I'm not suggesting an entire race is frequently abusing their maids to this day. What I'm saying is there is recorded history of it happening. You only have to dig through some of the abuses that happened during the slave trade to see evidence of this fact. So we do indeed have a bad track record in this regard. It might be an uncomfortable truth for some of us to hear but it doesn't make it any less true.
I hate to break it to you but rich white people are generally far less likely to be a sexual predation risk in these situations because they often have more to lose, have easier access to consenting parties, and come from countries that stigmatize that type of behavior to a much greater degree.
Honestly the "other cultures are just as bad" argument here strikes me just as poor as the "all lives matter" protest comment against the BLM movement:
> There is a difference between something being true and something being relevant.
source: eg https://relevantmagazine.com/current/the-problem-with-saying...
https://www.economist.com/baobab/2012/04/24/maid-in-ethiopia
https://toyokeizai.net/articles/-/100650
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/11/10/national/u-n-of...
Japanese people can tell the difference between reality and cosplay.
That quote would look good in a meme.
Some of the maid where indeed expected to also do "night duties" if asked. It was not a racial power stuff. It's was more a problem with a sort of "cultural prostitution" witch was everywhere in Ethiopia. The maids where still primary maids and not prostitute, and to be fair, the same problem also did exist in Europe at the time of Agatha Christie (How many European maid had become pregnant and then fired ?).
I thinks than it's now worst than in the 90's because Ethiopia had sadly become a tourist sex place since then. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Ethiopia
Nowadays, the spirit still lives on somewhat in the fact that we have free public scenic hiking trails through what looks like very expensive private property. When the land was privatized, the government made it a condition that the hiking trail would remain for the general public to enjoy, and so it did.
I believe Vietnam still has a similar system, too, in that the government will calculate how much jobs a foreign company needs to create, based on their annual revenue. It's one of the reasons why Korean milk tea shops tend to be crammed full with 10-20 schoolgirl employees.
The right of way is a concept which is still strong in a bunch of countries, including England and famously Norway where "Allemansretten" allows "all men" the right to camp in public spaces.
I personally find these habitual rights an interesting expression of positive freedom, laws and customs limiting the power of those that have a lot of it (i.e., property owners) to monopolise and exploit, thus creating a public good. I think we should have more of it, especially in the physical but also the digital realm.
Particularly, the concept of adversarial interoperability https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/06/adversarial-interopera... is connected, it would be a different world of Google, Facebook and any other platform were obligated to make their internal APIs and documentation available at cost+a legislated profit margin do anyone can be compatible with them.
This is like saying France and the US both have freedom of speech. Technically true but the difference in how strong the laws are between Nordic countries and England is enormous.
You wrote: <<Technically true but the difference in how strong the laws are between Nordic countries and England is enormous.>>
I am sure you were thinking of a specific example when you wrote this post! Can you share it? It would be nice to learn.
Because animals are easily stolen, cultures around animals as food, tend to consider weapon ownership essential, and tend to think highly of self defense and whatnot.
These same cultures also tend to believe strongly in "hospitality", in the sense that if you have guests you need to take care of them and whatnot, because you might need to be someone guest too.
Meanwhile plant-based cultures tend instead to favor things like schedules, calendars, seasons, festivals and so on, because this is what essential to their food instead, meanwhile it doesn't matter if someone is strolling in your land when it is not harvest season, the person won't steal your food.
Very generally, England allows a right to cross property on foot. But, that doesn't include camping, cycling, etc. The list of allowances is relatively short and exceptions relatively long.
Scotland allows all a lot more freedom to roam, including cycling and camping. I don't recall exactly how it's codified, but it's approximately a default right to access, with limited exceptions (close proximity to homes, farms with active lambing, estates during hunting season, stuff like that).
This is not because Norwegians are civic minded altruists and Singaporeans selfish jerks. It mostly reflects what is practical.
This isn't just a saying, but a part of the constitution (Article 14, http://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_gg/englisch_gg.ht... )
Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light
Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan.
-- Hilaire Belloc
Here in Massachusetts, our trespassing laws only apply to "improved" land. So you are free to transit any wilderness areas, even if they are privately owned, and even if "no trespassing" signs are posted. Of course, nobody knows this or follows it. People regularly call the police, who are just as ignorant on the law, because people are on their land.
In some places that don't have supermarkets the process of buying groceries for a whole family is much more time consuming and labor intensive. For example, you get vegetables from one market, you go to another place if you want chicken and wait while they literally kill it in front of you, chop it up and put it in a plastic bag.
Everything comes from its own decentralized market and requires a lot more time/effort to buy on an ongoing basis.
Shopping and the process of buying all the supplies for a household is not nearly as convenient as going to Costco or similar in north america.
Often the role of cook is combined with general duties of procuring household supplies, handling things like the local electrical bill, hiring laborers for household repair and maintenance, etc.
Grocery shopping is a huge effort compared to the US. Also, with smaller homes, kitchens, and smaller fridges, you have to go grocery shopping multiple times a week.
Cars and Gasoline are also heavily taxed. Even "rich" families will typically only have one basic car, so you need a driver to drop someone off at work, come home to take somebody to the various grocery stores, etc.
Over the last 10-15 years as job and educational opportunities have improved, more and and more of the people I know complain that it's harder to find "good" domestic help. Lots of people who would typically go into basic construction jobs or domestic help jobs are finding other opportunities. Basically, what is going on in the US right now.
This may sound naive, but I had legitimately never considered that it's a valid and useful way to spread my opportunities through the community.
Because the better way to spread opportunity is to use that money to pay for poorer people to get an education so they do not have to do menial tasks for richer people.
...and then a data scientist with an advanced degree spends the day hand-crafting SQL to root-cause a customer complaint after Bezos sends a one-byte email, "?"...
(EDIT: I may have focused on one aspect of the parent's point at the expense of the other, clarified below).
Is there any question that a housekeeper is better off if they were able to spend their time studying or training for something that offers a higher probability of earning higher incomes?
Or should society continue to perpetuate the relative socioeconomic class you are born into by having you spend your time washing other people’s clothes and homes?
(EDIT: That said, upward economic mobility is always desirable and education is essential to achieving it. It's an escape from poverty, but it's not a foolproof escape from hierarchy).
The two concerns are linked. You only see widespread personal drivers and housekeepers and gardeners in less developed countries with many very poor people. Reducing the stratification by redistributing wealth via taxes and an education system is preferable mechanism of spreading opportunity.
The societies telesilla and Blahah are referring to are not ones where a housekeeper works 40 hour weeks Mon to Fri and gets PTO and has time to get a law degree in the evenings.
These places have housekeepers and drivers because they are not fortunate to be born in a society with enough of a public education system that allows them to escape that fate, even if it is just being an accountant for a rich person, at least they get vacations and decent work hours and schedules.
Nor is the "high-growth" tech sector, which is notorious for long hours and de-facto little time off. The money might be good, but the lifestyle can be miserable.
You're working for billionaires instead of millionaires, but you're still in a situation where a "?" from the top means you've got to hustle.
One has weekends and holidays, can send their kids to fancy schools, go on international vacations, choose to retire by 40, has access to great healthcare, choose to work a different profession or their hobby or whatever they want.
The poster you replied to was very clearly limiting the scope of their comparison to the "so they do not have to do menial tasks for richer people" standard you gave originally. Listing any number of other differences is orthogonal to the point they are making.
"Step 1: Everyone gets a Ph.D.
Step 2: Meals cook themselves!"
(I suppose we could all live on MREs?)
Knowledge isn't zero-sum, but credentials are. Educating everyone doesn't make "menial" jobs go away. Better, really, to recognize some of those jobs as more important, and be willing to pay for them.
Also, there are gains from trade, and economies of scale. The time to cook two meals is less than double the time to cook one. And the person who specializes in it is probably better at it than the person who specializes in some other thing. When things are working correctly, these gains are then distributed across society by exchange.
It is obvious that a society with widespread use of personal drivers/housekeepers/nannies is simply one with a wider income/wealth gap.
One option is to spend multiple generations slowing bringing the housekeepers kids up the ladder with the housekeeper’s meager savings, and then their kids, and so on. Or we can cut the crap, and redistribute wealth more quickly and directly via a public education/training system.
You give people opportunities to do many more things than menial labor, then that allows the price for menial labor to rise so that it is not done by the “lower” socioeconomic rungs.
I know quite a few households in the $200k+ income, and no one has a driver, everyone does their own laundry, and only a few have a house cleaner come by every couple weeks.
I compare that to the American suburban experience, where most people who do manual work are considered too flakey to deal with directly, most tasks are nowhere near enough to count as a full time job, and everything is handled via companies led by people who code-switch. If I need a roofer or a landscaper, I will find few companies led by a mexican, or even someone with mexican ancestry, but their workers are almost assured to be: There's layers of isolation on top of layers of isolation, so you aren't building a relationship with your roofer, your handyman, or your housekeeper. The intermediaries make all of that work exchange have a very different nature.
On top of that, barring a small number of neighborhoods, there's a good chance you'll never see one of those workers outside of the contract, because the housing they can afford, and the housing they can afford, are so far apart you have few reasons to frequent the same establishments. So while places where more people live together might make it easier to see how different social classes are, in the US we might have a larger social distance, but completely hidden by housing. It's not just that the rich American can take their kids to a private school: It's that the way things are set up, the public schools for many a rich American will have few families who aren't rich in the first place, just via suburban zoning.
It's as if different social classes were happy to coexist in many other places, but in the US, they loathe each other, and can only interact via intermediaries.
Is it possible that the US is big enough and rich enough that it allows different social classes to not have to co exist, whereas in many other places, they have no choice but to co exist due to lack of land and other wealth?
Then you come back to western world (or anywhere else for that matter) after 6 months of such training and you find out you haggle harder than any locals, sometimes to the point of offense.
The most important point in haggling is to not show too much interest. It helps to have an idea about real local prices of items, otherwise its just shots in the dark.
It was exhausting to buy anything, the entire time. It never got better, even when the shops learned who I was after an extended period of time. Food, water, everything was an argument. I just wanted to exist and check out what was going on around me, not argue with some random shop that my groceries shouldn't be so expensive.
I have also heard the same, but I have zero native-level understanding of any Middle Eastern cultures. Could anyone who lives in the Middle East / North Africa / Horn of Africa comment? I would appreciate any first hand accounts about this stereotype. It's OK if you teach us that it's all "travel guide bullshit"!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_numerals#Comparison_of_...
Eastern Arabic ٠ ١ ٢ ٣ ٤ ٥ ٦ ٧ ٨ ٩ ١٠
However that algorithm has a couple of flaws in mixed left and right ordered text, and a couple of control characters have been introduced to solve the issue: https://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-bidi-unicode-c...
Could play a bit in https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Software/BabelPad.html to see how things work.
And then you step foot in a car dealership, and you might as well be in a souk
Fun when you do it once, not so fun when is expected every day.
A similar zero-sum game is advertising. Yet, some cultures look down on haggling and embrace advertising with open arms...
The waste of time is having to haggle to arrive at the price, when the price could have been published. It benefits nobody, because that's the price the transaction would have happened at anyway. But we have to do a whole song and dance beforehand anyway, every single time.
But price discrimination improves cashflow. And these merchants can do the same thing as haggling with less paper waste and on the spot.
But this is not true. Haggling is price discovery. Either way, I think this is mostly a cultural thing that's lost on a lot of westerners.
Yes, the issue is that the price does not need to be discovered. The seller knows the "real" price, and is just hopping to screw over the buyer.
The seller knows the customary price, and the lowest price they would be willing to accept. The "real" price is whatever the buyer and seller agree on for a particular trade. Price discovery is an ongoing process which isn't finished just because you've determined an average price for past trades. The buyer isn't losing out unless there's actual fraud involved, even if they could have potentially negotiated a better price. And really, we're mostly talking about trades between individuals and small businesses (who may also be individuals)—why should all the surplus value represented by the difference between the highest and lowest prices acceptable to both parties go to the buyer, and not the seller?
True, but the discovery is made necessary by artificial opacity.
It does not benefit society as a whole and that's why shops are legally required to have transparent pricing in most countries.
Honestly, thinking that there should be fixed prices for everything, if you're a rich westerner going in, means you're trying to externalize the effort of setting a market clearing rate, and trying to piggy-back off of the locals. If it's at some multinational chain, then sure, don't have people haggle with you over the price of some McNuggets, but at a family owned business, if they can get an additional 20% of the price of the goods they might be doubling their profit margin, so why wouldn't they haggle?
It doesn't take that long either. There are positives even to things you deem useless.
I don't get this one.
I also hate haggling, and since I’m not from a culture where it’s a norm I can’t use it to read deeper into a person. (Or them into me.) But it’s not too hard to imagine how it helps to build relationships.
A market vendor who knows an apple should cost $2 but charges $5 in the hopes of screwing over a tourist is just an asshole. I can't imagine how that builds relationships.
That is what's frustrating about negotiating for commodities like food. The seller is taking advantage of information asymmetry. They know what the standard price is, and they hope that you don't. It's scummy.
It is different when there isn't a set price, i.e. if you are trying to buy a one of a kind item. In that case even in the Western world some negotiation would be acceptable, (buying an original painting from an artist, for example). But this does not justify having to haggle for everything you want to buy, every time.
While I generally agree with you, if you're buying fresh food at a market, such as the apples in your example, it isn't necessarily a commodity. Quality and size will vary from one item to the next; why must they all be the same price? Places where goods tend to be more standardized seem to rely less on haggling and more on sorting: you don't haggle over the price of an apple out of a mixed lot, you pay a set price for a certain grade of apple which has been separated out in advance.
Even a published price is nothing more than a free option for buyers. It’s a ceiling. There’s nothing that prevents the seller from offering a lower unpublished price.
Couldn't care less if its rude or polite or whatever.
Go ahead and haggle if its fun for you.
Very little to do with skin color, it's just most often the biggest giveaway that the buyer is a foreigner.
This is strictly personal, but where I grew up with mostly light skinned people... showing up after winter holidays with a dark tan made you look so hot and so rich! Did anyone else feel the same? It carries into my life as an adult. :)
It's basically the same as if you go to a trade show in the US. All the salespeople are trying to figure out which visitors are CEOs and, hence, worth their time, and which ones are just curious amateurs.
Maybe Google "Thuan Pham" - the Vietnamese Uber ex-CTO. He's doing it so well that even for us westerners it's easy to see that he's in a position of power. He isn't going to be charged tourist pricing due to his skin color (which is normal for Vietnamese). He's going to be charged tourist pricing because of his behavior which indicates that he's mind-boggingly rich and powerful.
So for everyday living, $80mio in Vietnam is going to feel like $8bio in the US (because steak in a restaurant is $50 instead of $0.5 for a 100x multiplier in living costs).
(I don’t mind this system actually, but if I were paying taxes in Thailand and still had to pay foreigner entry fees everywhere it might bug me.)
My aunt and uncle took the first class as part of their far more expensive Peru tour, and were not exposed to the direct cost, but judging by the pictures, it was luxurious.
The only exception was where people insisted on being paid in American dollars. I'm not American so it never occurred to me to buy and bring American dollars to any country outside of the USA. We treat American tourists with a certain amount of eyerolling when they try to use their money in my country, but I have learned my lesson that it is a good idea to have an emergency stash of the currency of dishonesty when travelling abroad.
I recommend that you do some research about the economics of any country you visit. As you've already somewhat discovered, many places in Central America and South America will actually prefer payment in US dollars because the official government exchange rates from their local currency to dollars is extortionately unfair and not accurate to ForEx markets, this combined with high rates of inflation for the local currency and regular currency "resets" mean that people don't want to have their savings denominated in the local currency.
I don't know why you consider dollars to be the "currency of dishonesty", but all throughout the Americas, dollars are generally the highest valued currency because the US dominates economics and trade relations in the region. I imagine the same may be true in other parts of the world but they might preference other currencies rather than dollars (Ex: I found in some parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia that Euros were accepted in preference over local currency).
Any time you travel to a new country, do your research in advance.
I was not trying to imply Americans are dishonest. I was trying to imply that insisting on the use of foreign currency like USD as the sole medium of exchange, or any other black market activity if it comes to that, is a dishonest way to make a living.
And sure, I understand why the black market exists from a socioeconomic point of view. I have learned my lesson about travelling in less advantaged countries. I witnessed stuff in Peru that would make suburban Karen's head explode with apoplexy, and it was just considered normal and expected stuff there.
Agreed on that wholeheartedly. Visiting Peru was an interesting experience for me as well, and one that was deeply sad in many ways. There's such a visibily stark wealth inequality in Lima that's immediately obvious as soon as you deplane that is usually hidden away in other parts of the world. Lima is an amazing world-class food city, but most of that is found within Miraflores district which is a far cry from the conditions of most of the rest of the city or in the pueblo jovenes on the outskirts of town in the hills. The same is found in other parts of Peru as well, and in a way I am very happy for it because it made obvious to me things I had been able to avoid or put out of my mind in my travels elsewhere and made me more aware of how different societies exploit people and the role of the West in creating and enabling those conditions, my own role as a traveler included.
I was surprised, as I'd never thought to donate to these museums. He pointed out that he didn't pay tax in Britain, and entry tickets to a similar museum at home would be around £30.
https://disneyland.disney.go.com/offers-discounts/southern-c...
In Hawaii many business have discounts for locals
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discounts_and_allowances#Speci...
Maybe you are confusing paying for a guide as tourist with paying to visit the church.
But I meant for food the street vendors are incredibly honest. On several occasions I've given them money expecting no change (based on a price on the sign) but for whatever reason the price was different and they called me to give me change as I was walking away
The same thing happens in developed countries like the US too. It's just done a different way: We have high end grocery stores and low end grocery stores, and ones in the middle, each catering more or less to different social classes.
If you are really low on the totem pole, you may have no grocery store.
Although they differ in the quality of food they offer, there is significant overlap also, which is priced differently.
There are rich areas and poor areas, touristy areas and off-the-beaten-path areas. But in US retail you won't find sellers discriminate based solely on the look of the customer in 99% of cases.
The USA only does this for trivial unnecessary frivolities like medical care.
This happened to us in multiple cities (NY/Miami/SF)
But I also don't go out often, and if I do, it's just to eat usually.
That's true of my friends and romantic partners of all races by the way. I can't think of a single time I've seen someone be given a racial discount here.
There were a few times at restaurants and grocery stores where they had access to items I wouldn't have, but that almost always came from speaking the right language and knowing what to ask for. I'm sure those places would have been equally happy to accommodate me if I know what to say.
I do have stories of those friends and romantic partners being discriminated against a few times.
That physical separation is maintained by the actual physical class separation along policed municipal boundaries that exists in the US.
Developing societies instead use walls with barbed wire and hired security for that function.
That said, there are pretty strong correlations between the tier of the grocery store and the appearance of their average customer.
And yes, there are wealthier but frugal people who shop at cheaper stores, but they are an exception.
The lowest would be the dollar stores, but then you have food stamps, and food banks which are like free supermarkets in a sense. If you can’t get to them then there’s soup kitchens and quite a few charities that will bring food to you. We can definitely fill in more cracks but there are a lot of available food sources in America.
Ironically, we still paid less out of pocket for that week-long hospital stay without insurance than we would have paid for a single day hospital stay here in the US with insurance.
So, overall, we were pretty happy about the amount we were paying.
I'm curious about this one. I've been to the hospital one time in my adult life. Stayed overnight, got multiple tests including an Xray and an MRI. Got medication, etc.
Having heard the horror stories I was ready for a big bill.
It was like $140.
It was cheaper than a hotel room would have been.
I can't tell if I just have exceptionally good insurance or if people who make a big deal about the US healthcare system are leaving out critical details.
The cost of an MRI (starting at $400, going way up depending on what was MRI'ed)[2], xray (starting at $100)[3] and an overnight stay (around $2600 non-ICU [4]) would be at least $3100 alone if you had to pay everything out of pocket, not accounting for any additional costs (the unspecified "additional tests" you mentioned, for example, or things you haven't explicitly mentioned but may still used like an ambulance ride, etc).
Of course, this is recent prices, and the prices may have varied when you actually were in hospital, and it is my understanding that prices both for health care services and procedures, and health insurance can vary widely depending on the region and the providers involved in the US.
But my google-fu let's me conclude that you indeed extremely likely had a health insurance plan at "platinum" level, far better than what most of your fellow citizens in the US enjoy.
Somebody with a plan near the "median deductible" would have paid that median deductible of more than $1400 in full, or around 10x what you had to pay, somebody unlucky enough to be on a "bronze" plan might have had to pay the full amount (or at least around 7 grand), and there are about 31 million people in the US without health insurance[5] who would have had to pay in full.
(Please note that I, as somebody who never experienced the US health care system, can thus only provide an outside view based on what I heard from people I know and in the media, and googled)
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/how-much-does-health-insurance-...
[2] https://www.itnonline.com/content/mri-costs
[3] https://health.costhelper.com/x-rays.html
[4] https://www.debt.org/medical/hospital-surgery-costs/
[5] https://www.statista.com/statistics/200955/americans-without...
- The vendor charges every customer according to the customer's social class. A white guy pays through the nose. A servant-class local pays a modest amount. It doesn't matter who the food is supposed to be for.
- Thus, it is cheaper for the white guy to hire a housekeeper than to buy and prepare his own food. The white guy's food, if he has a housekeeper, will only cost as much as the housekeeper has to pay for food, because the housekeeper is responsible for buying it. And the savings relative to the white-guy price cover the housekeeper's wages.