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Comment by withinboredom | Hacker News Reader

I have very many doubts digital nomads are good for any community except a community they are prevalent in.

Nomads, by definition, don’t meaningfully contribute to a community. They don’t create deep relationships, families, or traditions. Instead, they bring outside perceptions and traditions that may either invigorate or destroy the community they are visiting.

Is it good for the community’s economy, probably. Is it good for anything else? Probably not unless the culture is at least adjacent to one you’ve lived in before. (IOW, if you come from one strong religious community to another one, or an artistic community to another one, you would be able to recognize what you’re experiencing and fit into your worldview; thus being able to more easily meaningfully contribute to the community)

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I'm abroad right now working remotely, I've had nothing but extremely positive interactions with the culture here and it's about as distant as two cultures can get. The crusades are over, I can't say I've met a ton of other digital nomads but I never got the impression anyone is going around destroying communities they're visiting. Learning more about and experiencing other cultures has deeply enriched my life, I do my best to be a good guest in the country and a lot of people seem interested in learning more about life where I'm from too. I know my argument is anecdotal here, but at least anecdotes are better than your wild and unfounded speculation.

You haven’t met many so it’s not destructive.

Any community or ecosystem can withstand some external forces and pressure, but they can still get overwhelmed.

There’s also the difference between a digital immigrant and a digital nomad - the first intends to stay and begins to care about where they are; the second may care but will be gone at a whim.

Curious questions and of course don't answer if it's not safe: do you remit full local taxes? Are they equivalent to a native local worker? Are you paid or employed as a worker of where you are now, or where you're from?

In most countries you are not technically allowed to work. They don't have a tax arrangement for you. You could not pay taxes if you wanted, because there is no system for you to be working.

You are paying taxes to your home country if you're American. If you're from another country and living abroad for enough days per year (depends on the home country), then you won't be paying taxes to your home country.

The place you're working remotely from still gets the benefit of you injecting revenue into their area, and you're not taking local jobs away.

Keep in mind though that a lot of the infrastructure one would be using including public transport, roads, water is subsidized with tax one is not paying.

True, but DNs often pay a premium for many services which locals do not pay. And DNs often spend a lot more than locals do just by virtue of having more to spend.

In places which thrive or depend on tourism, working DNs are a blessing. The broke backpackers are less so, as they live on the cheap (which is totally fine for them but offers less to the local community).

Also, DNs are a tiny, tiny percentage of public transport riders in places that have public transportation. Likewise, I don't imagine DNs are using vast amounts of water... especially since we tend to buy bottled water for drinking, and we often don't cook at home (so whoever we are paying for food is getting water however they get it).

As for roads and road maintenance costs, those should be covered in part by vehicle registrations. If we rent a car or a scooter, or we take a taxi, the costs are part of the fare.

Aside from building a local dependency on foreign visitors who splash money around, I don't see much downsides to DNs existing in remote places (assuming of course that they behave like decent humans).

These are excuses. Just hear yourself saying "I want to enjoy the benefits of feeling rich but leave all the inconveniences to locals".

A country typically has a framework that determines whether you are a tax resident based on how long you spend there within some period of time. If you stay long enough to qualify and do not pay the tax the next year, you are in violation. If you work around it by moving between countries to stay just below this limit good for you, but you should be aware you are working around the law and are not a bona fide tourist no matter what you say about benefitting local economy and society and splashing money around.

And no, earning and spending more doesn't absolve you--in fact you are obligated to pay more tax in countries with progressive taxes.

The countries you seem to be talking about are likely having tough times overcoming their preexisting problems with law compliance. Try being a positive change rather than import even more of that "law doesn't apply to me" attitude, especially since it seems like it'd not cause a splash for you.

> In most countries you are not technically allowed to work.

This is indeed my understanding, and I imagine that most digital nomads are abusing tourism visas.

I'm curious how many digital nomads declare their true intent at immigration. I'd guess it's close to zero.

> Nomads, by definition, don’t meaningfully contribute to a community. They don’t create deep relationships, families, or traditions.

Guess how many of those things my wife and I were doing in the suburban neighborhood where we were living before we started our (domestic) digital nomad journey?

It's like any type of immigration, there are plenty of people visiting and working in countries on short term visas. I don't think there's anything unique about "digital nomads" through that lens.

There isn't. It's a scapegoat, the failure is almost always with local authorities and governments (e.g. tolerating excessive Airbnb).

Those local authorities are under extreme pressure by monied interests (including Airbnb) to accept the commoditization of their housing market for “digital nomads”. Even in places like Los Angeles where most people are renters the local authorities have barely begun to get the situation under control.

I'm definitely sympathetic to this argument, AirBnb ruined housing markets. I'm curious how much of the demand actually comes from "digital nomads", though.

It is a good thing to be curious about. We don't have good numbers and it really is only a question of numbers. Any community can tolerate a certain amount of tourism or immigration.

My take is that most communities are small and have never had to deal with much growth. It would not surprise me if their little boats are getting swamped.

Fair point. I would estimate digital nomads are less than 10% of the total market. I do suspect they have an outsize effect, especially the ones who are “influencers”.

Your whole post can describe tourism too

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