My in-laws lived in Central America back in the 50s, as my father in law worked there for a large international bank. They did have a live-in maid and a cook. My mother in law said at first it made her feel uncomfortable, but was told in no uncertain terms that Americans who could afford help but didn't hire help were seen as selfish. The locals needed the work.
No doubt there are people who hire local help and are terrible about it, but I think so long as the employed people are treated humanely, with empathy, and paid as good or better than local rates, there isn't a problem.
> My mother in law said at first it made her feel uncomfortable, but was told in no uncertain terms that Americans who could afford help but didn't hire help were seen as selfish.
Yes, because Americans aren’t even seen as the same kind of human in these countries. These societies often have rigid class structures even among the locals—my family is Bangladeshi, but affluent and our servants definitely didn’t think they were our equals—much less between locals and European/American foreigners.
The locals are reacting rationally to the situation. But what kind of person would want to leave an egalitarian society and live like that, just so they can be at the top of the pecking order?
So, we shouldn't do business with folks of lower means, is that right? And to avoid doing so we should restrict ourselves to particular heterogeneous countries, with geographic boundaries that aren't particularly effective at that goal. Spending money in places it is needed rather than already concentrated is morally defective because the spender might also benefit from the transaction?
(Believe I read something similar once about folks trying to help the homeless. If the helper benefited one iota as well, the helper was branded a "monster.")
I don't believe this is a healthy or valid take. We should all be helping each other, and a win/win situation is the best outcome imho. Because it incentivizes more.
> what kind of person would want to leave an egalitarian society and live like that, just so they can be at the top of the pecking order?
To play devil's advocate, say it's not about having servants or "living like a king", but about having the freedom to do things that don't make money.
How many bad things are done because someone thought it was "necessary" to pay rent, or to afford college for their kid?
If, instead of optimizing ad engagement to pay a mortgage in Palo Alto, I buy a modest house, outright, in a little Columbian town nobody's heard of, and open an ice cream shop out of the first floor, is that so bad? There's an electrician on YouTube who did that.
Or if I spend my days building strange concrete domes and planting banana trees? There's another guy who does that.
Or running a backpacker hostel that employs (and pays fairly) a local cook and a maid? Probably a lot of us have stayed at such a place.
I had friends who backpacked through South America after college. They ran into an American who, one day in the States, said "fuck it", got in his pickup truck, and started driving south. Eventually he fell in with an Amazon tribe; he doesn't speak the language too well, but he has the truck and he knows how to drive, and that's how he contributes. He's much happier now. Who knows what he'd had to do to pay rent in America.
What if all I want to do is walk around, and drink tea, and chat with people? What if I'm somehow tired and bored at the same time?
What if I get a donkey and work as a traveling children's library?
Do I have to keep my position at the top of World Empire, or can I just take my good fortune and use it to drop out and chill?
I'm no savior, but maybe I can get a well drilled or something. Maybe I need the water too. Or maybe I can do the bushes in the local park, if everybody else is too busy with some other thing that earns dinero.
Hell, there's a white girl on YouTube who met a Maasai dude in Africa, married him, and now lives there doing... I don't know what, but it can't earn much. Granted I think she's going to be a little more independent than is, uh, traditional in that culture. But he's like, "ok, whatever, I have a good wife". Doesn't demand much, is happy.
Surely if you're born inside the harem, with all its advantages, there's got to be a way out.
Hell, if I'm an American, maybe me leaving creates a slot at a company that'll be filled by an H1B, and the circle of life continues. "Have at it, brother; I'm done."
Yeah the harm with employing people is not in hiring them and benefitting from their work. Rather, it is in exploiting them--cheating them on wages in one of many ways, ordering them to do harm, having dangerous working conditions, degrading them, those are only a few examples. And exploitation in these forms exists according to the local context of the foreign land, and simultaneously is strongly informed by American views. Both.
I have seen many instances when expats try to treat foreign workers much better than they need to, but it does not work at all for either party. The intention is still worth indulging, however, in ways that aren't mutually harmful. It's just difficult sometimes.
But it can be done. And it's beautiful when it is done.
There may be harm in diverting human resources from uses that are more productive in the long term. The best arguments I've heard for minimum wage run in a similar vein, and perhaps there's some parallels to the "resource curse".
Back in the day aristocrats paid people to keep their coats on the shelf. It wasn't like they couldn't do it themselves. It was expected from aristocrats to support such jobs so that the lower classes can have some employment.
No doubt there are people who hire local help and are terrible about it, but I think so long as the employed people are treated humanely, with empathy, and paid as good or better than local rates, there isn't a problem.