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I had a fellow American friend who lived in Bali for a year in the mid-70s. When he arrived, he shopped for his own food and cooked it. But he found that, since

I had a fellow American friend who lived in Bali for a year in the mid-70s. When he arrived, he shopped for his own food and cooked it. But he found that, since the merchants charged people by their social class, he could hire a housekeeper and have them buy and cook his food for the same price as buying his own found. And people expect him to do this.

slim 5y ago
it's a thing in left litterature. this role is called "comprador" and it has very negative connotation (for obvious reasons if you think about it from the native perspective)
telesilla 5y ago
>people expect him to do this. 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.
- mcorning 5y ago
  I'm surprised to hear that it is impolite to not have a housekeeper if you are an expat. To which places are you referring?
  - grandinj 5y ago
    That's a fairly common attitude in poorer countries - there is an expectation that if you are wealthy, you have (at the very least) an obligation to provide employment.
    - jiggunjer 5y ago
      But expat doesn't automatically mean wealthy.
      - medion 5y ago
        Wealth is a relative term. It's pretty unlikely for an expat to be living in the third world, on third world wages with third world opportunities...
      - stavros 5y ago
        It does, otherwise they're called immigrants.
        BurningFrog 5y ago
        My interpretation has always been that an expat is abroad temporarily, while an immigrant intends to stay permanently. 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.
        fxtentacle 5y ago
        Or "backpackers" - which seems to be secret code for: stay away, these people (usually guys) cause more trouble than they are worth.
        darkwater 5y ago
        No, backpackers in SE Asia are still mostly on the expat side. Even if they are broken students on a sabbatical year, they mostly have families home that can back them up in case of need. (Exceptions apply, YMMV etc etc.)
        fxtentacle 5y ago
        I agree with you that most westerners who travel to SE Asia will still be considered as "expats" by the locals. What I meant to say is that those people who the locals consider not "expat" anymore, but "backpacker" instead, must really have fallen low.
        soapdog 5y ago
        That is not how it was taught to me. Expat is when your job moves you to a new country, as in "you're an expatriate employee". Immigrant is when you move for your own reasons. Expats are expected to come back to their original country, or move to a third one at some time. Immigrants are establishing themselves in the new country.
    - thombat 5y ago
      From Hilaire Belloc, of pre-war (1911) Britain: 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.
    - Little_Fish 5y ago
      I think this has a lot of truth. My brother was based in the Philippines for a while for work and was expected to have at least a housekeeper and a chauffeur. I think having a driver was a very reasonable safety measure given the traffic there too. At the time it seemed very ostentatious to us at home, but it was totally the norm.
      - frenchy 5y ago
        Car ownership, especially in Manila, is also not the norm there. There's over 110 million people on a handful of small islands. Also, public transit is way more efficient there than anywhere in North America.
        Little_Fish 5y ago
        True - it was better to hire a chauffeur who had his own car than to buy a car (also traffic was crazy). He is from the UK - Public transport is pretty good in the UK and across much of Europe. As I recall, there were issues with terrorist bombing shopping centres and public transport in Manila at the time, so I think he avoided both.
  - Snoddas 5y ago
    Anecdata : 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)
    - miniwark 5y ago
      I have heard of the same in Ethiopia around the 90's. For white worker it was expected to: - 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)
      - mmmmmbop 5y ago
        > (I will avoid the more complicated subject of the maid...) I'm really curious now. Why is the maid a more complicated subject?
        hnlmorg 5y ago
        Given our history, I was assuming there was some expectation that duties might also include requests of a sexual nature. 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. :(
        tagoregrtst 5y ago
  - fxtentacle 5y ago
    50 years ago, Germany also still had a popular saying "Eigentum verpflichtet" which I would translate as "ownership creates a duty". In short, people who owned companies, large plots of land, or other infrastructure were expected to spread their wealth by creating jobs. 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.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - igorkraw 5y ago
      "private property is subordinate to the common good" is even in our "Constitution" (grundgesetz, literally foundational law), although it has been neutered by precedent and other laws. 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-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay 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.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - 5y ago
  - walrus01 5y ago
    I can't speak to the social expectations to have a housekeeper or cook as a domestic employee, but in many developing nation environments with high income disparities between the working class and those who hire domestic staff, there's another thing to consider. 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.
    - apohn 5y ago
      Your post is spot on. I'm an immigrant (to the US) from one of these countries. It's easier to get domestic help because people are desperate for money and there is no social safety net. A lot of the domestic help typically has no/little education (maybe only elementary school), so they are trapped in that situation. 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.
  - Blahah 5y ago
    Very true currently in Kenya, if you integrate at all. People don't usually live in isolation, they are part of a local community and it's natural and expected that they share opportunities and risks with their community. If you can afford to, you are expected to hire other people to do things that save you time and energy, distributing your wealth in the local economy. Having a housekeeper, one or more people responsible for childcare, a gardener (if you have a garden), etc, are all very normal and it lifts everyone up.
    - Loughla 5y ago
      That's genuinely interesting. Here in my part of the states, you're expected to do it all yourself, and in my area (exceedingly rural and exceedingly low income) having anyone do some of those things would be seen as being stuck-up or snobbish or something to that effect. For example, I still catch grief for being a "rich bitch" from my neighbors because I hired someone to put a roof on my covered porch on the back of my house 6 or 7 years ago. 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.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        > 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.
        throwhauser 5y ago
        > 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).
tomrod 5y ago
Philippines as well. If you don't speak the language you are paying a premium for food, travel, communications, and potentially rent.
- dendriti 5y ago
  My experience in SEA in general and Bali specifically (as a Malaysian), prices are not simply a matter of speaking the language. Vendors often charge based literally on your social class/status.
  - fastball 5y ago
    In other words: your skin color.
    - L_Rahman 5y ago
      Vendors in Bangladesh, where I grew up and where my family is from and where I look like I was born, try to rip me off the second they get the slightest inkling I'm American. Very little to do with skin color, it's just most often the biggest giveaway that the buyer is a foreigner.
    - dustintrex 5y ago
      That's a factor, but given the kaleidoscope of ethnicity in most of SE Asia, it's nowhere near that straightforward. People can and do pick up on social class based on dress, the way you speak, the way you address others etc, just as they do in the US.
    - dendriti 5y ago
      No... please don't put words in my mouth. Social class is somewhat related to color in SEA, but not to that extent.
      - fastball 5y ago
        Social class is very related to skin color, at least in Bali. Balinese cover themselves up extensively to avoid getting any darker, cosmetic products are specifically advertised as having bleaching properties to make you whiter, etc – all because historically darker skin was associated with the lower/lowest caste (peasants) and lighter with the upper.
mattwad 5y ago
In Egypt, that's true unless you haggle. You can always haggle to get close to Egyptian prices, but if I didn't have my friend with me to show me how to do that, I would have paid American prices the whole trip. I'm sure a lot of places work similarly. At the end of the day, they want to make a sale, doesn't matter who you are just what they think you'll pay.
- elcritch 5y ago
  Funny, I found shop vendors from some Arabic cultures would almost become offended if you _didn't_ barter with them -- at least if they knew you weren't just a tourist. For the (American) tourists wandering through they'd suck it up and just charge them 10x the price. ;)
  - dennis_moore 5y ago
    "This bloke won't haggle!"
  - saiya-jin 5y ago
    Very true in India too. You stick out as backpacker very clearly, the prices are set accordingly. I found it extremely hard to haggle with my european mentality, and ended up agreeing on still too high prices. It took some time to get better. 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.
    - Loughla 5y ago
      That was my least favorite thing about traveling/living overseas as a stereotypical looking American. I hate haggling. I hate it more than anything. It's needlessly antagonistic and completely unnecessary. I understand it's a cultural thing, but I hate it more than birds. 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.
johnchristopher 5y ago
Does the housekeeper pay less when s/he buys for her/himself ? Or does the seller asks the same price ? Wouldn't be in the housekeeper's interest to say he/she's buying for someone else, to cash in a bit extra ? Wouldn't it fit the seller ?
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  The way I understood your parent comment: - 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.
  - glitchc 5y ago
    The poster got the OP’s point but you didn’t get his. Presumably the expat is giving the housekeeper a grocery allowance, she’s not spending her own money. The merchant could certainly make a deal with the housekeeper to charge expat prices and the two could split the difference.
    - Talanes 5y ago
      That not being the case is the system that got the housekeeper her job though. It's probable that she knows that "not paying the foreigner tax on food" is part of the value she brings, and that overly messing with that system could put her out a job.
    - fragmede 5y ago
      That only works if the foreigner has no friends and doesn't talk to anybody about how much they pay their housekeeper and the grocery budget. And if the foreigner just pays t housekeeper a lump sum, rather than a wage + cost of supplies, then that also won't work.
danans 5y ago
> But he found that, since the merchants charged people by their social class, 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.
- wbobeirne 5y ago
  I get what you're going for, but this simply isn't comparable. I pretty much can't walk into the same store and purchase the same item but be quoted a different price than anyone else. 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.
  - alasdair_ 5y ago
    > I pretty much can't walk into the same store and purchase the same item but be quoted a different price than anyone else. The USA only does this for trivial unnecessary frivolities like medical care.
  - lodovic 5y ago
    Depends on the goods; in normal retail, surely, but if you walk into a used car store, a pawn shop, or try to get insurance, YMMV.
  - fvdessen 5y ago
    When I was in the USA a few years ago with an hispanic looking friend, he was often offered a steep discount at the various shops and restaurants. Often enough that we would ask him to do all the shopping. This happened to us in multiple cities (NY/Miami/SF)
    - gavinray 5y ago
anovikov 5y ago
I love the concept! Eh good old days.
namdnay 5y ago
I’ve noticed that in India, it’s cheaper for a foreigner to book an Uber car than hail an auto rickshaw, because the former can’t discriminate
- angry_octet 5y ago
  Surely Uber can very much discriminate? Tourist prices for tourists. And Uber definitely knows you're a visitor.
  - te_chris 5y ago
    Uber, an American company with heavy presence in Western countries, is not going to do that. It would be suicidal.
Blamvitoads 5y ago
Same is true in India. Those who do not have servants are charged higher prices when you go to buy grocery and pantry items.
literallycancer 5y ago
If I find out a shopkeeper charges me different prices based on who I am, I never spend money there again. I'd much rather give my money to a corporation that's agnostic wrt customer identity.
babyshake 5y ago
It seems that part of the problem in the US (at least the part I live in) is that it can be very difficult to find a maid, nanny, even a gardener who takes pride in their work. I'm sure they are out there and their customers value them and try not to lose them. I've found that using a service like Handy for cleaning never works because the workers tend to clearly really resent doing that kind of work and seem to not care if you give them a bad rating. Of course, a big part of the problem is the wage for this kind of work is not even close to a living wage in a lot of areas.

slim 5y ago

it's a thing in left litterature. this role is called "comprador" and it has very negative connotation (for obvious reasons if you think about it from the native perspective)

telesilla 5y ago

>people expect him to do this. 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.

mcorning 5y ago
I'm surprised to hear that it is impolite to not have a housekeeper if you are an expat. To which places are you referring?
- grandinj 5y ago
  That's a fairly common attitude in poorer countries - there is an expectation that if you are wealthy, you have (at the very least) an obligation to provide employment.
  - jiggunjer 5y ago
    But expat doesn't automatically mean wealthy.
    - medion 5y ago
      Wealth is a relative term. It's pretty unlikely for an expat to be living in the third world, on third world wages with third world opportunities...
    - stavros 5y ago
      It does, otherwise they're called immigrants.
      - BurningFrog 5y ago
        My interpretation has always been that an expat is abroad temporarily, while an immigrant intends to stay permanently. 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.
      - fxtentacle 5y ago
        Or "backpackers" - which seems to be secret code for: stay away, these people (usually guys) cause more trouble than they are worth.
        darkwater 5y ago
        No, backpackers in SE Asia are still mostly on the expat side. Even if they are broken students on a sabbatical year, they mostly have families home that can back them up in case of need. (Exceptions apply, YMMV etc etc.)
        fxtentacle 5y ago
        I agree with you that most westerners who travel to SE Asia will still be considered as "expats" by the locals. What I meant to say is that those people who the locals consider not "expat" anymore, but "backpacker" instead, must really have fallen low.
      - soapdog 5y ago
        That is not how it was taught to me. Expat is when your job moves you to a new country, as in "you're an expatriate employee". Immigrant is when you move for your own reasons. Expats are expected to come back to their original country, or move to a third one at some time. Immigrants are establishing themselves in the new country.
  - thombat 5y ago
    From Hilaire Belloc, of pre-war (1911) Britain: 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.
  - Little_Fish 5y ago
    I think this has a lot of truth. My brother was based in the Philippines for a while for work and was expected to have at least a housekeeper and a chauffeur. I think having a driver was a very reasonable safety measure given the traffic there too. At the time it seemed very ostentatious to us at home, but it was totally the norm.
    - frenchy 5y ago
      Car ownership, especially in Manila, is also not the norm there. There's over 110 million people on a handful of small islands. Also, public transit is way more efficient there than anywhere in North America.
      - Little_Fish 5y ago
        True - it was better to hire a chauffeur who had his own car than to buy a car (also traffic was crazy). He is from the UK - Public transport is pretty good in the UK and across much of Europe. As I recall, there were issues with terrorist bombing shopping centres and public transport in Manila at the time, so I think he avoided both.
- Snoddas 5y ago
  Anecdata : 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)
  - miniwark 5y ago
    I have heard of the same in Ethiopia around the 90's. For white worker it was expected to: - 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)
    - mmmmmbop 5y ago
      > (I will avoid the more complicated subject of the maid...) I'm really curious now. Why is the maid a more complicated subject?
      - hnlmorg 5y ago
        Given our history, I was assuming there was some expectation that duties might also include requests of a sexual nature. 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. :(
        tagoregrtst 5y ago
- fxtentacle 5y ago
  50 years ago, Germany also still had a popular saying "Eigentum verpflichtet" which I would translate as "ownership creates a duty". In short, people who owned companies, large plots of land, or other infrastructure were expected to spread their wealth by creating jobs. 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.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - igorkraw 5y ago
    "private property is subordinate to the common good" is even in our "Constitution" (grundgesetz, literally foundational law), although it has been neutered by precedent and other laws. 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-interoperability-reviving-elegant-weapon-more-civilized-age-slay 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.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - 5y ago
- walrus01 5y ago
  I can't speak to the social expectations to have a housekeeper or cook as a domestic employee, but in many developing nation environments with high income disparities between the working class and those who hire domestic staff, there's another thing to consider. 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.
  - apohn 5y ago
    Your post is spot on. I'm an immigrant (to the US) from one of these countries. It's easier to get domestic help because people are desperate for money and there is no social safety net. A lot of the domestic help typically has no/little education (maybe only elementary school), so they are trapped in that situation. 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.
- Blahah 5y ago
  Very true currently in Kenya, if you integrate at all. People don't usually live in isolation, they are part of a local community and it's natural and expected that they share opportunities and risks with their community. If you can afford to, you are expected to hire other people to do things that save you time and energy, distributing your wealth in the local economy. Having a housekeeper, one or more people responsible for childcare, a gardener (if you have a garden), etc, are all very normal and it lifts everyone up.
  - Loughla 5y ago
    That's genuinely interesting. Here in my part of the states, you're expected to do it all yourself, and in my area (exceedingly rural and exceedingly low income) having anyone do some of those things would be seen as being stuck-up or snobbish or something to that effect. For example, I still catch grief for being a "rich bitch" from my neighbors because I hired someone to put a roof on my covered porch on the back of my house 6 or 7 years ago. 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.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      > 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.
      - throwhauser 5y ago
        > 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).

tomrod 5y ago

Philippines as well. If you don't speak the language you are paying a premium for food, travel, communications, and potentially rent.

dendriti 5y ago
My experience in SEA in general and Bali specifically (as a Malaysian), prices are not simply a matter of speaking the language. Vendors often charge based literally on your social class/status.
- fastball 5y ago
  In other words: your skin color.
  - L_Rahman 5y ago
    Vendors in Bangladesh, where I grew up and where my family is from and where I look like I was born, try to rip me off the second they get the slightest inkling I'm American. Very little to do with skin color, it's just most often the biggest giveaway that the buyer is a foreigner.
  - dustintrex 5y ago
    That's a factor, but given the kaleidoscope of ethnicity in most of SE Asia, it's nowhere near that straightforward. People can and do pick up on social class based on dress, the way you speak, the way you address others etc, just as they do in the US.
  - dendriti 5y ago
    No... please don't put words in my mouth. Social class is somewhat related to color in SEA, but not to that extent.
    - fastball 5y ago
      Social class is very related to skin color, at least in Bali. Balinese cover themselves up extensively to avoid getting any darker, cosmetic products are specifically advertised as having bleaching properties to make you whiter, etc – all because historically darker skin was associated with the lower/lowest caste (peasants) and lighter with the upper.

mattwad 5y ago

In Egypt, that's true unless you haggle. You can always haggle to get close to Egyptian prices, but if I didn't have my friend with me to show me how to do that, I would have paid American prices the whole trip. I'm sure a lot of places work similarly. At the end of the day, they want to make a sale, doesn't matter who you are just what they think you'll pay.

elcritch 5y ago
Funny, I found shop vendors from some Arabic cultures would almost become offended if you _didn't_ barter with them -- at least if they knew you weren't just a tourist. For the (American) tourists wandering through they'd suck it up and just charge them 10x the price. ;)
- dennis_moore 5y ago
  "This bloke won't haggle!"
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  Very true in India too. You stick out as backpacker very clearly, the prices are set accordingly. I found it extremely hard to haggle with my european mentality, and ended up agreeing on still too high prices. It took some time to get better. 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.
  - Loughla 5y ago
    That was my least favorite thing about traveling/living overseas as a stereotypical looking American. I hate haggling. I hate it more than anything. It's needlessly antagonistic and completely unnecessary. I understand it's a cultural thing, but I hate it more than birds. 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.

johnchristopher 5y ago

Does the housekeeper pay less when s/he buys for her/himself ? Or does the seller asks the same price ? Wouldn't be in the housekeeper's interest to say he/she's buying for someone else, to cash in a bit extra ? Wouldn't it fit the seller ?

thaumasiotes 5y ago
The way I understood your parent comment: - 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.
- glitchc 5y ago
  The poster got the OP’s point but you didn’t get his. Presumably the expat is giving the housekeeper a grocery allowance, she’s not spending her own money. The merchant could certainly make a deal with the housekeeper to charge expat prices and the two could split the difference.
  - Talanes 5y ago
    That not being the case is the system that got the housekeeper her job though. It's probable that she knows that "not paying the foreigner tax on food" is part of the value she brings, and that overly messing with that system could put her out a job.
  - fragmede 5y ago
    That only works if the foreigner has no friends and doesn't talk to anybody about how much they pay their housekeeper and the grocery budget. And if the foreigner just pays t housekeeper a lump sum, rather than a wage + cost of supplies, then that also won't work.

danans 5y ago

> But he found that, since the merchants charged people by their social class, 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.

wbobeirne 5y ago
I get what you're going for, but this simply isn't comparable. I pretty much can't walk into the same store and purchase the same item but be quoted a different price than anyone else. 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.
- alasdair_ 5y ago
  > I pretty much can't walk into the same store and purchase the same item but be quoted a different price than anyone else. The USA only does this for trivial unnecessary frivolities like medical care.
- lodovic 5y ago
  Depends on the goods; in normal retail, surely, but if you walk into a used car store, a pawn shop, or try to get insurance, YMMV.
- fvdessen 5y ago
  When I was in the USA a few years ago with an hispanic looking friend, he was often offered a steep discount at the various shops and restaurants. Often enough that we would ask him to do all the shopping. This happened to us in multiple cities (NY/Miami/SF)
  - gavinray 5y ago

anovikov 5y ago

I love the concept! Eh good old days.

namdnay 5y ago

I’ve noticed that in India, it’s cheaper for a foreigner to book an Uber car than hail an auto rickshaw, because the former can’t discriminate

angry_octet 5y ago
Surely Uber can very much discriminate? Tourist prices for tourists. And Uber definitely knows you're a visitor.
- te_chris 5y ago
  Uber, an American company with heavy presence in Western countries, is not going to do that. It would be suicidal.

Blamvitoads 5y ago

Same is true in India. Those who do not have servants are charged higher prices when you go to buy grocery and pantry items.

literallycancer 5y ago

If I find out a shopkeeper charges me different prices based on who I am, I never spend money there again. I'd much rather give my money to a corporation that's agnostic wrt customer identity.

babyshake 5y ago

It seems that part of the problem in the US (at least the part I live in) is that it can be very difficult to find a maid, nanny, even a gardener who takes pride in their work. I'm sure they are out there and their customers value them and try not to lose them. I've found that using a service like Handy for cleaning never works because the workers tend to clearly really resent doing that kind of work and seem to not care if you give them a bad rating. Of course, a big part of the problem is the wage for this kind of work is not even close to a living wage in a lot of areas.