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Take some of your money and travel. Go to Cambodia and don't be shy with your cash. Visit the landmine museum, do some crying, and see how the resilient peopl

Take some of your money and travel. Go to Cambodia and don't be shy with your cash. Visit the landmine museum, do some crying, and see how the resilient people are (slowly) making a comeback. Buy all the trinkets and crap off the swarming children. Hire a guide. Stimulate their local economy, then come back with a greater appreciation of everything in your life. Vote (I suggest independent, since mainstream are different shades of the same color), focus on your friendships, and find yourself a more challenging and fulfilling job, and don't read so much bad news. Everyone plays a role in the world, and yours doesn't have to be one of direct savior. You can and do add value in innumerable ways that you don't even notice.

enko 13y ago
> Buy all the trinkets and crap off the swarming children Oh FFS, don't do that, it just encourages them to treat visiting whiteys as walking ATMs, which is bad for their tourism industry long-term. Stay at hotels, eat at restaurants, take taxis, but don't encourage the obnoxious hawkers, no matter how young they are.
- heynk 13y ago
  Would you advocate for the same 'top-down' approach to stimulating the economy in the US or another developed country? I think the concept of 'hawkers' could be easily applied to startups. Do you believe a good consumer should be supporting big corporations or fledgling startups? I'm just genuinely curious of your position and if you think the analogy applies in the first world.
  - enko 13y ago
    I am not so sure it is such a good analogy. The "business model" of these hawkers in third world countries like Cambodia or Laos is to explicitly present themselves as impoverished, and then pressure or guilt-trip you into buying something from them as a gesture of charity. The OP seemed to encourage such behaviour, even admitted it was "crap" they were selling (it is). I'd suggest that any startup worth its salt is actually offering something of real value, not explicitly a charity case, so the analogy completely breaks down. I fully support encouraging the startup ecosystem. And I'm not even sure about using a term like "top down". Hotels really do employ locals, as do restaurants, and by patronising them you send a strong signal of support to the local tourism industry. With that assurance they can make plans, invest, advertise, expand. It's not about making the rich richer, not at all. Giving a small regional tourism industry the confidence to plan for the future is a wonderful thing.
    - rfnslyr 13y ago
      > The "business model" of these hawkers in third world countries like Cambodia or Laos is to explicitly present themselves as impoverished, and then pressure or guilt-trip you into buying something from them as a gesture of charity. The fact that they even have to do this speaks volumes.
    - was_hellbanned 13y ago
      > to explicitly present themselves as impoverished That's not the least bit true, in my experience. I've watched them come over from where their families are working and attempt to sell trinkets, then go back to their families (or friends' families). As for "crap", yeah, it's crap. Because you don't give children appliances and automobiles to sell. It's no different than the stuff you'll buy from American children going door to door, trying to raise money for their school. I think you're really looking down your nose at people. You have a choice when traveling in areas like this. You can either act like you have to guard your precious money from all these street urchins trying to cheat you, or you can simply accept it as part of the experience traveling in a very poor area, and embrace the reality that you can make some small difference in an individual's life. You talk as if denying individuals some income is somehow helping their long-term tourism. Yet Thailand, which is decades ahead of Cambodia in terms of development and wealth, still sees foreigners as wealthy, pesters them for sales and rides, and they have a very healthy tourism industry in spite of this. A country can't force its way into a $500/night resort industry. Thailand has tried for years, and it's not happening anytime soon. Cambodia doesn't even have a reasonable highway infrastructure. > Hotels really do employ locals To give an interesting regional example, are you aware that the Thai island of Koh Phi Phi is controlled by the Chinese mafia?
      - notahacker 13y ago
        Do you have a source for the Ko Phi Phi claim (reason I ask is genuine curisoity: I had a long conversation with a Thai bar owner a couple of years ago where he observed that one of the attractions of Phi Phi is that unlike Phuket or Samui, it wasn't mafia run). The mafia "protected" parts of the Thai tourist industry still employ lots of working class Thais, not to mention the Burmese diaspora. The wider issue with buying stuff off Cambodian street urchins is that you really don't want to encourage a state of affairs where the most aggressive child beggars/vendors earn far more than their parents... and then need kids of their own once they hit their mid-teens and no longer appeal to tourists' sympathies.
- was_hellbanned 13y ago
  > Stay at hotels, eat at restaurants So, you only want your money going to the wealthier families, many of which are foreign? Street hawkers may be annoying, but they also represent the most basic form of entrepreneurial spirit.
shanusmagnus 13y ago
This is a beautiful answer, thank you. Here's a twist that I read about from Tyler Cowen, from marginalrevolution: for reasons a child of your comment has pointed out, handouts to the people asking for handouts creates something of a perverse incentive; Cowen recommends going to random people in third world countries who seem to be in need but are _not_ begging for money, and give them your money. Not sure about the practical effects of this (there's a whiff of the kind of paternalism that economists, including Cowen himself, debunks in other economic domains) but thought-provoking nonetheless.

enko 13y ago

> Buy all the trinkets and crap off the swarming children Oh FFS, don't do that, it just encourages them to treat visiting whiteys as walking ATMs, which is bad for their tourism industry long-term. Stay at hotels, eat at restaurants, take taxis, but don't encourage the obnoxious hawkers, no matter how young they are.

heynk 13y ago
Would you advocate for the same 'top-down' approach to stimulating the economy in the US or another developed country? I think the concept of 'hawkers' could be easily applied to startups. Do you believe a good consumer should be supporting big corporations or fledgling startups? I'm just genuinely curious of your position and if you think the analogy applies in the first world.
- enko 13y ago
  I am not so sure it is such a good analogy. The "business model" of these hawkers in third world countries like Cambodia or Laos is to explicitly present themselves as impoverished, and then pressure or guilt-trip you into buying something from them as a gesture of charity. The OP seemed to encourage such behaviour, even admitted it was "crap" they were selling (it is). I'd suggest that any startup worth its salt is actually offering something of real value, not explicitly a charity case, so the analogy completely breaks down. I fully support encouraging the startup ecosystem. And I'm not even sure about using a term like "top down". Hotels really do employ locals, as do restaurants, and by patronising them you send a strong signal of support to the local tourism industry. With that assurance they can make plans, invest, advertise, expand. It's not about making the rich richer, not at all. Giving a small regional tourism industry the confidence to plan for the future is a wonderful thing.
  - rfnslyr 13y ago
    > The "business model" of these hawkers in third world countries like Cambodia or Laos is to explicitly present themselves as impoverished, and then pressure or guilt-trip you into buying something from them as a gesture of charity. The fact that they even have to do this speaks volumes.
  - was_hellbanned 13y ago
    > to explicitly present themselves as impoverished That's not the least bit true, in my experience. I've watched them come over from where their families are working and attempt to sell trinkets, then go back to their families (or friends' families). As for "crap", yeah, it's crap. Because you don't give children appliances and automobiles to sell. It's no different than the stuff you'll buy from American children going door to door, trying to raise money for their school. I think you're really looking down your nose at people. You have a choice when traveling in areas like this. You can either act like you have to guard your precious money from all these street urchins trying to cheat you, or you can simply accept it as part of the experience traveling in a very poor area, and embrace the reality that you can make some small difference in an individual's life. You talk as if denying individuals some income is somehow helping their long-term tourism. Yet Thailand, which is decades ahead of Cambodia in terms of development and wealth, still sees foreigners as wealthy, pesters them for sales and rides, and they have a very healthy tourism industry in spite of this. A country can't force its way into a $500/night resort industry. Thailand has tried for years, and it's not happening anytime soon. Cambodia doesn't even have a reasonable highway infrastructure. > Hotels really do employ locals To give an interesting regional example, are you aware that the Thai island of Koh Phi Phi is controlled by the Chinese mafia?
    - notahacker 13y ago
      Do you have a source for the Ko Phi Phi claim (reason I ask is genuine curisoity: I had a long conversation with a Thai bar owner a couple of years ago where he observed that one of the attractions of Phi Phi is that unlike Phuket or Samui, it wasn't mafia run). The mafia "protected" parts of the Thai tourist industry still employ lots of working class Thais, not to mention the Burmese diaspora. The wider issue with buying stuff off Cambodian street urchins is that you really don't want to encourage a state of affairs where the most aggressive child beggars/vendors earn far more than their parents... and then need kids of their own once they hit their mid-teens and no longer appeal to tourists' sympathies.
was_hellbanned 13y ago
> Stay at hotels, eat at restaurants So, you only want your money going to the wealthier families, many of which are foreign? Street hawkers may be annoying, but they also represent the most basic form of entrepreneurial spirit.

shanusmagnus 13y ago

This is a beautiful answer, thank you. Here's a twist that I read about from Tyler Cowen, from marginalrevolution: for reasons a child of your comment has pointed out, handouts to the people asking for handouts creates something of a perverse incentive; Cowen recommends going to random people in third world countries who seem to be in need but are _not_ begging for money, and give them your money. Not sure about the practical effects of this (there's a whiff of the kind of paternalism that economists, including Cowen himself, debunks in other economic domains) but thought-provoking nonetheless.