alt Hacker News> (from their perspective) extremely wealthy blow-ins
I’ve had some friends do the digital nomad lifestyle. One thing that stood out to me was how many of them were not really doing that well financially. The stereotype is someone with a $100K per year job living like a king in a place where the median wages are 1/10th of that
Most of the people in their digital nomad groups were actually not full-time employed. They were trying to do contract work and then stretching out their earnings between jobs so they could travel. Living in these cheap locations was almost required to allow them to work the way they wanted.
There were people who were lucky enough to have the six figure remote jobs at companies that were okay with them not being available during normal business hours. Those jobs were at high risk of getting cut at the next economic down cycle.
It reminded me of how much the indie hacker scene all fantasizes about being like the levels.io guy making crazy money selling simple services to his giant follower list, but most of them can barely get a couple dozen sales for their SaaS if they’re lucky. Everyone thinks of levels.io, but few people think of the long tail of people making less than they’d get at any full time job.
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> One thing that stood out to me was how many of them were not really doing that well financially. The stereotype is someone with a $100K per year job living like a king in a place where the median wages are 1/10th of that
The thing is, having a Western passport and earning $10k-20k a year (untaxed) in countries where the median household incomes (ie. 2 working adults) are at best comparable to that is living like a king comparatively speaking.
There's a reason western expats are looked down on derisively by locals across ASEAN and the only ASEAN state with a semi-functional democracy (Malaysia) is also one of the least budget tourist friendly - the middle class and above look at tay ba lo with disgust as losers, and the lower class only look up to them for the opportunity to get a more powerful visa. The high rate of "passport bros" also doesn't help.
It's like that scene from Futurama when they all accidently age backwards: "Oh, so this is the famous Fry. What is he, like, the biggest loser on the surface, so he has to hang out in the sewer?
Fry: They're on to me!"
The reality is, most kinds of tourism only lead to the development of extractive economic institutions at the expense of human capital development and higher value economic sectors that would benefit from that.
And in the case of this specific village and town in Andalusia, this will only exacerbate anti-tourism politics which has helped both Vox and Podemos because rural Andalusia is absolutely not equipped to support a sudden influx of transitory high income outsiders.
I was just the sort you’re talking about.
I did contract work so I could stay traveling and lived on money I made in previous full time jobs. It was a very nice way to live compared to the 9 to 5 even though I made less money.
Having enough money to live the way you want is all you need. Hostels are fun.
But in the free time I had, I did end up making a SaaS that set me up very comfortably for the rest of my life.
Cynicism will keep you in your 9 to 5.