Agatha Christie's quote is well-known but the exact same situation still holds today in many countries. Here in Viet Nam it is extremely common for middle income families to have a maid or nanny (or both) but not a car. The cars themselves are quite expensive. A Honda Civic is $33,000 by itself whereas a nanny (6-days a week, 10 hours a day) is $400-500/month and a maid who works 9 hours a week, i.e. 3 days a week, 3 hours each time) is $90-100/month.
So a single car not very expensive car costs the same as 5 years of a full-time nanny and part-time maid.
And that's without figuring in all the extra costs of a car, especially parking. There's not really free parking most places here. So you'll be paying for parking literally everywhere you go.
Even worse, most houses (unless they are luxury houses >$500,000 built in the last 5ish years) aren't built with a garage for a car, so you're looking at buying land, smashing down the existing structure, and then rebuilding something with a garage. And the space for a garage isn't cheap either. If you're a middle income family you're probably living in one of the capital cities and most people would probably be shocked at how expensive land is in the capital cities nowadays.
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.
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.
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.
"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-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.
Scotland is a much better example of "right to roam" than England.
Very generally, England allows a right to cross property on foot. But, that doesn't include camping, cycling, etc. The list of allowances is relatively short and exceptions relatively long.
Scotland allows all a lot more freedom to roam, including cycling and camping. I don't recall exactly how it's codified, but it's approximately a default right to access, with limited exceptions (close proximity to homes, farms with active lambing, estates during hunting season, stuff like that).
> 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.
This is like saying France and the US both have freedom of speech. Technically true but the difference in how strong the laws are between Nordic countries and England is enormous.
This is a great post. When I moved away from the United States, and started to learn -- in earnest -- about other countries, I was surprised to learn about "freedom of speech" in other highly-developed, liberal democracies. Two specific things come to mind: slander/defamation/blasphemy and pro-Nazi (German National Socialist) material. Initially, I was aghast -- "Why isn't 'everything' allowed?". Over time, I began to understand that each nation and society needs to define their own version of "freedom of speech" -- and what it means to be a liberal democracy. As a good example: Read the Wiki page for Geert Wilders. He is a hateful person who says many dreadful, discriminatory things. More than once, he has lost court trials in Nederlands over hate speech. I recall once that he was fined zero euros. Complex! And, there are some nations where it feels like they voluntarily use "freedom of speech" less than Europe/US/CAN/AU/NZ/SouthAmerica -- like East Asia (Taiwan, Japan, South Korea) and Southeast Asia (Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia -- don't get me started about Singapore!) And South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, etc.) are so culturally diverse and complex that I cannot begin to generalise.
You wrote: <<Technically true but the difference in how strong the laws are between Nordic countries and England is enormous.>>
I am sure you were thinking of a specific example when you wrote this post! Can you share it? It would be nice to learn.
It's surreal as an American watching a couple of UK photographers on YouTube just stroll through random gates and cross land without any locks or "No Trespassing" signs. Meanwhile, I got a shotgun shoved in my face for walking too close for the comfort of the owner of a house on the other side of a highway's shoulder. I'm pretty sure brandishing is a crime in Georgia, but I was a teen and wasn't about to argue with someone who could end me with a twitch.
I once read this is actually tied to the degree of agriculture vs animal raising.
Because animals are easily stolen, cultures around animals as food, tend to consider weapon ownership essential, and tend to think highly of self defense and whatnot.
These same cultures also tend to believe strongly in "hospitality", in the sense that if you have guests you need to take care of them and whatnot, because you might need to be someone guest too.
Meanwhile plant-based cultures tend instead to favor things like schedules, calendars, seasons, festivals and so on, because this is what essential to their food instead, meanwhile it doesn't matter if someone is strolling in your land when it is not harvest season, the person won't steal your food.
> 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.
> When the land was privatized, the government made it a condition that the hiking trail would remain for the general public to enjoy
Here in Massachusetts, our trespassing laws only apply to "improved" land. So you are free to transit any wilderness areas, even if they are privately owned, and even if "no trespassing" signs are posted. Of course, nobody knows this or follows it. People regularly call the police, who are just as ignorant on the law, because people are on their land.
I guess this is the reason in Germany it is very common to run your own business when you are employed while countries like India most of companies add very brutal moonlighting clause in job agreement.
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.
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.
The way of the American suburb is so different from cities in most of the world that the rest of the cultural differences seem natural. In places with this social bonding arrangements, you have contacts across social strata that fit people and jobs: Your friend's housekeeper is often a great contact for more good housekeeping. They might have friends and family members that need work in other occupations too, and thus entire social groups of people of different social classes bond together. You typically hire the people directly, not through a company, and personal reputation hits ripple through the social network. There might be people in-th-know, which act as brokers for the top opportunities without charging a cent.
I compare that to the American suburban experience, where most people who do manual work are considered too flakey to deal with directly, most tasks are nowhere near enough to count as a full time job, and everything is handled via companies led by people who code-switch. If I need a roofer or a landscaper, I will find few companies led by a mexican, or even someone with mexican ancestry, but their workers are almost assured to be: There's layers of isolation on top of layers of isolation, so you aren't building a relationship with your roofer, your handyman, or your housekeeper. The intermediaries make all of that work exchange have a very different nature.
On top of that, barring a small number of neighborhoods, there's a good chance you'll never see one of those workers outside of the contract, because the housing they can afford, and the housing they can afford, are so far apart you have few reasons to frequent the same establishments. So while places where more people live together might make it easier to see how different social classes are, in the US we might have a larger social distance, but completely hidden by housing. It's not just that the rich American can take their kids to a private school: It's that the way things are set up, the public schools for many a rich American will have few families who aren't rich in the first place, just via suburban zoning.
It's as if different social classes were happy to coexist in many other places, but in the US, they loathe each other, and can only interact via intermediaries.
>It's as if different social classes were happy to coexist in many other places, but in the US, they loathe each other, and can only interact via intermediaries.
Is it possible that the US is big enough and rich enough that it allows different social classes to not have to co exist, whereas in many other places, they have no choice but to co exist due to lack of land and other wealth?
> 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.
Knowledge isn't zero-sum, but credentials are. Educating everyone doesn't make "menial" jobs go away. Better, really, to recognize some of those jobs as more important, and be willing to pay for them.
Also, there are gains from trade, and economies of scale. The time to cook two meals is less than double the time to cook one. And the person who specializes in it is probably better at it than the person who specializes in some other thing. When things are working correctly, these gains are then distributed across society by exchange.
I wrote education, not credentials. That includes learning how to farm, be an electrician, a crane operator, a researcher, learning how to cook, it could be anything.
It is obvious that a society with widespread use of personal drivers/housekeepers/nannies is simply one with a wider income/wealth gap.
One option is to spend multiple generations slowing bringing the housekeepers kids up the ladder with the housekeeper’s meager savings, and then their kids, and so on. Or we can cut the crap, and redistribute wealth more quickly and directly via a public education/training system.
What I wrote does not preclude ditches being dug, or being a ditch digger. What it does is prevent ditch digging from being one of the few options for many people which result in ditch digging labor prices to be very low.
You give people opportunities to do many more things than menial labor, then that allows the price for menial labor to rise so that it is not done by the “lower” socioeconomic rungs.
This is a good argument, IMO. The main dangers I see are of status-signaling "non-skills" dominating education, and of overall malinvestment in skills that aren't needed.
> 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).
Is there any question that a housekeeper is better off if they were able to spend their time studying or training for something that offers a higher probability of earning higher incomes?
Or should society continue to perpetuate the relative socioeconomic class you are born into by having you spend your time washing other people’s clothes and homes?
Because you've combined two concerns, the amount of money people make, and what level of stratification is involved in making it. You can study, train, and improve your economic security considerably, but still end up essentially doing menial tasks for rich people, just for more money.
(EDIT: That said, upward economic mobility is always desirable and education is essential to achieving it. It's an escape from poverty, but it's not a foolproof escape from hierarchy).
> Because you've combined two concerns, the amount of money people make, and what level of stratification is involved in making it.
The two concerns are linked. You only see widespread personal drivers and housekeepers and gardeners in less developed countries with many very poor people. Reducing the stratification by redistributing wealth via taxes and an education system is preferable mechanism of spreading opportunity.
The societies telesilla and Blahah are referring to are not ones where a housekeeper works 40 hour weeks Mon to Fri and gets PTO and has time to get a law degree in the evenings.
These places have housekeepers and drivers because they are not fortunate to be born in a society with enough of a public education system that allows them to escape that fate, even if it is just being an accountant for a rich person, at least they get vacations and decent work hours and schedules.
> The societies telesilla and Blahah are referring to are not ones where a housekeeper works 40 hour weeks Mon to Fri and gets PTO
Nor is the "high-growth" tech sector, which is notorious for long hours and de-facto little time off. The money might be good, but the lifestyle can be miserable.
You're working for billionaires instead of millionaires, but you're still in a situation where a "?" from the top means you've got to hustle.
I do not even know how to respond to a comparison of the quality of life for an employee in the tech sector to a housekeeper or driver in a developing country.
One has weekends and holidays, can send their kids to fancy schools, go on international vacations, choose to retire by 40, has access to great healthcare, choose to work a different profession or their hobby or whatever they want.
>One has weekends and holidays, can send their kids to fancy schools, go on international vacations, choose to retire by 40, has access to great healthcare, choose to work a different profession or their hobby or whatever they want.
The poster you replied to was very clearly limiting the scope of their comparison to the "so they do not have to do menial tasks for richer people" standard you gave originally. Listing any number of other differences is orthogonal to the point they are making.
The vast, vast majority of Americans are doing their own laundry, house cleaning, gardening, and driving.
I know quite a few households in the $200k+ income, and no one has a driver, everyone does their own laundry, and only a few have a house cleaner come by every couple weeks.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Expats usually don’t have immigrant visas. They also receive packages from their companies for their temporary assignments. If you go to the country on your own to fund a job, you usually won’t be referred to as an expat by those with packages who refer to themselves as expats. But you won’t be referred to as a migrant worker either unless you are poor and doing construction or farm work. We used the term half-pats to describe ourselves, but mostly it was just foreigners.
The USA is exceptional because almost every visa that allows for work is considered an immigration visa (eg H1 leads to a greencard, eventually). But in other countries that is most definitely not true.
H1 does not lead to a green card. Infact H1 approval receipt will show Temporary Non Immigrant Worker visa. You have to apply to get a green card, entirely separate.
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.)
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)
Some of the maid where indeed expected to also do "night duties" if asked. It was not a racial power stuff. It's was more a problem with a sort of "cultural prostitution" witch was everywhere in Ethiopia. The maids where still primary maids and not prostitute, and to be fair, the same problem also did exist in Europe at the time of Agatha Christie (How many European maid had become pregnant and then fired ?).
I hate to break it to you but rich white people are generally far less likely to be a sexual predation risk in these situations because they often have more to lose, have easier access to consenting parties, and come from countries that stigmatize that type of behavior to a much greater degree.
But mentioning it as if white people are known for it or did it lots or have a specific history of it is quite racist. Bad things are committed by all races and slavery is certainly one of them. It's whitewashing the world's dirty secrets and then pinning them on the evil white man.
As I've said elsewhere, the context was already about white men employing people from black communities -- go re-read the GP's post, I wasn't the one that bought race into it. I just made an uncomfortable truth that some people apparently feel the need to defend by proxy with the usual arguments of "other people were just as bad", as if that somehow reconciles the atrocities that we committed (hint: it doesn't).
Honestly the "other cultures are just as bad" argument here strikes me just as poor as the "all lives matter" protest comment against the BLM movement:
> There is a difference between something being true and something being relevant.
> No need to racially charge it - sexually exploiting servants is a universal.
The topic of race was already raised in the grandparent post, I quote (emphasis mine):
> I have heard of the same in Ethiopia around the 90's. For white worker it was expected to:
While I'm sure exploitation happens in most cultures I'm mostly familiar with it happening in white culture and given that context was already specified and my education being based on that context I decided to keep my reply specific to that context which I already knew.
Sorry if I offended anyone -- I just figured being a white male myself it was more offensive to drag other cultures into the discussion when they were previously outside the scope.
> Curiously, you said “rich white people” forgoing the one prejudice that actually does predict sexual exploitation - men!
I didn't need to specify men because that context was already defined in the post I was responding to. To quote the GP again:
> This was OK if you where a man, a couple or a family. If you where a young woman... good luck with this.
Frankly though, moaning about other cultures doing it too feels a little like trying to pull others down so we don't look so bad instead of acknowledging our own failings. Maybe that's an uncomfortable opinion for people to hear but as the saying goes "people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones".
Bare in mind I'm not suggesting an entire race is frequently abusing their maids to this day. What I'm saying is there is recorded history of it happening. You only have to dig through some of the abuses that happened during the slave trade to see evidence of this fact. So we do indeed have a bad track record in this regard. It might be an uncomfortable truth for some of us to hear but it doesn't make it any less true.
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.
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. ;)
Also funny, I visited Jordan 2 years ago, right before the pandemic. I was expecting to have to haggle prices like in other places but it just didn't happen, didn't feel I was paying tourist prices at all. Street sellers didn't push us to buy stuff. A street restaurant in Amman that didn't have a menu charged us around €4 for the meal, which was dirt cheap for what we had. All in all it was a very nice experience.
Seconded. Jordan is a pretty great place as far as I experienced it too. Though I was not alone myself, but watching interactions with others it was all very decent.
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.
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.
When I have traveled to India, I just wear jeans and t-shirt... and yeah, a backpack. :) Obviously, I am a non-native, but I have not experienced outrageous "foreigners-only" prices ever. This experience includes incredibly remote villages in South India as well as urban centre of Mumbai. That said, I understand that many people have difficult experiences with bartering when they travel in South Asia.
You wrote: <<some Arabic cultures would almost become offended if you _didn't_ barter with them>>
I have also heard the same, but I have zero native-level understanding of any Middle Eastern cultures. Could anyone who lives in the Middle East / North Africa / Horn of Africa comment? I would appreciate any first hand accounts about this stereotype. It's OK if you teach us that it's all "travel guide bullshit"!
When I lived in Morocco, the prices went down the longer I shopped with particular market vendors. The first time I bought oranges, for example, they were eye-wateringly expensive. As I became a regular buyer, the price gradually dropped until they were a fraction of the original cost. (It would probably have been cheaper to begin with if I'd haggled, but I am not great at that sort of interaction).
Ah is that what it was. Mixing ltr and rtl text always trips me up. To make matters even weirder it seems that sequences of nummerals, such as ١٠ are ltr again. That has some very unintuitive consequences when you try to edit that sentence.
Haggling is fun. I’m convinced the modern aversion to haggling in first world countries is because people grow up avoiding all direct confrontation. They think it’s somehow how rude to disagree with someone about the price of the article at hand. The next level of it is when they justify this “politeness” by claiming that haggling is inefficient or a waste of time.
The transaction itself is not zero sum. The existence of the transaction itself is proof that both parties value what they received more than what they gave away (otherwise they would not have transacted).
The waste of time is having to haggle to arrive at the price, when the price could have been published. It benefits nobody, because that's the price the transaction would have happened at anyway. But we have to do a whole song and dance beforehand anyway, every single time.
This of course is under the assumption that time is expensive relative to the accuracy of the market clearing price of the goods being sold. In many cultures this isn't true, people have lots of free time, but each person buying the good might assign different value to it, so by spending a bit more time the people who need the lower price can still access it, whereas the shopkeeper can still make the money to keep the shop running from those who can afford it.
Honestly, thinking that there should be fixed prices for everything, if you're a rich westerner going in, means you're trying to externalize the effort of setting a market clearing rate, and trying to piggy-back off of the locals. If it's at some multinational chain, then sure, don't have people haggle with you over the price of some McNuggets, but at a family owned business, if they can get an additional 20% of the price of the goods they might be doubling their profit margin, so why wouldn't they haggle?
The seller knows the customary price, and the lowest price they would be willing to accept. The "real" price is whatever the buyer and seller agree on for a particular trade. Price discovery is an ongoing process which isn't finished just because you've determined an average price for past trades. The buyer isn't losing out unless there's actual fraud involved, even if they could have potentially negotiated a better price. And really, we're mostly talking about trades between individuals and small businesses (who may also be individuals)—why should all the surplus value represented by the difference between the highest and lowest prices acceptable to both parties go to the buyer, and not the seller?
Negotiating price is extremely common in corporate environments. If I had to guess what it accomplishes, I’d say building a relationship with your trading partner.
Many / most corporate negotiations are legitimately necessary because every contract being negotiated is unique. Negotiations allow both parties to set terms and come to an agreeable price when there is no preset price.
A market vendor who knows an apple should cost $2 but charges $5 in the hopes of screwing over a tourist is just an asshole. I can't imagine how that builds relationships.
There is a standard price, or at least there could be. It would be trivial for the apple seller to calculate the average price he ends up negotiating, and setting that as the published, firm price.
That is what's frustrating about negotiating for commodities like food. The seller is taking advantage of information asymmetry. They know what the standard price is, and they hope that you don't. It's scummy.
It is different when there isn't a set price, i.e. if you are trying to buy a one of a kind item. In that case even in the Western world some negotiation would be acceptable, (buying an original painting from an artist, for example). But this does not justify having to haggle for everything you want to buy, every time.
> That is what's frustrating about negotiating for commodities like food.
While I generally agree with you, if you're buying fresh food at a market, such as the apples in your example, it isn't necessarily a commodity. Quality and size will vary from one item to the next; why must they all be the same price? Places where goods tend to be more standardized seem to rely less on haggling and more on sorting: you don't haggle over the price of an apple out of a mixed lot, you pay a set price for a certain grade of apple which has been separated out in advance.
You’re biased against the seller and even your example of “fair” price is arrived at after negotiations! Where would that come from if there is no haggling?
Even a published price is nothing more than a free option for buyers. It’s a ceiling. There’s nothing that prevents the seller from offering a lower unpublished price.
Through the conversation, you learn the idiosyncrasies of the other person. In a culture where haggling is normal, their “style” gives you insight into their personality and how they might act in other scenarios. And it identifies you as an insider or outsider to the culture. At the very least, you’ve learned their name and face.
I also hate haggling, and since I’m not from a culture where it’s a norm I can’t use it to read deeper into a person. (Or them into me.) But it’s not too hard to imagine how it helps to build relationships.
in the west buying stuff usually requires no human interaction at all, even the cashiers are getting replaced by automatic checkout. But, on the other hand, you do need negotiation skills, be it in career, private live, or elsewhere. So maybe we all just need to do a year of backpacking and learn how to haggle
yup, stuff like cars, or, god forbid, houses, are not only expensive AF, but the buying requires skills most people never had a chance to practice.
fuck it, I'm cycling to save the planet and my nerves
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.
No, your manners. Plus little details like a nice watch, clean shirt, how you arrive, perfume, hair style, etc.
It's basically the same as if you go to a trade show in the US. All the salespeople are trying to figure out which visitors are CEOs and, hence, worth their time, and which ones are just curious amateurs.
Maybe Google "Thuan Pham" - the Vietnamese Uber ex-CTO. He's doing it so well that even for us westerners it's easy to see that he's in a position of power. He isn't going to be charged tourist pricing due to his skin color (which is normal for Vietnamese). He's going to be charged tourist pricing because of his behavior which indicates that he's mind-boggingly rich and powerful.
I thought he got $80 mio in Uber shares some years ago. In Ho Chi Minh City - the capital of his home country - you can buy a good freshly cooked lunch like Com Suon Op La (steak with egg, rice and fresh vegetables) for $0.50
So for everyday living, $80mio in Vietnam is going to feel like $8bio in the US (because steak in a restaurant is $50 instead of $0.5 for a 100x multiplier in living costs).
Parent was saying that if you saw this guy on the street, you wouldn't think he's a deca-millionaire just by the looks, which is what you implied. In most pictures he projects a middle manager look.
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.
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.
Most cultures in East/South/Southeast Asia have a similar reaction to skin colour for the dominant local ethnicity. For example, when in Tamil Nadu, (sadly) local people with darker skin are considered lower class. (Positive note: This is less and less true when you talk to young, highly-educated Indians!) As a counterpoint, of course, this would not matter if a group of wealthy South Indian-descent Malaysians walked into a business/shop/restaurant in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. (For less knowledgeable readers: South Indian-descent Malaysians are a comparative minority in Malaysia -- Wiki says only 6.6%!)
This is strictly personal, but where I grew up with mostly light skinned people... showing up after winter holidays with a dark tan made you look so hot and so rich! Did anyone else feel the same? It carries into my life as an adult. :)
Holy crap yes! There are loads of very wealthy, dark skin South Indians in Malaysia! I can tell when they roll-up in a fancy car, good clothes, and private school accents!
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.
Many attractions in Thailand have dual pricing, with foreigner pricing in Arabic numerals (100 baht) and local pricing in Thai numerals (๒๐ บาท). The price differential is often 5x or more.
I was visiting some temples in Bangkok recently and was amused to find there was no dual pricing; rather, there was an admission charge for foreigners and no charge for Thais.
(I don’t mind this system actually, but if I were paying taxes in Thailand and still had to pay foreigner entry fees everywhere it might bug me.)
The train between Machu Picchu (Aguas Calientes) and Cusco had three classes, the lowest of which was restricted to Peruvian citizens and residents. To be clear, Peruvians were free to use the second and first classes if they were willing to pay, too, but only they were allowed to use the very cheap third class. If I recall correctly, the second class one-way was about US$35. It struck me as being a bit fancier (and unnecessarily so) than second class in a DB (Germany) Intercity Express.
My aunt and uncle took the first class as part of their far more expensive Peru tour, and were not exposed to the direct cost, but judging by the pictures, it was luxurious.
I knew I was being milked everywhere in Peru. It didn't bother me because extortionate prices in Peru are still cheaper than prices in my home country.
The only exception was where people insisted on being paid in American dollars. I'm not American so it never occurred to me to buy and bring American dollars to any country outside of the USA. We treat American tourists with a certain amount of eyerolling when they try to use their money in my country, but I have learned my lesson that it is a good idea to have an emergency stash of the currency of dishonesty when travelling abroad.
> good idea to have an emergency stash of the currency of dishonesty when travelling abroad
I recommend that you do some research about the economics of any country you visit. As you've already somewhat discovered, many places in Central America and South America will actually prefer payment in US dollars because the official government exchange rates from their local currency to dollars is extortionately unfair and not accurate to ForEx markets, this combined with high rates of inflation for the local currency and regular currency "resets" mean that people don't want to have their savings denominated in the local currency.
I don't know why you consider dollars to be the "currency of dishonesty", but all throughout the Americas, dollars are generally the highest valued currency because the US dominates economics and trade relations in the region. I imagine the same may be true in other parts of the world but they might preference other currencies rather than dollars (Ex: I found in some parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia that Euros were accepted in preference over local currency).
Any time you travel to a new country, do your research in advance.
> I don't know why you consider dollars to be the "currency of dishonesty"
I was not trying to imply Americans are dishonest. I was trying to imply that insisting on the use of foreign currency like USD as the sole medium of exchange, or any other black market activity if it comes to that, is a dishonest way to make a living.
And sure, I understand why the black market exists from a socioeconomic point of view. I have learned my lesson about travelling in less advantaged countries. I witnessed stuff in Peru that would make suburban Karen's head explode with apoplexy, and it was just considered normal and expected stuff there.
> I witnessed stuff in Peru that would make suburban Karen's head explode with apoplexy, and it was just considered normal and expected stuff there.
Agreed on that wholeheartedly. Visiting Peru was an interesting experience for me as well, and one that was deeply sad in many ways. There's such a visibily stark wealth inequality in Lima that's immediately obvious as soon as you deplane that is usually hidden away in other parts of the world. Lima is an amazing world-class food city, but most of that is found within Miraflores district which is a far cry from the conditions of most of the rest of the city or in the pueblo jovenes on the outskirts of town in the hills. The same is found in other parts of Peru as well, and in a way I am very happy for it because it made obvious to me things I had been able to avoid or put out of my mind in my travels elsewhere and made me more aware of how different societies exploit people and the role of the West in creating and enabling those conditions, my own role as a traveler included.
It was more like $90 per person for one-way, 1.5 hour ride, of course it's fancy for that kind of cash. I guess all Machu Picchu prices were subject to 10% YoY growth pre-COVID since, you know, they don't make them anymore.
In Java, Indonesia, it is similar for Borobudur (massive Buddhist temple) and Prambanam (massive Hindu temple). Since they are both UNESCO heritage sites that have a small army of well-paid local and foreign experts constantly improving the sites, I do not mind to pay 10x or 20x compared to locals. The same was similar for temples in Siem Reap, Cambodia (Ankor Wat and friends). I have heard about some "elite level" Indian religious sites than do similar, but will offer local rates for people who carry an OCI card (Overseas Citizen of India card).
Same was for Taj Mahal some... 13 years ago. Foreigner price (apart from few neighboring countries) was at least 10-20x the price of local one. Still, well worth seeing that marvel
Zero trolling: If locals pay 1 EUR and you and me paid 10 or 20 EU, is it so bad? I am can accept when the UNESCO world heritage site is top notch. Yes, 20 EUR is expensive, but so is the entrance fee for the Vatican Museum or Le Louvre (Paris). Real Question: Does Italy or France have a programme to allow low income students to enter these world class museums cheaply? It would be great if someone can comment about it!
Of course they have it, whole western (or more probably whole) Europe has significant discount for students and I think elderly too, for any kind of tourist attraction. But not 10 or 20x, more like 20-50% of full ticket.
they are very up-front about that, though, and my thai friends told me it's because their taxes support the attractions, which seemed perfectly fair to me.
Last time I was in one of the large, free museums in London (British Museum, Natural History Museum, Science Musem etc), a tourist asked me to read out / read simpler the words shown above the donation box. He then put £30 in.
I was surprised, as I'd never thought to donate to these museums. He pointed out that he didn't pay tax in Britain, and entry tickets to a similar museum at home would be around £30.
In Thailand there isn't dual pricing for food. But there is for entry to many venues. It is institutionalized by the government - for example, the entry fee to national parks for non-Thais is 10x the Thai price.
This is true, I just paid 50 baht at a temple yesterday and my gf didn't have to pay. And of course taxis might try to charge you more too.
But I meant for food the street vendors are incredibly honest. On several occasions I've given them money expecting no change (based on a price on the sign) but for whatever reason the price was different and they called me to give me change as I was walking away
This isn't even that uncommon in Western countries. For example Cardiff Castle has free entry for residents, but non-residents need to pay for entry (at least, that was the case when I was there a few years ago). The museum in my city in the Netherlands is €6 for residents of the city, and €13 for non-residents.
It is - many restaurants have two menus, one for locals in thai and one for tourists. Prices in the first one are sometimes twice as cheap. (I've lived on Koh Samui for 3.5 years)
It was certainly the case when I lived in Thailand, as I could read (the numbers aren't difficult and you get a lot of practice) and often anything with a published price up front would be different read in English than in Thai.
Your examples are more like colleges charging more tuition on out-of-state student, or tourist attractions charge lower price to locals, which are made public information. The context under this thread is talking about dual price that is deliberately taking advantage of information asymmetry, differentiation, or even discrimination based on social class and skin color.
I can't speak for Rome because I have not been in churches there but for the rest of Italy, 99% of churches are Free Entry and the few very famous touristic attractions have a single fee no matter who you are.
Maybe you are confusing paying for a guide as tourist with paying to visit the church.
Free entry - but for those going for the religious service. That's not me. At least that's how it was all around northern Italy few years ago when I visited.
My experience in S. Korea is different, if you are a resident of a certain province (I don't know what is that in Korean) you get a discount on the local tourist spots even if you are a foreigner or a S. Korean. So if you're S. Korean and live in a different province you pay a higher price.
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.
> 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.
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.
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)
I've been all over the US and lived in two of the cities you mentioned. Dated and been friends with many different hispanic people and I've never seen this happen.
That's true of my friends and romantic partners of all races by the way. I can't think of a single time I've seen someone be given a racial discount here.
There were a few times at restaurants and grocery stores where they had access to items I wouldn't have, but that almost always came from speaking the right language and knowing what to ask for. I'm sure those places would have been equally happy to accommodate me if I know what to say.
I do have stories of those friends and romantic partners being discriminated against a few times.
Well we found it all the more surprising because our hispanic looking friend didn't even speak Spanish. But that's what happened. Maybe they mistook him for an illegal migrant ? In a similar vein, We also noticed that when our white looking friend was not with us, people started to offer us drugs in the streets, which we found hilarious.
Hospitals in Belgium charge you by your income level. We know this because my wife had to be briefly hospitalized in Brussels during the nearly 8 years we lived there, and the hospital made it very clear to us that we were being charged in this way.
Ironically, we still paid less out of pocket for that week-long hospital stay without insurance than we would have paid for a single day hospital stay here in the US with insurance.
So, overall, we were pretty happy about the amount we were paying.
> Ironically, we still paid less out of pocket for that week-long hospital stay without insurance than we would have paid for a single day hospital stay here in the US with insurance.
I'm curious about this one. I've been to the hospital one time in my adult life. Stayed overnight, got multiple tests including an Xray and an MRI. Got medication, etc.
Having heard the horror stories I was ready for a big bill.
It was like $140.
It was cheaper than a hotel room would have been.
I can't tell if I just have exceptionally good insurance or if people who make a big deal about the US healthcare system are leaving out critical details.
I am confused by this seriously down-voted post. Are you based in the US visiting a local hospital saying that you received (very!) fair pricing for an MRI and X-ray? If not, can you please explain?
Google search tells me that in 2020 the median deductible (out of pocket pay before health insurance takes over costs) was between $1,418 and $2,295 depending largely on the company size, with "platinum" plans median of only $95 and "bronze" plans median of $6,992[1].
The cost of an MRI (starting at $400, going way up depending on what was MRI'ed)[2], xray (starting at $100)[3] and an overnight stay (around $2600 non-ICU [4]) would be at least $3100 alone if you had to pay everything out of pocket, not accounting for any additional costs (the unspecified "additional tests" you mentioned, for example, or things you haven't explicitly mentioned but may still used like an ambulance ride, etc).
Of course, this is recent prices, and the prices may have varied when you actually were in hospital, and it is my understanding that prices both for health care services and procedures, and health insurance can vary widely depending on the region and the providers involved in the US.
But my google-fu let's me conclude that you indeed extremely likely had a health insurance plan at "platinum" level, far better than what most of your fellow citizens in the US enjoy.
Somebody with a plan near the "median deductible" would have paid that median deductible of more than $1400 in full, or around 10x what you had to pay, somebody unlucky enough to be on a "bronze" plan might have had to pay the full amount (or at least around 7 grand), and there are about 31 million people in the US without health insurance[5] who would have had to pay in full.
(Please note that I, as somebody who never experienced the US health care system, can thus only provide an outside view based on what I heard from people I know and in the media, and googled)
> If you are really low on the totem pole, you may have no grocery store.
The lowest would be the dollar stores, but then you have food stamps, and food banks which are like free supermarkets in a sense. If you can’t get to them then there’s soup kitchens and quite a few charities that will bring food to you. We can definitely fill in more cracks but there are a lot of available food sources in America.
I'm assuming you've never tried to maintain a nutritious diet through dollar stores and food banks before. It's very difficult. Additionally, when you take into account special packaging made for dollar stores, some of the trash food is actually more expensive than healthy items available at the "rich" store.
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)
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.
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 ?
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
It pretty much comes down to labor costs. I spent some time in VN and anything that requires unskilled labor is incredibly inexpensive.
Delivery? Sure, someone will bring it across the city, in the next hour for 35,000 Dong ($1.50USD).
Want to buy shoes? Msg a store, they’ll send pictures, choose a few and they send a store employee over to your house to try them on.
That is changing though. Covid completely messed up the labor market and rather than get locked down, losing your job and still having to pay rent and food, people just went back to the countryside with family and are staying there for now.
As a result labor shortages, even nannies, and wages are going up. I think it’s a good thing, it’s the bottom moving up.
I expect you’ll see a similar transition as the UK eventually. Maids and nannies becomes something exclusive to the rich. Unless of course they continue to import them from lower income countries - a la Singapore.
India is building a lot of public transit now. I will be interested in seeing how that changes the culture of such cities. This is long term - transit needs to go close to where you are and where you want to be before people will use it, so a large part of the change depends on if/when they build more lines after the current ones open.
It's not a surprise - today's Vietnam per capita GDP is same as U.S. (and probably UK since the countries were close in their economic development) in 1919 (13-14% of today's U.S. level).
Interestingly, in societies with several "tiers" made up of people of different origin (many of them full-on citizens anyway, it's not about legal rights but about race/class which is perceived to be same thing), it can work even on a much higher level of economic development.
Cyprus where i live is at around 60% of U.S. level, and average family can have a full-time maid, as long as she's from Philippines. I was surprised to know that many of these Philippines maids have better immigration status than myself and this is certainly not because they are "forced to work for pennies or risk being kicking out of the country". It's just a perception of how much a Philippine maid is worth.
I'm in a moderately ok country, and I still see buying a new car as a luxury. It's something you do much later in life/career, when you can't be bother to take care of the extra management a used car comes with. And definitely not for everybody - there's quite a few people I know that are middle age with kids and don't even think about a new car. They just have chose other tradeoffs
I mean, given the depreciation on most new cars, it doesn't make sense to buy a new car in a lot of cases. But it depends on various factors like how much do you drive, does your employer compensate you for driving, how much maintenance does a used vs a new car need, etc.
Note that this is a very eurocentric viewpoint coming from someone who only has a car for shopping and family visits.
In my previous job I had a lease car from my employer, that made a bit more sense then given how much I had to drive.
You can transport your family on a motorcycle or scooter in the US too. You'll just be on a first name basis with all the cops everywhere you go regularly because even if the cops themselves dgaf there will be no shortage of people calling them on you.
I wonder about speeds. The only places I've seen a lot of people on motorcycles is in heavy traffic where the speed is only slightly faster than you could ride on a bicycle. In the US most traffic is at higher speeds on residential roads, and you are expected to jump over to the freeway with very high speeds to get around. As such the practice is much more dangerous if you drive like you are in the US (not that it is ever safe)
Overwhelmingly combustion-engine motorbikes. Something like 7.5-8 million of them on the roads of Ho Chi Minh City.
There are e-bikes around but they aren't very common, at least in the south. Like, I see a few every day so they're not super rare. But...I see one or two a day compared to the thousands of regular ones.
There's also a bit of toxic masculinity around them; I'd say 99% of the people riding them are women. Most often high school or university age.
They are hampered by concerns about theft (it is relatively easy to steal the battery), range, and charging.
A newish brand tried to offer a premium e-bike[1] a few years back and you see them around but not very often.
Interestingly, I was in Hue on holiday a few years ago -- a city in the north -- and, at least in the city center where we were, it felt like it was 30% electric bikes. I don't know if there was a local government policy encouraging them or what.
Honestly, it was pretty amazing. You never realise how much noise combustion engines make until you've seen a huge fraction of them taken off the road like that. It was very pleasant.
I live in Hanoi. One of the best purchases I made last year was noise cancelling headphones. It's the productivity boost I never knew I needed so much.
> There's also a bit of toxic masculinity around them; I'd say 99% of the people riding them are women. Most often high school or university age.
I disagree, I saw a great many male students driving electric bikes back in 2020 (Hanoi, Da Nang, HCMC). I would say of the particular model of e-bike that I tended to notice (the often black or black&red ones with large footrest area), easily 20%-50% drivers were male. I think the reason it isn't more common yet is probably because of range.
The overwelming majority is motorbikes / scooters:
* E-bikes are popular among teens / people under 18-21. They are cheaper, and the law prohibits them from riding motorbikes with above 50cc engines (which the majority are, unless you're riding a Cub 50 or so)
* As you go up the age ladder, ICE motorbikes dominates. I also have a feeling that traffic congestion is getting worst, thanks to more people having access to cars.
Most middle class families who can afford a car in developing nations rarely buy used cars/motorcycles. Giving the scenario in India. Vehicles are treated as a luxury here which are bought much later in a person’s life. Most families don’t even buy a car in India. It’s takes a lot of money to maintain it and it is very costly to drive one. The vehicle which you’ll find in every household here is a motorcycle and that too in mostly between 150cc-200cc engine range. The reason for that too is because lesser the cc, cheaper the bike, more the mileage.
> Even worse, most houses (unless they are luxury houses >$500,000 built in the last 5ish years) aren't built with a garage for a car, so you're looking at buying land, smashing down the existing structure, and then rebuilding something with a garage.
I don't know if this is meant to be serious, but you could just park your car outdoors, like city dwellers do?
There's not enough space for everyone to do this. It's also often not free, you have to pay the city for using up the street space etc. New housing in Europe is planned with underground garage space exactly for this reason. SEA cities are even more densely populated.
But aren't we talking about single family houses here, with a garden? If you have room for a garage in your garden, surely you have room for a car without a garage?
The other poster mentioned Vietnam, I would expect cities there to be quite dense with townhouses or a tiny "garden" that's more like the smallest gap between houses that you can get away with while not breaking the construction code.
Exactly. Everyone I know here with a driver owns the car themselves and hires the driver separately. I don't know driver salaries since I don't have one but I'm guessing they are similar to nanny salaries since they are usually full-time 8am-8pm, 6-days a week kind of jobs. The only people without their own car tend to be foreign executives who are only going to be here on a 2-3 year contract.
Driver salaries would likely have been much higher because the position wouldn't also cover room & board. Also the gender differences in pay would influence things as well. Last is that household cleaning etc. would have been considered lower skilled labor.
Here in Austria we still have building codes from the Nazis that dictate a parking space for every new unit built. This is absolutely ridiculous in cities where car ownership is going down but underground parking is built. A sad result is that many of those expensive underground parking spaces are empty because house owners are not forced to rent out units and parking spaces separately while at the same time the overground parking (for 50 Euros a year in Linz' Blue parking zone) are overcrowded.
They probably are leaving money on the table, but the hassle of renting out your unused parking spot isn't really worth the money you could make. There is also the convenience on when a guest arrives with a car you can give them your parking spot (this would typically happen only a few times a year)
The landlord could make a lot of money by collecting all the unused parking spots, but that is probably either illegal (those are for the residents and can't be separated from the units) or technically legal but they fear it would be made illegal if they tried.
The real money left on the table is secondary effects: residents pay for parking they don't need/use; and that parking takes up space that could be used for something else thus making the area more dense and public transit because of the additional people in dense area can afford to be more useful.
So a single car not very expensive car costs the same as 5 years of a full-time nanny and part-time maid.
And that's without figuring in all the extra costs of a car, especially parking. There's not really free parking most places here. So you'll be paying for parking literally everywhere you go.
Even worse, most houses (unless they are luxury houses >$500,000 built in the last 5ish years) aren't built with a garage for a car, so you're looking at buying land, smashing down the existing structure, and then rebuilding something with a garage. And the space for a garage isn't cheap either. If you're a middle income family you're probably living in one of the capital cities and most people would probably be shocked at how expensive land is in the capital cities nowadays.
[1]: https://www.honda.com.vn/o-to/san-pham/honda-civic/index.htm...