this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2024
334 points (95.9% liked)
Asklemmy
44149 readers
1631 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- [email protected]: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's more about you going to a poor country, and raising the cost of living of the communities there by telegraphing to landlords and retailers that you will happily pay X% markup for goods and services.
Who told you I'm paying any markups? Nobody is aware of my income, and I'm paying the same prices anybody else does.
Any more assumptions?
Locals: shop around for the place that sells it at the lowest cost. Take extra time to go to different stores for different products even if they're all available in one place. Regular price too high? Vote with your wallet and don't buy it. Good price but you don't have much money? Buy less.
Wealthy foreigner: This is cheap. I'll take it.
No one needs to know your income. The price may be the same for everyone, but if you're willing to pay a higher price, then they'll be more likely to keep the higher price, thus reducing everyone else's buying power. If you buy more than the locals and help eat up their stock, that again incentivises keeping prices where they are, or even increasing them. The storekeepers don't care about how much money you have. They look at whether things sell or not, then make their decisions based on that.
There's only one supermarket near me, everybody goes there.
And everybody buys all the rest online. I don't shop in malls because the prices are inflated. Even if I don't need to watch every penny, it doesn't mean I shouldn't.
Yes, many. Rent is 3% of your salary and you don't believe that that automatically grants you far more buying power than others?
You will never have to make the choice of paying for treatment or food, and retailers and insurers see this as a stat they can bank on to jack local prices.
Of course it grants me more buying power, but that doesn't mean I'm using it. 80% of my income goes to savings, my lifestyle is no different to my next door neighbors, for whom the 20% I do spend is all they have. The only difference is that for every month I work, I can retire 4 month early.
Fair enough. To be fair, I don't know you. I just wanted you to be in the category of digital nomads that I can rage against because the world is expensive and unjust, and if I'm suffering through it then so should you.
But that's not fair to you. Sorry for pinning my frustrations on you, and I'll try to be better in the future
No worries, it happens. Thanks for speaking it out though rather than just walking away, that really says something about your character. Much appreciated!