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Why I stopped being a voluntourist

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Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#131

Post by pekru »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #124
pekru wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Treating low skill commodity workers as human beings on the same social level as yourself is such a destructive western practice. So is hiring a stranger with a great github rather than your brother in law, hiring a woman if she is the most qualified, etc. Or there is that destructive western practice of managing by output - the boss is working until 8pm but you can go home as soon as you hit your quota. I really d…

If it is your assumption that every firm/organization in India follows nepotism and doesn't value true merit, it would be simply a wrong assumption... If you read my post, you'd clearly see that I don't believe every local firm does this: "...I mean both western companies and local companies like Reliance/Infosys..." My belief, based on my experiences living here, is that this is far more common than in the US, Canad…

> you'd clearly see that I don't believe every local firm does this

Yes. I clearly see the original comment seems to infer that most of the (or almost every!?) local firms in India does that.

> Do you claim I'm wrong on this point?

To an extent, yes. India and Indian industry/economy is not just IT and not just big cities. There's a lot more to it. I would be most honored if I get a chance to show some of it first hand, if at all our paths cross in life and we get to meet in the real world, outside of these digital confines.

> I'm not asserting some sort of vague cultural/moral/racial superiority.

Pardon me, but the original comment indeed seems to mention that the "western style management and work culture" is morally superior to the local one.

> I'm claiming that certain modern business practices are not widely used here, but are common in the west[1]. And I'm claiming India will be a better (i.e. richer, happier) place when it adopts them more widely.

Yes, agreed. But one can rest assured that better practices are being adopted at a much better pace here, because developing economies are already resource constrained and thus they are forced to come up with best practices to maximize value extraction from a given set of resources. ISRO and recent Mars mission was big news already. I believe business practices always have locality as a dimensional factor associated with them for their applicability and relevance. (HSBC ad about local knowledge comes to my mind)

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#132

Post by smsm42 »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #95
mattlutze wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not blindly ethnocentric, it's the OP's thesis based on a feminist critique of the existing business culture in an area OP built a business. His/Her observations were that, for his/her employees, western business culture was potentially an improvement over existing conditions. OP in particular observes on experiencing lingering caste pressures and strongly misogynistic trends in the expectation of business en…

> western business culture was potentially an improvement over existing conditions // Western business culture is primarily "profit is the end that justifies the means" - exploit any person, resource or environment to their|it's detriment as longer as you make more profit for the owners/shareholders. Many times I've seen on HN "the purpose of a business is to make profit; stat". Equality, helping those in poverty, cu…

>>> Western business culture is primarily "profit is the end that justifies the means"

This is certainly not true as otherwise there weren't as many charitable funds sponsored by businesses and as many publicly useful things done by those.

>>> exploit any person, resource or environment to their|it's detriment

That is not true either, moreover - this is not true even if we accept your previous premise. There's nothing in making profit that mandates that it would be to the detriment of any person, resource or environment. Moreover, not ruining the resource supporting your business is certainly more conductive to the profit than ruining it, since it allows to extract profits for the longer period of time, so even from pure profit-driven approach you are wrong.

>>> Equality, helping those in poverty, cultural benefit, elimination of crime - none of these are Western business ideals; they're cultural constraints placed on businesses

Equality taken as equality of citizens before the law is certainly good for business, since inequality usually means inability to conduct certain profitable deals. E.g. when there were place "for white people only" in US, it meant profitable business involving non-white persons could not be conducted there. Crime is obviously bad for almost every business (maybe excluding security guard and alarm systems business).

>>> Now not all businesses are so immoral - but I'd say immorality is indicative of "Western business practices"

Since western business practices is nothing more but Western people conducting a set of voluntary transactions, you've just called the whole set of Western people inherently immoral. Not only this smacks of racism, it is certainly not matching the observable truth of Western people having a lot of morals guiding them.

>>> when those businesses get to exploit people and environments that aren't being monitored and aren't subject to legal protection that's when the abuses of the business ethic rear their head.

Oh, I see what you mean. Western people are immoral in general, but there is a tiny sliver of them - those that enact and enforce the "legal protection" - i.e. the government - that are the moral backbone of the Western society. As soon as the person joins the government, they become moral, and able to enact the protections derived from their freshly gained morality, and as soon as they leave the governmental aegis, they revert to their natural immoral state and only the "legal protections" keep them from running rampant exploiting people around them.

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#133

Post by aestra »

unsquare wrote: post #35
arjie wrote: post #15

About the brick laying, I'm told that you usually do that poorly if you have no experience (unlike activities like making sawhorses etc. which require little skill). Our local Habitat chapter has experts come in for brick-laying. In the end, 'voluntourists' are just trying to give what they think they're able to. If they aren't net negatives, I see it as a good thing because they will spend money there, they will bri…

>About the brick laying, I'm told that you usually do that poorly if you have no experience (unlike activities like making sawhorses etc. which require little skill). As a former bricklayer, i'll confirm it, unskilled labor shouldn't lay bricks, it will fail at some point.

My parents have a fireplace in the back yard. It has completely collapsed once. My (presumably unskilled in brick laying) dad rebuilt it but now it is falling apart again. I'm guessing the original builder wasn't skilled in brick laying either.

Thanks for the info, I always wondered why that fireplace wasn't staying up.

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#134

Post by awkward »

VLM wrote: post #101
Fuxy wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not volunteer work if the school, fraternity or sorority requires it of you. It's not voluntary if it's a requirement to get into the school/frat. It's more like free forced labor that most of the time is not even needed by the non-profit but hey the kids need certain hours so let's make the move garbage from one trash can to the other all day and if they finish early make them move it back.

"let's make the move garbage from one trash can to the other all day and if they finish early make them move it back" Perhaps you were going for humor but locally some (mostly religious) high schools have mandatory required volunteer (LOL) graduation requirements, and criminal court "community service" also means work at the same recycling center, so you end up with a weird and probably very unhealthy mixture of ex-c…

I disagree entirely!

Otherwise sheltered teens likely have at least enough family resources and support that a couple hours of supervised contact isn't going to turn them into rampaging criminals, and dealing with people who aren't on a track straight into college and then into elite employment will make them more grounded.

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#135

Post by aestra »

insuffi wrote: post #40
rdtsc wrote: post #21

I have seen, heard of and have been invited to participate in these trips. Some are NGOs, some are religious groups. Yeah, looking at it from the perspective she wrote, it seems ridiculous. It is an "industry", wrapped in a non-profit, save-the-world PR shroud, that caters to educated, Westerners who can afford to travel overseas. People feel good when they do good. Whether they other side perceives it as good, somet…

I agree with almost all of your post in terms of business and how NGOs operate. However, I'm going to offer a more cynical opinion on why people go to developing countries. I disagree that people who go there are somehow doing it because of moral reasons or because doing good makes them feel good. It has become a trend - to go to Uganda and post statuses on facebook about how you are in Uganda helping poor, oppressed…

>It has become a trend - to go to Uganda and post statuses on facebook about how you are in Uganda helping poor, oppressed people.

This was satirized in The Onion.

6-Day Visit To Rural African Village Completely Changes Woman’s Facebook Profile Picture

http://www.theonion.com/articles/6day-visit-to-rural-african...

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#136

Post by pekru »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #124
pekru wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Treating low skill commodity workers as human beings on the same social level as yourself is such a destructive western practice. So is hiring a stranger with a great github rather than your brother in law, hiring a woman if she is the most qualified, etc. Or there is that destructive western practice of managing by output - the boss is working until 8pm but you can go home as soon as you hit your quota. I really d…

If it is your assumption that every firm/organization in India follows nepotism and doesn't value true merit, it would be simply a wrong assumption... If you read my post, you'd clearly see that I don't believe every local firm does this: "...I mean both western companies and local companies like Reliance/Infosys..." My belief, based on my experiences living here, is that this is far more common than in the US, Canad…

> I mean both western companies and local companies like Reliance/Infosys...

Just adding another note, on the firms you mentioned.

Reliance, is a known to be a crooked player that uses non-ethical business practices and is a major crony-capitalist player. Modern business practice followed: profit at any cost.

Infosys, on the other hand, isn't ethically/morally corrupt and is actually known for setting standards in corporate governance. But these days, it seems to have lost the game and run into troubles by fanatically adhering to the "maximize shareholder value while minimizing risk" rule. Modern business practice followed: keep shareholders happy no matter what.

Both followed 'modern business practices' too much to the word, or so it seems.

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#137

Post by aestra »

lemming wrote: post #102
pekk wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by "do good" you mean "give money to whoever has their hand stuck out the furthest." Those aren't necessarily people in need who will use the money for some good purpose, often they are in a special parasitic class of professional beggars and con artists. Hopefully the point is to do more than show off that you are rich and generous.

I assume he means donating to worthy charities rather than actually putting money in people's hands.

Perhaps putting money is people's hands is what is needed?

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/08/23/214210692/the-char...

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#138

Post by olifante »

sien wrote: post #89
ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #7

White people are finally starting to "get it". http://youtu.be/dyf2Cf5GkTY See Dambisa Moyo's interview about her book "Dead Aid" The statistics showing how aid is actually hurting African countries and not allowing them to develop on their own the way the rest of the world has.

Don't just read Moyo. Read 'Poor Economics' by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo. Duflo is at MIT and is all about trials to figure out what works with aid. Read 'The Bottom Billion' by Paul Collier who is a development economist at Oxford. Read 'The Idealist' by Nina Munk which is about how we can say that Geoffrey Sach's millennium village project has failed. Read 'Africa Rising' by Vijay Mahajan about how many cou…

I second Poor Economics, great book. It's fascinating how the book shows that entrepreneurship is actually MORE prevalent in poor societies than in rich ones.

Re: Why I stopped being a voluntourist

#139

Post by jcampbell1 »

saraid216 wrote: post #19
jcampbell1 wrote: post #10

I took a trip to Africa to go on a Safari and climb Kilimanjaro. I was amazed at how many do gooder tourists there are. The conversations go like: Me: What are you here to do? Them: Build a school. Me: Oh, you are a carpenter. Them: No, part of a school program. Me: Oh, you are providing unskilled construction labor. Didn't realize Tanzania had a shortage. Near the end of the trip, I met a friend's cousin, asked what…

> I asked how she got that gig, and she told me a story about her going to Tanzania to build a school. She decided to make a real difference. When you (or she) don't explain how she got from A to B, your epiphany has a lot less force. Most kids that come back from these trips seem to have no idea that they weren't helping. How did she realize it? How did she do something about it? How did she start actually doing som…

Yeah, I didn't explain it well. The first trip was with her church, and the job was 5 years and an engineering degree later. It was the first trip that sparked the interest and gave a comfort level with the country.
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