I saw a post a couple of weeks ago that was going around Twitter from a user complaining about “begpackers”. This is what some people call backpackers who are busking, selling bracelets, and doing street performances while they are traveling. Often people buy their stuff or give them money when they are busking out of a sense of charity.
The jist of the post and the sense I get from people that hate “begpackers” is that they believe these people are wrong to go to places like SE Asia or South America and do this because the people in those places often have less money and fewer opportunities.
The idea of traveling with no money and hitchhiking/selling bracelets is not very appealing to me, but the hate expressed towards this group of vagabonds comes from the underlying assumption that people in these places are being taken advantage of.
If someone from England is busking in Mexico and making money there is something wrong with it in a way that wouldn’t be wrong if the person was busking in the USA.
Is it that Mexican people are incapable of deciding what they should do with their own money?
When a Thai person buys a bracelet from a German in Chang Mai, is it different than a German selling a bracelet to a German?
The anti-begpackers say something shady is happening. They say German is taking advantage of the kindness and hospitality of the Thai person. But are Thai people not capable of making their own rational decisions?
When I see this stuff I can’t help but think that these anti-begpackers who believe themselves to be so noble, have this problem because they believe that people in poor countries are inferior to people in rich countries.
They disguise that and hide from that truth, but it comes out in how they assume that a Thai person shouldn’t be the giver, but rather the receiver of charity. That when individuals and families in third-world countries are supporting and aiding travelers from first-world countries they are doing it because they are getting something out of it– a fun story, a bracelet, and good feeling, whatever.
I don’t hold “begpackers” in high esteem, I think many of them are wrong in their beliefs about money. But the “good travelers” directing vitriol at them are worse,
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