We lived in Lisbon for a year. While lots of city centers have had housing converted to Short-term Rentals, Lisbon is at an entirely different level. There, entire apartment buildings (6-10 units) are converted to Airbnbs/hotels/hostels. There are streets in the more touristy areas where every other building is for STRs (buildings that were clearly built as long-term housing).

not the op. agree that op is not refugee fleeing war on inflatable boat.

I distilled "lack of agency" as: not rewarding initiative, people afraid to take initiative. the portuguese boss does not like the employee to take initiative, and the employee will not do so. copying existing British designs is "safer" socially speaking, than making new designs.

source: I'm portuguese, I'm a weirdo and people always try to conform me to a box.

>>has a large amount of cultural baggage from quite frankly medieval times

>I wonder what exactly you mean by this.

I was at a festival last night - the screens by the stage were playing ads in between the acts (that itself is a topic for another day!).

After a cringe-worthy advert for the UK (that I didn't even recognise it was so far fetched), there then appeared a public information message in Portuguese. It said (and I do my best to translate):

"What is the place for a women?" (pause) "Wherever she wants it to be"

Full credit to them for trying to drag themselves into the 21st century, having mostly avoided the 20th - you can see what I'm getting at.

There is such a thing as a rich refugee. People in the mining business, when a country goes supercritical (more than Brexit, like Cuba) their bright career prospects decouple from their prospects politically, so confiscation is on the table even if "they were cool" because eg the Cuban Revolution needed money and now everyone is meant to have the same amount of sustenance anyway. New definition of what's fair. They operate under more recent definition, I would say every single person has a different definition of fairness.

Incompatible definitions of fairness. They have in practice a much higher metabolism requiring more pure ingredients, from better sources, it's medically harmful to cut them off like instantly. Although at the same time they contribute to both the problem and solution, like it depends. Turns out very rough to adapt to on short notice, flat-out can't in many cases, and for sure you can't send your kid to any random Cuban school with kids on the other side of a former class divide, from one day to the next? Like how are you going to tell that kid? Just gotta be "really cool", in the "they was cool", sense, and some kids make it and others can't, wretched childhood. Although at the same time Fidel Castro, biographically, grew up among blacks because his father didn't recognize him fully, not even a second son, so he knew it could be done and there was the will that it happen.

And people will price discriminate against that kid forever, never accept he's no longer rich unless he's filthy in rags...that's a rough sketch of it. Misery all of a sudden, and metabolically difficult, like it's not just 2000 calories here's some water with fluoride for your teeth boom done. It wouldn't take your body 24 hours a day if it took a single sentence to summarize like I just did. Water alone, Americans aren't supposed to drink Chilean water or they get diarrhea like automatically, it could be anything, selenium plus manganese in the water table, natural salts (as opposed to NaF) that are systematically removed in America. It's along the same lines as toothpastes in Chile having over 6x the sodium flouride of American toothpastes. Like literally you couldn't buy those same toothpastes in America without a dentist's prescription, I innocently told them 5000 ppm pharmacist looked at me said "No that you need a prescription" like it was opioid that kind of reaction. I was actually prescribed toothpaste weaker than the only strength toothpaste Walmart sells in Chile, it's all 1650, like eating the color white, kids hate it because it's good to hate it because it's bad for you. Counterproductive, makes people become busted and scream at their kids, everyone in the family going to the Walmart to buy cookies. Makes you crave. Gives you ADD, I actually--it turns out--don't have any symptoms of ADD--and I generally have literally every single one and nothing else--when I cut fluoride out of my life. Drank from a well. I actually paid attention, as a verb, for once in my life. Like a colorblind guy seeing blue for the first time. So weird, now I know what people are talking about.

So if you don't want F poisoning, which is exactly what the fuck that's all about for political reasons, there it is again, didn't want this country to turn into another Cuba, Socialist Sandwich as Nixon put it, you flourinate really hard. Breakfast lunch and dinner, inescapable, it's a super expensive subsidy but it's not for your teeth, it's for your brain, it is incapacitating so you don't eg sue or protest. If you know the way around here in Santiago, you'll figure out you have to pay triple at a homeopathic store, the pharmacies don't carry any toothpaste that doesn't F you 1650 ppm. Either you go way out of your way or go without toothpaste, which is a thing for instance in Cuba. Everyone has a hard time adapting to that.

So that's an example of adapting, and it can take decades. And it's expensive to adapt, hard-learned lessons like flunking courses at Stanford in my case because I was consenting to absurd doses of fluorine, not knowing the harm. Not one ADD doctor brought it up, like they have them on a gag order, it's the most obvious shit nobody had ADD in the 50's and then you F'ed up the water and now everyone has to see a shrink, 2 + 2 equals what?

So the wealth and political status decouple, and they benefited when times were good, and then...well they get a new citizenship somewhere else and adapt to that, not Cuba but maybe 60's Brazil, learn the language which is work, learn the laws under which they must now live, and relearn the balance of power what the traps are what the actual opportunities are...and be a survivor, there are people left behind that couldn't get out, not savvy enough, bad airport game missed the last flight, and yeah they have money but they get charged much more for everything. Like the parent poster. Price discrimination evens things out in the end. That's what you replied to.

Dude a raft is not what determines refugee status, it doesn't have to be a giant pornographic Hollywoodesque stereotype of all the tropes of taking refuge--which is what the word means--to qualify in my book. Being hated is enough.