How much privilege does it take to move to Guatemala or Pakistan?

HN commenters are apparently privileged for having to move to Guatemala to get by, whereas Guatemalians are refugees when they move to the US.

This misses the point completely. One side is taking advantage of geo-arbitrage while the other is fleeing violence. It's a false equivalence.

The US has 18 large cities with a higher homicide rate than Guatemala. 50 with more than half of Guatemala's. The difference between the two countries from a violence perspective hardly constitutes "fleeing."

This is the definition of cherry picking data. If you are comparing rates between countries, use the country data.

I have personal experience with refugees from Central America and Mexico. I can assure you, many are fleeing violence.

Mods didn't read it until you flagged it. The only rule my comment violated that you didn't violate is that my snark was from the wrong side of the woke spectrum.

Again, dismissing or diminishing someone's accomplishments because you accuse them of being privileged without knowing the first thing about them violates all of the following:

- Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Edit out swipes.

- Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

- Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead.

So, go ahead and flag this too, because you know as well as I do that the rules have nothing to do with what they say, and everything to do with who is applying them.

I dunno. What if they’re currently living in Bangladesh?

It's ironic you should mention Bangladesh because there's a guy on my payroll who lives in Bangladesh and I'm flying him to an international conference soon. It does indeed take more paperwork than usual, it will be a unique opportunity for him and probably not his last with me, he's a great employee.

Working remotely != moving for geo-arbitrage. If anything, it's the opposite, where the employer is taking advantage of geo-arbitrage.

In this model, people living in Bangladesh skip the “moving” part. They already live in a low cost locale.

So they have open doors to be wildly successful entrepreneurs?

My point is that the OPs “model” is a strategy for a limited population and not very generalizable. Within those caveats, I have no issue with their suggestion.

Thanks for the input, privilege police.

Please review the HN Guidelines before commenting.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I mean you're not wrong but you missed my point. There's always an angle. That's how everyone succeeds. You find your angle and you exploit it. Everybody has at least one.

You choose here to focus on the fact that some people have more angles available to them than others. You call them privilege and believe them to be unjust. If you do that too much, you'll defeat yourself and destroy your own agency.

Maybe you're right, maybe they are unjust, I do have opinions on that sort of thing, I also think the best places to indulge those opinions are at the ballot box and at my desk writing checks to nonprofits. I mean I do screw this up and focus my time/energy/attention on them at inappropriate times. But I know it is a screw-up when I do it. No one is serving the greater good by wasting time.

I acknowledged your point. I also agree that the individual should focus on what is in their power to exploit. But I think it's also important to recognize and work to fix systemic issues if we value a just system. Both can be true at the same time and I think it's sometimes a mistake of the hustle-porn mentality to focus exclusively on one while ignoring the other.

Says the person who attacked a commenter for being "privileged." I'm just helping defend him against your irrelevant accusations of privilege (even though you know nothing about him) while he's attempting to discuss ways to become successful without being a trust funder. He has given us a very helpful and insightful perspective, and since you cannot add to his useful discussion, you instead interrupt by him being the privilege police, because you think it will get you internet points.

He laid his heart and mind out for our benefit, and you rewarded it by attempting to bully him. Don't tell me I'm being uncivil.

Nobody was "attacked". Saying that having specific options that aren't afforded to everyone is an acknowledgement that neither negates their point or is an attack on a person. It is, as you say, adding to the perspective, based exclusively on what they said; I'm not jumping to conclusions as you allude. Contrast that to your snarky reply. The fact that you thought that comment was an attack demonstrates a lack of the HN guideline to read the strongest possible interpretation and avoid snark. Your approach is not conducive to discourse.

No, you absolutely bullied him. And now instead of apologizing, you're doubling down. He never claimed to be a starving African child. He told us what he had to do to make up for his limitations, and instead of working with that conversation, you chose to denigrate his efforts.

You're right that I'm not adding to his discourse. I'm just trying to hush the people who are attempting to bully him.

Honestly I’m probably more inclined to land on the same side as you regarding this particular case regarding the suggestion or assumption of privilege. That being said, no, you’re being ridiculous. There was no attacking or bullying.

It's hyperbole, sure. But if you were to put it in a productive-unproductive and bullying-kindness matrix, it's in the unproductive/bullying quadrant.

There is always someone more privileged than you and someone less privileged than you.

What you do with the cards in hand is what matters. Other paths lead to insanity.

No doubt, I’m just acknowledging the limitations of the OPs advice. It came across as a bit of a solipsistic perspective.