Dear Republic,
A.A. Kostas’ impassioned piece manages to complete an impressive trifecta: qualifying for our series’ on “Money,” “Travel,” and “Vents.”
-ROL
EXPATRONIZING: MORE MONEY LESS PROBLEMS
I hate to disagree with The Notorious B.I.G., but from my observation, you really do have less problems when you have more money (that’s kind of the whole reason why people want more money). However, Biggie may have been onto something on a deeper level, as having less problems does ironically lead you to a bigger, thornier problem. Because despite what the ‘get that bag’ Zoomers preach, the old wisdom holds true — you really cannot purchase lasting happiness. At best, you can use your money to avoid responsibility. And a life without responsibilities is its own kind of punishment.
I’m a new member of what I like to call the ‘managerial or professional laptop-invested class’ (shortened to ‘MOP-LIC’ or, if you prefer, ‘MOP-LICkers’). I work for a multinational company, performing a role that I increasingly fear AI can do better than me, and currently live in one of the world’s global cities — places infested by a rotating group of expats who shuffle between Shanghai, Dubai, London, New York, Hong Kong, and my present home, Singapore. I’m new to this world of wealthy expats, and perhaps I find the way they live so jarring because in the space of three months, my wife and I went from sleeping on the floor of a hut in remote Nepal with four other people (it’s a long story), to rubbing shoulders with the so-called ‘global elite,’ patiently nodding as they complain about private school fees while sipping $25 Dubai Chocolate Matcha Lattes.
These expats are, for the most part, MOP-LICking power couples. They’re living in resort-style condominiums (and then, bizarrely, spending their long weekends in Thai beach resorts) and as they both work full-time, they need at least one maid/nanny/helper to look after their personal lives (more on that later). This is the true upper middle class of late-stage capitalism, the only significant cohort of people left with any actual disposable income. And yet, do they use their ample sums to pursue interesting hobbies, invest in arts and culture, act as patrons for visionary creatives, set out on grand adventures, or undertake works of philanthropy and charity? No. One of their main crimes is how boring they are, how vapid their interests, and how little they care about anyone but themselves. They consume the same reality television, scroll the same social media, buy the brands they are told to buy, voice the opinions they are supposed to voice (socially progressive as long as it doesn’t impact neoliberal economics). But these are the only group of people left with significant purchasing power! In previous, more illustrious ages, they were the economic subset who bankrolled great literature and art, or pursued such endeavours for themselves. But these expats don’t seek money for the purpose of creating anything better for anyone else. Instead, they seek money for the sake of avoidance. To avoid the messy realities of life.
* * *
What these expats seem to want is a life without responsibility. It looks like this: work a job with very little physical effort required, spend your free time on Tik Tok and Instagram, stay skinny by eating unaffordably healthy food and hiring a personal trainer or dosing Ozempic, travel the world on your vacations but only by hopping between luxury resorts, keep planning for your retirement by buying up property around the world and playing the stock markets, and send your children to high-fee schools to preserve your family’s economic position. But cook for yourself? Clean your own house? Walk your own dog? Raise your own kids? No way. That’s what the help is for.
* * *
In Singapore, domestic helpers from the Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar, India, and Malaysia do everything for the MOP-LICkers. They cook, they clean, they run errands, they raise the children. Most apartments come with a ‘bomb shelter,’ a windowless storage room without air-conditioning, where your helper can sleep. Often there’s also a separate helper’s bathroom near the kitchen, so they don’t have to use your guest bathroom or interact too much with you.
Once you’re part of the MOP-LICker club, they say things about their maids and helpers which, if said by someone else, would offend their supposed politically correct sensibilities. Here are some of the most memorable things I’ve heard people say about their ‘helpers’ in the past year:
“Filipinas are best because they don’t need to sleep that much.”
“If you think about it, not having a helper is more racist than having one.”
“Singapore is great because they keep the minimum wage for helpers so low.”
“Thank god I only have to give my helper one day off a month.”
“Make sure you get a short helper so they take up less space in your storage room.”
“My helper wasn’t respecting my parenting decisions so I had to fire her.”
“I don’t like waking up in the night, so our helper sleeps on the floor in our baby’s room and looks after him.”
“After two years I’ll let my helper go home to visit her family, but only for a week or two.”
“I would never have a kid in a country without cheap helpers, how else am I supposed to live my life?”
“The storage room was full so the helper rolls out a futon on the kitchen floor each night.”
Yes, these are all statements I have heard. And the only conclusion I can draw is that having domestic help doesn’t seem good for the state of your soul.
* * *
It’s difficult to shake the feeling that these wealthy MOP-LICkers are big children, Peter Pans and Wendys who are somehow extremely capable at their very important jobs, and yet totally incapable of every other normal human task. I think of the oft-shared meme of the woman saying “I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so I can do art and writing, not the other way around.” Well, the new bourgeois already have a maid who does all that for them, and guess what? Most of them aren’t creating great works of art. They’re just finding more and more frivolous ways to waste their time. Maybe you shouldn’t want anyone or anything to take care of the most basic parts of being alive in a physical body and living with other human beings. Maybe losing touch with daily responsibilities robs you of the very acts of living which give rise to good art.
We already live in the most comfortable period of human history, and the pursuit of comfort seems to be the main driver of our modern economy. In an age where the physical labour to acquire the food, water, shelter, clothing, and power necessary to survive is minimal, there are so few tangible responsibilities we have left. But there is joy to be found in these remaining few — the pleasure of ironing your own shirts, cleaning your own house, preparing meals for those you love, teaching your child how to interact with the world. There is a tangible satisfaction in these often mundane tasks, skills to learn, and acts of love to give to others. Why would you want to outsource them?
Responsibilities have the power to make us good when any remaining sense of altruism falls away. In an increasingly self-worshipping and disembodied age, we need responsibilities to ground us to the physical and the other. A lack of obligations to others makes it extremely likely that we treat those others as disposable. If you never have to care for another person in a way that costs you something, how will you have any idea how valuable they are?
A. A. Kostas is a Canadian-Australian poet, writer, and lawyer (in that order), currently based in Singapore. He writes the Substack newsletter Waymarkers.
Image by Elena Samokysh-Sudkovskaya.
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