The median income in brazil is 10X lower than USA. So $12 a day -> $120 a day. That's similar to what someone in the US at the bottom of the economic ladder might earn. We have the same thing, it's just that Americans want to have servants but don't want to see them, so there's an app barrier between you and the poor. Someone cooks your food, someone else delivers your food, someone cleans your hotel room, but Americans prefer not to have to ever learn their names or talk to them. Is that really better?

Unlike when you use an app, for the most part, because we're not psychopaths, living with someone every day for months or years causes us to feel a great affinity and care towards them.

I live in a developing country. Some people treat their live-in staff badly. But for many others, this is not the case.

Imagine you are a high-earner and hard worker and so you and your wife get a live-in nanny to assist with childrearing duties. Often, two or three decades later, the live-in nanny is ready to retire, but your children (whom you love) have come to see her as a member of the family, or even as a second mother. Surely you also do. How can you live with someone for 20-30 years and not care about them? You might thus often take care of her for the rest of her life, even though she has her own savings.

(No, I do not have live-in house staff. But I've had the same maid for 7 years and she knows she can come to me if she needs anything.)

How one treats someone else is probably mostly just a reflection of the individual. But it's harder to disregard someone's humanity when they live in your house and you've know them for years.

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ricardobeat 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is probably the same line of thought the families involved in the story have had.

Yet, the end result is still quite similar to slavery. Why do you suppose the servants stay, instead of living a life of their own? I think you’ll find the answer there.

	▲	therealpygon 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		There is a world of difference between paying someone who is free to leave, and basically fake adopting a child who you keep uneducated so that they don’t even know how to leave while forcing them to work without any pay. Are you saying if they were simply paid slightly more money and forced to seek their own food and shelter in whatever abject conditions they could afford, like minimum-wage and rural workers in most first-world countries, they would be better off? Or do you have more insightful suggestions? “Pay more” is always the easy answer people go with, especially while not wanting to pay more for anything, so I’m excited to hear a fresh and unique take on poverty.
	▲	carlosjobim 6 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I'd say certainly not. The key aspect of the story is that the woman entered in service of the family as a very young child. That makes all the difference.

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ufmace 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Thanks for your perspective. I do wonder if this arrangement is usually not as bad as some people are implying. Though on the other hand, the line between this sort of thing and something that can reasonably be called slavery can be quite fuzzy.