Money: Ted Carr is lying to you. Vegans selling the "digital nomad" dream are lying to you.

somebody sent me an email recently with
a link to an article that wasn't so much complaining but just factually describing the digital nomad scene in Chiangmai as a scam as a pyramid scheme specifically and saying look this is a little world of people who quit their jobs in Los Angeles and London and Australia and move to Chiang Mai and the reality is the only way they can make money is by preying on one another that new people show up and the old people try to sell the books try to sell them a dream try to sell them yoga classes but try to sell them the illusion they can have a wonderful new life in Chiang Mai and economically they really can't it was an interesting article I mean you know I think it's tremendously important for all of us that were honest with ourselves and honest with others about where our money comes from whether we're living in Los Angeles or Chiang Mai Thailand it's certainly easy to meet someone and mistake them for being financially self-reliant in Southeast Asia when really they're not there are certainly a lot of people who are in Chiang Mai who are spending money that they've inherited and I don't say that with any hatred I don't say that with any rancor but it's the truth and there are other people and to give you a specific example I met one Eastern European woman and she was what you'd call an absentee landlord she owned an apartment in Eastern Europe and every month let's say that apartment gave her five hundred dollars in rent somebody else was paying rent to stay in that apartment that she owned and in a place like Cambodia and a place like Thailand that's a lot of money so I mean when I met that woman this absentee landlord she did not introduce herself to me as an absentee landlord she didn't say to me hi this is my name what I do for a living is I live off the rent money of this apartment I owe and your no no no she introduced herself to me as a chef and she had some term I forget if she called herself a macrobiotic chef or an organic chef or something whatever some something something fancier than just chef so I went to meet her and I was assuming she was gonna tell me that she's so many why she had a degree in cuisine and a career link to cuisine and I was really expressing you know concern for I said well gee you know here in this part of Asia I don't really see how you can earn enough money to pay your rent in that line of work and I had known a couple of people two men stand out in my mind white European men who actually did work as chefs in East Asia in restaurants and also in hotels but in general none of those places could pay you know Western trained one of them was a French trained chef a wage durably normally those places would pay for a short period of time for a foreign chef to come in and educate their own staff so their staff could learn to cook western-style cuisine or improve their their skills so that you get a couple weeks of work doing training sessions and then they'd have to move on so because it had that experience before of talking to those guys when I first met this woman I was really consider oh well gee you know how do you afford afford your rent let alone your next airplane ticket I wondered that's not what I said directly but that was what was on my mind how you actually afford your ranch I had you as your Ford your next airplane ticket if you're earning the same wages that a local person would being you know working in the back of a restaurant and she immediately just sort of dismissed the question and said oh well you know I have this apartment that I own in Eastern Europe and so every month I get income from the rent from that apartment so that's not really a problem for me okay mystery solved right I mean that's that's what it comes down to here it can be very misleading to people I think other people might have met her and might have assumed that this was really somebody who was living that dream this was somebody was a macrobiotic chef or whatever so know what's up EPIK chef and indeed she could have had a youtube channel promoting herself as exactly that to her fans but in reality she was at best a hobbyist she was someone who cooked for fun or cooked in her spare time and did not cook for a living she wasn't a real pro and I mean this is part of the internet age we live in is of amateurs misrepresenting themselves as professionals whether it's Ted Carr saying that he's an athlete when he's not an athlete or someone saying they're an artist when they're not an artist they don't actually you know earn their living through the arts you know across the board we're living in an era when it's never been easier for an amateur to find an audience but it's never been more difficult for an amateur to earn a living from that audience and certainly I mean Ted Carr himself by his own account is a failed author being an author let alone an editor or a book publisher now it has never been easier to write a book and have that book reach its audience but it's incredibly difficult to actually earn a living with a pen to earn a living from writing and that's true across the board in fiction in nonfiction even people are writing for newspapers now a ridiculous percentage of the content in newspapers the authors are not being paid for so I'll come back to that but the general whole reflection I want to share with you here is that it's tremendously important for us to be honest about where our money comes from even if it's just the influence we have on other people who see us face-to-face and I saw that many many many times in Southeast Asia where people would say to me like this really happened people would say to me oh um but you can earn money I have a good friend and he lives in a big house he lives a wealthy Rp lifestyle and he just writes articles for the local newspaper so this would be like in Thailand this would be writing for the Bangkok Post or something or maybe writing for the put on pan post and no I knew enough of those people and I knew and I said look you must realize if you write articles for a newspaper in Thailand or newspaper who as a foreigner not as a locally hired person you repeat a symbolic wage you're paid a very small amount of money just to reward you for your time just to make you feel welcome just to make you feel valued but you're not paying your rent with that you're not buying a car with that you're not buying a house with that and the people they were describing whether it was money they that they'd inherited or money from a prior career like you know but used to be an architect in Europe and now they were semi-retired in Thailand and writing for the newspaper it's in many many cases there's this illusion that what people have written on their business card what people say they do is where their money really comes from I don't know if anyone is so naive to believe that someone like Ted car can afford to buy multiple airplane tickets back and forth between Hawaii and Canada and Thailand on the basis of him selling motivational ebooks I doubt it I doubt I do not know if anyone is naive enough to believe the story he now presents that he apparently saved up money as a fresh fruit tycoon apparently a black market fresh fruit tycoon in Vancouver Canada he says that when he was living in Vancouver he would buy 600 dollars worth of fruit and then sell it on to his friends and clients he would buy wholesale and he would sell retail with a 15% markup and he remarks that 15% on 600 dollars is pretty good money well yes it would be if you were selling 600 dollars of fruit a day but that's not what he means I think he means $600 a month is it $600 a week Ted I doubt it that's a lot of mangoes you gotta have a lot of friends to move 600 toys of fruit every week and I hate to tell you this but 15% of $600 is $90 $90 Canadian maybe real money in Cambodia but that's not real money in the City of Vancouver Vancouver BC Canada the cost of rent is very very high the cost of living is very very high and I do not think it is credible for Ted Carr to suggest that in just a few short years perhaps just one year it seems like a very short period of time he worked as a part-time personal trainer at a mainstream gym and he sold crates of fruit out of his garage and it's his garage not his parent's garage so he was paying rent for a house in Vancouver which is you can you can try to do the math how many crates of mangoes would he have to sell at a 15% markup just to pay the rent for a house a house that has a garage in Vancouver British Columbia Canada that's a lot of mangoes my friend that's a lot and yet we are supposed to imagine that in a brief period of him handling mangoes for his friends his short career is a fresh fruit cut tycoon and part-time personal fitness trainer he saved up the money for him to now live back and forth between Thailand Hawaii and the west coast of Canada that's a very expensive lifestyle I don't care if he films himself being in a cheap hostel or a cheap apartment he got from Airbnb that's real money okay and you weren't old enough to be retired Ted I think there are a lot of other questions to ask there there questions about having ambition there's questions about the fact that he he originally said that he dropped out of university because he wanted to be a writer now maybe in some ways that's a noble ambition but in fact what he says now is that he just dropped out of university because he wanted to enjoy his own life and leave the moment well that's very different isn't it that has none of the personal sacrifice or commitment to an art or commitment to an audience or commitment to accomplishing anything that may be becoming a writer has but the bottom line is you are really doing a disservice to yourself and others if you lie in this way if you pretend that you are paying your own way in Chiang Mai Thailand or anywhere else by selling buckets of fruit or anything else when you're not now you know I don't know I don't need to speculate but I mean Ted could it be that you inherited money you're not mentioning could it be that the garage you were selling fruit out of was not your garage was your parents garage there has to be some more plausible explanation than that you went from by your own account working in a hamburger restaurant for six dollars an hour to dropping out of college dropping out of college paying $500 to get a health coach certificate working as a part-time health coach and selling fruit of garage it does not make sense that you graduated from this career to living as you do now on permanent vacation back and forth between Hawaii and Thailand by airplane you can do the math Ted it doesn't add up and you know I'll just say this has really been a recurring problem in my life people around me in Cambodia would say oh but you can get a job working for the local newspaper here in Cambodia because you have this background as an editor an author and researcher and you have to say them know the foreign employees they have there some of them are paying to be there some of them are university students a master's student from California who is wealthy or on some kind of scholarship or both most likely both where in effect the parents of the employee are paying them to be there in Cambodia working for free there's a lot of that going on in the humanitarian sector it's a lot of that going on in creative writing and journal we're the people who they may hand you a business card that suggests that they're an employee there but the reality is they're not paying their rent by working at that newspaper or working in that charity they may have a very impressive sounding job title from that part of the nonprofit sector or creative writing sector whatever or the media whatever it may be but the reality is their parents in California are still supporting them or their university in California is still supporting them it's actually not a viable career for them it's not a viable career for me and it's not a viable career for anyone and sometimes I think a whole sector of the economy can get dragged down by this kind of mismatch set of expectations where people are selling you a dream I did I did want to mention this in my channel you know sooner or later and this is a good time to to say it you know at my university in Canada we had a woman come to a creative writing class and she was presented as a success story as an author etc I mean she did learn her she did earn her living by writing books but when she went over the economic reality of her career for years and years she taught English as an ESL teacher in English in English as a second language teacher in Hong Kong and in southern China and at the end of that time I mean her youth was gone she lost the chance to have children or have a fan-made her family she was too old to bear kids anymore and she went back to Canada with nothing and she moved back into her mom's house I was sitting there listening this lecture and there was more to it as I'll say in a second I was sitting there listening this lecture and I was like how is it possible that this is being held up as a positive example for university students if anything this should be presented the universities with the sternest warning imaginable saying hey you might think it's all fun and games after you finish your university degree to go and get a low-paying job in Asia teaching English as a second language but guess where you can end up when you're 45 years old now anyone else if she had did this woman who gave the a university if she had stayed in Canada and worked a minimum-wage job at Tim Hortons it's a donut shop or at a Starbucks Starbucks pays more than minimum wage by the way if she worked a steady minimum-wage job in Canada at the end of that time she could have owned a home maybe a very modest apartment but she could have been making down payments home she could have owned a car yes with a line of credit yes it did she could have put together a real life for herself she could have had a future and instead she worked in a sector where fundamentally people are underpaid because they loved it you know there are so I still talk about the day I talk to other vegans like that there are vegans who ask me for advice because I have background in this living and working in Asia there are vegans who say I just love working with kids and it's true so they'll work for below minimum wage below what minimum wage would be in Canada they'll work against their own financial interests short term and long term and they may really destroy their own long-term future partly because they love kids and partly because this is a whole sector of the economy that's really how is it it's influenced by young people finishing university and wanting to go to Asia and chase a dream and chase a dream with on the one hand very little sense of economic realism and the other hand with very real financial support from their parents right like part of it just may be that they feel they can come to Asia and teach ESL for a few years and go back to Canada with nothing go back to America go back to England go back to where they come from but let's say it's Canada and they have the confidence that when they go back to Canada they'll be able to move into their parents house again with nothing and then find their footing find a new job finding a career no job should leave you in that position okay if you're going to go work in a coal mine for five years at the end of those five years you should really own something whether that's an apartment or a car or whatever you should have a footing you should not have to move back in to your parents house and the whole sector of ESL teaching on the contrary it's really based on that pattern of exploiting young people who have all kinds of dreams look you can see this on YouTube there are so many young people in America now who grow up watching Japanese cartoons and when they finished the university degree in their minds there is nothing grander than going to Japan the magical country that all these cartoons come from and that's what they want to do and certainly if you're vegan and you've been spending any time at all on the Internet you're aware there are a lot of vegans of all ages it's not just young people because I've met people in their 50s who did this there are people who are university students through retirement age who want to quit their job or drop out of university and run away to the magical city of chiang mai thailand which is a rundown hellhole by the way it's an awful City don't let me tell you otherwise and they want to live like Ted car they want the dream that people like Ted Carr and durianrider are selling them and how are you gonna bankroll that dream is it gonna be by selling ebooks to other people I don't think so coal mining is a lot more honest than this kind of pyramid scheme where one person after another joins the digital Nomad scene one person after another jumps into this new life and then tries to sell the promise of that new life to others right and the reality is the people who are really living those lives either have money they saved that from another job in the past or an inheritance or some other arrangement they own an apartment back in Toronto someone else's paying rent on that apartment and that rent would not be a lot of money in Canada but maybe it's a lot of money in Cambodia or Thailand this is what goes on [Music] I think Asia offers a lot of people the appealing illusion of a life of affluence that's completely unearned and completely undeserved and and I understand completely that especially when people have just finished university or maybe they've just gotten they just lost patience with a job to hate that may be an especially appealing notion that you two can live like Ted car or that you can get into any of the sectors I've mentioned in this video and suddenly earn start earning a living that I don't know will provide you with regular access to a swimming pool in a tropical country but it's a trap and for me I think the saddest part of it is that most of the people who are laying the trap don't really profit from it and don't really know that that's what they're doing and that's what's going on to give a contrasting example that doesn't involve third-world so-called favourable conditions or that kind of economic disparity you know I spent a lot of time in Cambridge England and Oxford UK and those cities were full of people who would cling to a Cambridge mailing address clinging to an Oxford mailing address sometimes with no job at all or with a job on paper that they could put on their put on their business card to say hey officially I'm a researcher of this institute but the job either paid absolutely nothing or paid an honorarium paid a merely symbolic sum of money right and it was in England in British culture it was very very difficult to get those people to be honest with you because they would meet you and they would say oh I'm a researcher at the McKenzie foundation for anthropological Oh something really specific okay for the anthropology of the human diet some of this or the diet of remote tribal groups I'm a researcher for this foundation for endangered languages something that sounds exciting and interesting and the reality was that these were people who very often had a PhD sometimes they were they had an MA and they were waiting they were hoping to do a PhD these were people who were really living they would be living in absolute poverty they would be on the dole they would be doing they would be worse than unemployed but maybe they had some savings from a job that in the past maybe they had an inheritance maybe they had parents who still supported them financially and that was supporting them in living on the cusp of a very wealthy academic institution and to still be in the loop to find out about what kind of research projects they could apply to get involved in you know what grants what proposals maybe someone was putting together a non-profit project and they could join or they could at least submit their resume submit their CV just by living there just by being in the loop it's a bit like being an unemployed actor and yet wanting to live in Hollywood and be connected to people had those social connection so you know what opportunities are missing out on at least there was a whole world of people there in you know in England and in Cambridge and Oxford and I mean I think it was just from their own sense of pride that they did not want to be honest about how they were paying the rent but at the same time all these people coming together in one place at one time everyone coming together and for their own reasons being dishonest about it it actually creates a kind of trap for people on the outside looking in because people on the outside looking and really think oh hey if I do this if I do the same thing he does I can afford to pay my rent and live in a nice home in Oxford or a nice home in Cambridge I can also write books and write research grant proposals and you know I can live the same life I see other people living because that's what you see you see them living you see their business card you hear their boasting you know I mean and and it's a trap it's a trap even if nobody is intentionally lighting the trap you know what I mean and I see that same thing here with you know the wonder that is Chiang Mai with all these people really lying one way or another about what the economic opportunities aren't Chiang Mai and what the economic costs are of quitting your job even if you literally just have a job at Starbucks and going to teach English as a Second Language in Chiang Mai or going and trying to earn a living on YouTube in Chiang Mai which is kind of even more ridiculous the everyone is presenting this illusion of of affluence but on the other hand they're also just presenting that most fundamental illusion that the job you see on their business card is the job that actually pays their rent