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| Person and dog getting their picture taken in a cute Valentine's Day photo frame. From the linked article. |
I read this article from NPR, Luxury dog hotels give some people pause amid the inequality of South Africa (wait, has the title been changed? now it's "Where luxury dog hotels are all the rage, but half the humans live in poverty"), by Tommy Trenchard, and I want to talk about it.
It's about luxury dog hotels in Cape Town, South Africa. The article highlights the contrast between the nice time these dogs are having, and the poverty in Cape Town:
At the same time, more than half of the population lives below the government's "upper bound poverty line" — the level at which people can afford adequate food, clothing and other basic necessities. And huge parts of the city struggle with high unemployment, rampant violent crime and a lack of adequate housing and reliable services.
The article describes the fancy services that the dogs get at the dog hotels, and some of it is quite over-the-top, like dog weddings. Doesn't it seem like there's something wrong with that happening in a place where such a huge proportion of people live in poverty? Why are rich people's dogs getting all these nice things, when there are homeless people who don't even have enough food to eat?
What I want to say is, the article seems to be implying that the customers who bring their dogs to the dog hotels are doing something wrong. Or the owners of the dog hotel businesses are doing something wrong. I don't think this framing is right- I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with being a customer or employer in the dog hotel industry while people live in crushing poverty geographically close to you.
How close do they have to be, exactly, for it to be immoral? Why is that article talking about this like well-off people in South Africa are the ones who should feel guilty about this- aren't the rest of us well-off people outside of South Africa also living nice lives while poverty exists in Cape Town? I guess we're far enough away that we're not morally obligated to feel bad about it? This framing is all wrong. It reads like the readers are supposed to think "Well, *I* live in the US [or whatever "first world country"], so it's fine for me to send my dog to a nice dog hotel. But if I lived in South Africa, it would be morally wrong for me to do the exact same thing."
The fact that luxury dog hotels and extreme poverty both exist shows that something is wrong with society. Something is very wrong. But it's not about an individual dog owner's choice to send their dog there- they are not doing anything wrong. This is about society.
The article says that many of the dog owners who send their dogs to the hotel work full-time jobs, and they don't want to leave their dogs shut in at home all day. (I suspect that only a small proportion of the customers are paying the extra money for the fancy luxury stuff that the article describes in so much detail.) Well, yeah, that makes sense. If you have a dog, and it's not good for the dog to be alone at home all day, and you have enough money to send the dog to a dog hotel, then why not? You should totally do it. There's nothing wrong with that.
But also, you should donate money to help people. If you're in a good position financially, you should donate an amount of money that's (at the very least) in the ballpark of what you spend for yourself for things you like but don't really need. I've talked about this on the blog before- my approach is to make a plan once a year about how much money I want to donate during the year. Make a deliberate choice. I think a lot of people donate haphazardly if they see some charity ad that makes them feel bad- if you are financially comfortable, you should do better than that.
So for these individual dog owners, they're not going to help anyone by feeling guilty about having access to a dog hotel. It doesn't help anyone, even if they feel so guilty they stop sending their dog there. What can actually help is donating money. Really what's needed is changes at the societal level- but you as an individual can't really do that- but at least you can donate money. But feeling bad about your dog doesn't help anyone. How about doing both- send your dog to the hotel, and also donate a sizable amount of money to help people?
I don't think you're morally obligated to give up everything you possibly can, and donate all your money except the bare minimum. I don't think it's workable to live that way. I think you should look at the things you typically spend money on, and think about which ones give you more or less value. For example, something costs you some amount of money and makes you really happy, and something else costs the same amount but doesn't really do much for your happiness- maybe stop spending money on the one that doesn't make you as happy. No need to give up both of them though- I don't think it's workable to live that way.
The dog hotel is an indication that something is wrong with society. But the dog hotel isn't the thing that's wrong, in and of itself. If you want to avail yourself of the services offered by the dog hotel, there's nothing wrong with that. Either way, you still have to live in a society that has something terribly wrong with it.
(Either way, I'm sure you can find something to make yourself feel guilty about.)
I like this quote, from the end of the article:
"We can't be prioritizing the 5% over the 95%," says Luyanda Mtamzeli, of the legal non-profit Ndifuna Ukwazi, which campaigns against inequality and the lack of affordable housing in Cape Town. "You've got a huge number of people who need accommodation in the city, and then you've got the 5% of the population who need luxury hotels for their dogs. This whole situation underscores the lack of genuine political will to tackle the structural and deep-seated inequality that persists in Cape Town."
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I think the reason this article rubbed me the wrong way is because of my experiences with the different ways one can make oneself feel bad for having money and privilege when poverty also exists in this world.
One way of looking at it is, I could have stayed in the US and gotten a job that pays much more than the job I have here in China. But I didn't want to do that because there's a ... there's a discomfort in the experience of things being easy, having enough money, being in the majority culture, but also knowing that other people in the world are living in extreme poverty- knowing that's real, but it's so disconnected from your life. It feels wrong, to live in a way that you know is not consistent with the actual reality of the average person in this world. Like you're in a bubble. Like the morally correct thing to do is leave all that behind and go live somewhere that Americans think is a "third world country."
(Which is not the real reason I moved to China, but it is a lens that has been relevant to my thinking.)
But then, you move, and life still goes on. I'm still myself, I still have a degree in engineering and haven't had any problems with having enough money to live my life. Life is still as real and complex. I have an office job and I make more money than what the average person in Shanghai makes. It's not enough for really pricy stuff that I hear about some Chinese and/or international people spending money on, like buying a home or sending their kids to international schools, but it's much higher than the average person in Shanghai. I'm still in a bubble.
And if you're American and you like dogs, then you move to South Africa, you're still a person who likes dogs, who has experience having a pet dog. You're still that person, so you get a dog. (There's nothing wrong with being that person! Everyone's life is complicated and full of individual experiences like that.) And something that is normal in the US- sending your dog to a boarding or dog-walking service when you're at work- if you do the exact same thing in South Africa, suddenly it's this ethically-questionable thing, because you're geographically closer to poverty than you used to be?
(But, note that probably most customers for the dog hotel are South African, rather than being international people who moved there from other countries.)
So, in other words, you can feel bad for living far away from poverty, and also, you can feel bad for living close to poverty.
I don't think this "feeling bad" helps anyone at all. What really needs to happen is for society to change, so that everyone can get their basic needs met. To whatever extent we can advocate for that, or donate money to charities that are helping poor people, let's do it. But you can still buy nice things for yourself and your dog sometimes.
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