Lao does not help Lao
Ladies and gentlemen, today we write about a phenomenon that is both well-known but also mysterious. It is the unwritten law of Lao help Lao. The logic behind this law seems somewhat similar to quid pro quo which means “something for something”. Is Lao help Lao another “a favour for a favour”, a “what for what,” “give and take,” “tit for tat”, “this for that”, and “you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours”?
No it is not. In a quid pro quo the relationship between participants is – for the most part – equal. There is an outcome of actions or goods that is equal in proportion to the given. A basic understanding. Reciprocity.
Lao for Lao differs from quid pro quo in the sense that relationships are definitely not zero sum. Yes, something is expected from you, Lao descendant, but the given is disproportional to what is expected from you in return. Much less.
An example. Suppose you visited a fair and there are three merchants present that all sell Larb Kai. The first merchant is of European descent, the second is a Thai national and the third one is Lao. After doing a culinary test round of all three you came to the conclusion that the European and Thai salesmen definitely delivered the best quality larb. The Lao guy just couldn’t get it right. Pity, it happens sometimes.
Now in the real world, you, a Lao person, would do your second purchase round with the European or Thai cook. Not in the Lao-help-Lao world. In the Lao-help-Lao world it is expected of you that you will re-purchase with the Lao merchant because you are Lao yourself. Get it?
Lao help Lao is defined as a general attitude between two or more people of Lao descent whereby initial actions of a Lao person always get reciprocated by something (far) more than the value of this initial action deserves. The reason for this expected disproportionate response is the common Lao descendance that binds the participants.
There you have it: the first written down definition of Lao help Lao. Since it is the first, it is destined to be flawed. Improvements are very welcome.
This attitude is the reason why even personal failure is attributed to fellow Lao. People don’t like your food because Lao people wouldn’t help you eat it. Your business failed because it targeted Lao people but Lao people wouldn’t buy your product. Lao people don’t eat your cookies so they are bad people. Forget the fact that your cookies taste awful.
It is the most enslaving, quality deal breaking fallacy I have seen. Lao people deserve quality like anyone else so why would they support their fellow Lao if they feed them crap? Because the underlying premises is that Lao people do not deserve top quality. In its core, the Lao help Lao mentality is symptomatic of low self confidence. Less than average is enough for Lao people because Lao will settle for less.
Down with the Lao help Lao mentality!
And, ladies and gentlemen, if you do decide to start a business, organization, magazine or toilet paper that represents you and Laos: please, pretend you live in the real world. The real world does not consume anything below its price-quality standards because of descendance. If you promise 10 don’t give your fellow Lao five because you expect them to swallow it.
Galvanize self confidence. Demand quality from your fellow Lao and help them improve. False applause is for losers and recycles bad behavior. Pretty soon we can’t find the real gems anymore because they have been covered in Lao help Lao mud. Clear the path. Lao demands quality. Lao demands you keep your promises. And Lao won’t eat your crap just because you made it. Thanks.
wow….I’m getting this vibe that this is pointing an certain magazine.
well said… Padek
Interesting concept,I had learns.You got a great point and good thinking into this I applause your creative writing skills.
“Kird pen Lao thong hak Lao coy leau Lao (born Lao must love Lao and help Lao” a simple lyric, first Lao natural law I know, I learned as a kid in Laos some years ago. On the food note, Lao food is better eating from home kitchen.
I think this phenomenon isn’t just isolated to lao people, every culture does it too. Why does the US gov’t help the US automakers and not the japanese or korean automakers that have manufacturing plants in the US also? If the americans aren’t even buying thier own domestic cars, why is the US gov’t trying to keep them in business. I keep hearing on tv to buy american to keep jobs in america. I went to a vietnamese sub shop and vietnamese people order after me and get served first before me.
I buy lao to help lao even if it isn’t that great compared to something else cause if I don’t help my own people, who will? If we don’t try to keep our own culture alive, we will become extinct like the dinosaurs. The only way for lao people to improve and provide ‘quality’ is if they continue to stay in business and learn to improve. Price-quality standards are western ideals, not lao. What ‘most’ lao peope want are things that are cheap in price, but you can’t have quality and cheap at the same time.
The reasons I see why lao people fall behind in this world is that they don’t have the support such as large funding/donations, not enough education and the constant criticism from it’s own community. Does anyone know of any lao millionaires? How about lao people with phd’s or even a bachelors, hard to come by isn’t it. I do hear a lot of gossip at the temples though and lao people envying each other. The reason I come to this site and any other lao site is because I support lao people, even though this site may not be ‘quality’. There are so few of us lao people and we have a long way to go in terms of development, but the only way we are going to get there is if we help each other, just like the way the rest of the world does it. Rome was not built in a day.
If they build quality, I will buy it.
Quality is a relative term. If you accept something in relationship to a given price for that product or service, then the quality is right for you. If you pay for low quality, that quality will become the “accepted” low quality and you won’t help your people improve. It is misleading to think that paying for crap is going to improve anything but the pocket of a bad business practice. They will never improve because you are ready to buy just about anything. Why would I try better if you buy anything I make because of my nationality?
You won’t help Lao businesses by keeping the bad ones in place. You won’t help Lao people that way either. You will give an incentive to business malpractice and keep that alive.
Culture is an entirely different issue. Culture is priceless and transcends over centuries. Cultural evolution and business malpractice is not the same. You are mixing up culture with commercial products.
What you also did not fully understand is that the Lao help Lao fallacy does not translate in actually helping Lao. I wonder if you really read the article or that you are just shooting from the hip.
YeaH! Padak is right and that’s a very Socialistically correcta. Free market doesn’t work-look at all the problems the US is causing all around the world.
Millhallpa, I think you just contradicted yourself. You agree with Padek about his so called “free market” of demanding quality and letting poor quality businesses die out, yet you state that, “Free market doesn’t work-look at all the problems the US is causing all around the world”. So you are in favour of having gov’t regulated “free markets” so that american business survive, and therefore americans helping americans, and lao helping lao, and so on.
I don’t think there is nothing wrong with lao helping lao, nor any other ethnicity helping it’s own, it happens all over the world, this is business and business is not separate from the society/culture that it does business in, only a fool would think otherwise. Many businesses have failed due to this fact. I remember my marketing prof telling me that Godiva chocolates initially failed in asia because in one of the countries, the people did not like large chunks of chocolate but rather small bite size pieces.
By not understanding the social/cultural climate, how is a business to succeed? Business is culture, business is interactions between people. The idealistic school that teaches that by demanding quality, that this improves the economic climate for the consumer is just that, idealistic and not realistic. If everyone did this, then it might work, but the fact that the world is not idealistic makes this view point unrelevant. Just so you guys don’t think that I’m talking out of my hip, I will give you some reading material on Starbucks, monoculture, and American Imperialism(refer to the website).
Quote: The Starbucks mission statement is to develop satisfied customers and to establish 25,000 stores for them, but this “development” involves forceful elimination of competition, NOT BY OFFERING A SUPERIOR coffee experience, but by purposefully eliminating alternatives. Effectively, Starbucks is on a path towards monopolization of the coffee market. End Quote
I will help lao survive and fight the power.
Here is some more reading material: “Ethnic Enterprises and their Clientele.” (Refer to Website)
Unlike yourselves I do not debate by trying to discredit the person’s intelligence by assuming they don’t even read things in their entirety. If you really want some insight into this matter, you will read all 35 pages of the following link/website like I have and do your research before “just shooting from the hip”. I have many more websites I can post to verify my statements, but I will just end it here.
Buk. I am an american. Padak/Laovoices choose the side to have America to be better like Europe. How can I defend ourselves when we voted a Socialist Fascist into the highest office in the country. Eventhough he swore to uphold and protect our constitution, he is saying one that and do everything opposite by using his power to destroy the constitution which is the only thing that is protecting us American from his grab for power.
Most people don’t know what the word Fascist means. It means government control the market hence not a free market. Listen to his speech, similar to my previous post. There is no Truth, no absolute certainty but who can say? Who knows? Only contradiction. I know I left Laos almost 40 years ago to get away from this nonsense. Now we are headin to a choice of Europe 1 and Europe 2(America). I have spent time in Europe, it is not like America. It is very restricted in freedom for the people. America has been great because of the freedom the people have to exercise their god given potential. Now that potential is diminishing because of the Altruism Socialist Ideal for Fascism.
I read the “Starbucks article” of Mr Buk.
For anyone hoping to discover relevance to Lao help lao: don’t read it. It is basically a bad re-run of the McDonaldisation theory of Ritzer. A bad B movie of the real thing. Weak substance and no relevance.
Most statements are incredibly far fetched and 80% of the article is based on non scientific sources.
To further discredit mr Buk
: Buk doesn’t know the difference between original science and anecdotical derivates. and, apparantly, he still hasn’t read the full article or does not want to read it. Fail.
Scientific source from the Austrian school: why protectionism never works (also along ethnic lines).
And fascism guy, please get a life
If you classify the US as a socialistic society because of Obama, as your beloved Neocon brethren brainwashed you, then you really do not know what you are talking about. But you are amusing so you may pass 
[...] Kee Kark, writing for Lao Voices, analyzes and criticizes the “most enslaving Lao help Lao” mentality. Cancel this [...]
I don’t even want to respond anymore cause this guy is beyond help. All he does is talk trash about everyone who doesn’t agree with his twisted view points. A debate should focus on the subject at hand, not the person. Now he’s accusing me of promoting protectionism? I guess I backed him into a corner so he had to put words in my mouth and telling people not to read the evidence that basically undermines his entire thesis. If the only thing he knows how to do is take cheap shots at people, then he definitely is a candidate for an american politician. In a debate, I usually try to learn something from the varying viewpoints but in this case, this is just a blatant hitler wannabe dictating nonsense to try and drum up support for his god complex. I think this is pretty close to those extremist terrorizing the world to follow their ideals.
I will choose the way I want to choose as a consumer and if I decide to buy a product cause there is a hot chick selling it instead of “quality” then that’s my perogative. Another day I may choose something else just for the hell of it, there is nothing scientific about that. There is no such thing as a ‘fair’ market, business is not fair, life is not fair, deal with it.
I will continue to help Lao cause I’m Lao, so I will continue to help myself also and I will help my laos family too and my laos children and they will help their children and so on. I’m ashamed to know that there are lao people who don’t want to help one another, even animals know better. I went to a Lao festival in VA recently and they were selling t-shirts to “help Lao people in Laos”. Their shirts/booth/website were of poor quality so maybe I should go help another charity instead huh? Visit them at Jai Lao dot org. I will continue to help my fellow Lao no matter what any idiot says. Please seek some help, sayonara.
Buk, you throw tantrums like a little girl.
I am sorry that you are not able to connect the issue of protectionism to the Lao help Lao mentality. The connection is there and I would be happy to explain it to you but I think you are here to make your little statements, not to listen.
Good luck with buying T-s for Laos. Helping people in Laos is an entirely different issue than the Lao help Lao mentality. You are completely missing the point. Do you realize that? Never mind, I think I know the answer
You simply cannot follow the logic here and, consequently, your rebuttals are borderline insane. I am sorry but it just is what it is.