To travel to Mexico’s touristy coasts, like the Mexican Rivera (Cancun, Tulum, or Playa del Carmen) or Baja California Sur (Cabo San Lucas, San Jose del Cabo, La Paz), is to willingly accept you’ll be wildly overpaying at every available opportunity in every financial interaction during the entirety of your stay. Front-line hospitality workers are skilled magicians, and their best trick is convincing us to overpay and feel good about it.

The median household income in Mexico is around 14,000 USD. In the U.S. it’s 74,500 USD. That’s about 5 times more. The minimum hourly wage is approximately 1.50/hour, where as in the U.S. it is 7.25/hour. Again, that’s about 5 times more. Things should be cheaper in Mexico. While the Caribbean and Central America countries have their own currencies, they encourage U.S. visitors to spend (and tip) in U.S. dollars. It seems so convenient and innocent.

When the Mexican cab driver asks for a crisp $20 for the cab ride I just took, there are two points of view. For me, I think how easy was that? Traveling in Mexico is fun and accessible. For the driver, he just netted over a day’s wages for a 15 minute ride off one fare. Similarly, when I tip housekeepers $5/day for cleaning the room, I’m giving them 34% of their day’s wages, cash. When I go out to dinner and pay U.S. prices for tacos and beer, and then tip 20% because I’m a conscientious tourist, the waitstaff just received one or two days wages off one table. Since I used dollars, I feel nothing. I’m used to the prices I just paid. If anything, since I live in New York City, it felt a little cheaper. That’s the magic.

In my mind I see these resorts as massive engines, and we tourists are the raw material. We pay the room rate, which goes to the company, investors, and government. The fat cats get their due before my plane has landed. Then, turned over to the front-line workers, the real artistry begins, and our remaining cash is gently, ever so delicately liberated from us as the staff put on a show honed by the thousands of people who visited before. It’s a great show to play a part. They make us feel charming, funny, cultured, welcomed, good-looking, and help us live like royalty during our stay. Knowing the attributes of my fellow countrymen, a large amount of imagination must factor into their performance since most of us are none of those things … particularly in bathing suits while piss drunk. We depart with warm, fuzzy feelings. We feel seen. (That phrase always makes me vomit in my mouth a little.)

You can see why I don’t worry about the cartels interfering during my stay. The literal cash flowing out and around these massive “engines” must be enormous. The financial upside of kidnapping or robbing me is chump change compared to the systemic downside risk. Plus, the cartels reportedly use the satellite businesses (like nightclubs, bars, restaurants, tchotchke shops) to extort or launder money, all while selling drugs to idiot college kids. Everyone is making money, no murder and kidnapping necessary. As long as the tourists flow, a deluge of money sloshes right behind them.

I am not annoyed by this currency trickeration. Rather, I am both amused by how the economics of places like this evolved and in awe of being so deftly handled. The design and function of “the machine” is elegant and magnificent to behold. While I am a “raw material” in this metaphor, most raw materials don’t get so nicely treated at any price. Nobody stops to ask the wood how it feels being sliced into logs or coal’s thoughts on incineration. Plus, I flew here on purpose. I volunteered for this. My role here is to be deftly handled and tip everyone who pretends I’m funny, charming, and clever … everyone who works hard for my slovenly benefit. If that doesn’t appeal to me, I can stay home. There’s a food truck outside my work that sells cheap, authentic tacos for, like, a dollar.

Questions remain that I cannot answer but always wonder about. Do workers keep their cash tips or are they extorted somehow? Does tourism really help move average citizens out of poverty? For example, does the housekeeper or taxi driver’s child have better economic opportunities than they did? Then I don’t mind spending, as I deeply believe having more people in the middle class (of any country) is a good thing for my general safety and 401k. Has all this loose money twisted the local economy into something truly abhorrent? Look what ESPN’s money did to college football. I worry that I am inadvertently participating in something ghastly.

I digress.

If you’ll excuse me, I see our pool attendant Lenny and want to place an order. I will tell a joke or make a comment he’s heard thousands of times before, but he will laugh and smile as if this is the first. I’m so clever. I will order some pancreas-destroying, flavored sugar-water mixed drink, and Lenny will nod and say, “Good choice, my favorite.” This will validate my decision to drink alcohol before 10 A.M. and I will feel less slovenly. I’ll lean to RBD and say, “It’s his favorite,” and she’ll roll her eyes. Lenny is friendly, and I will tip him well. I’m a good international traveler. I am generous. Somewhere, not too far away, a dark-skinned Mexican teenager is being beaten or killed for interfering with the enormous flow of money. Maybe he pickpocketed a tourist or sold drugs in the wrong place, angering a rival cartel? There are borders here I do not know exist. I will think, Wouldn’t it be nice to live here?