I think you've captured it perfectly with "Maybe it's daily reminder that all the luxuries are right here, right under your fingers, if only you weren't so miserably poor?"
In one of Philip Pullmans His Dark Material novels there is a race of creatures that have a symbiosis with a tree whose huge perfectly round nut can be grasped by their fore and hind limbs and they roll around that way.
Living in rural Spain service is chill. Am used to it by now. Went to an upmarket restaurant in France other day and it took me ages to realise the waiter was vibing me the whole meal for a tip. Such a weird transactional space. Person literally smiling and being agreeable for money. Insane.
It’s the kind of thing I think about before going to China or if I were to visit NKorea. But hasn’t this possibility of hardcore border harassment been a feature of visiting the land of the free (the US that is) for a while now? Phones confiscated and inspected etc..