Posted by lexandstuff 1 day ago
(Please note: im explicitly saying this about the governments. Not the people. The people, in most/all situations, have little to no power to remove this corruption, other than civil war.)
I really think its the mixture of the Global North, and along with the worst of the worst people is why there isnt an African Union, with African single currency.
Its also the reason im not (cant) buy African products locally. The supply chain is nearly non-existant. I couldnt buy even if I wanted to.
There are charities that move used electronics to developing countries in bulk somehow.
Some could argue corruption is an attempt to equalise on that.
The price should be whatever it costs you when including all cost factors¹. A competitive market is an attempt at a system (no central control) to approach that lower bound value. It's really hard to incorporate the million dependencies in a true cost price, so people are instead free to set a price and consumers are free to choose a vendor that's cheaper, and so there's competition. Markets are said to not be working well (lack of competition, usually) if the price of a good or service does not remotely approach the cost price
Bribes are usually to people in power because otherwise you'd just go with the non-corrupt option. That's not a functioning market. I wouldn't say that this type of monopoly is an attempt at determining the fair price for transporting an item of a given mass and dimensions
¹ this really includes everything: to be able to walk across the street and deliver packages, you needed to eat the night before; you needed to learn to read; you need to put money to the side for when you're of age; etc.
Corruption (tolling, rent seeking, bribery) is part of the free market.
If the sender doesn't like the risk profile of the route to market they should pay a premium and route around it at certain cost or get insurance, else pay up if it is the financially optimal path.
- even the UN (which pays 1/4 of what the EU pays) cannot ship work laptops to these countries. The either vanish or have to be shipped to very central DHL offices.
- Informal remittance from family members to their communities is exactly the same amount of all the money the country gets from external sources as Aid. e.g. Angola had USD$2bi given by EU and UN. Remitances where the same 2Bi. I don't know if there are mechanisms to keep that this way, but that was the case for all the countries i could get the number that year and the year before.