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On Twitter recently a Nigerian business man shared some of his frustrations which I found insightful. He started a bar. Yet later discovered that his business

by fleddr 4y ago

On Twitter recently a Nigerian business man shared some of his frustrations which I found insightful. He started a bar. Yet later discovered that his business partner was reselling booze via the back door, pocketing this money for himself. Next, the business man started a transport business. Every driver he hired mysteriously got "robbed", which means they resold the fuel. They are just anecdotes, but if widespread, it must be near impossible to get any development going. It's constantly sabotaged by your peers. On a TV program, I saw a Nigerian woman complaining how the city fails to maintain drinking water infrastructure, specifically pointing to a broken pipe. It was in this broken state for 13 years and as a result she had to walk an additional 30 mins for her water, every day. It's bad that government is this careless but looking at the broken pipe, I'd say its 1 hour of work to repair for a pro. So maybe crowd fund that pro with some locals and get it done? One of my friends has a construction company that infrequently does some jobs in Africa. He really wants to do things right so exclusively hires local people and offers them double the usual pay. Guess what happens? They don't show up the next day. Literally living life by the day. I personally visited Madagascar a few times. All over the country you see structures crumbling. You can tell somebody had the right idea and built something of value, but not even minor cheap repairs are carried out. So it's all falling apart from pure indifference. Our guide, a local, explained how there was a tree planting project where people are literally paid per tree. Most planted a handful and went home. I tried to help out in ecotourism by explaining how they're drastically undercharging. Make little booklets and sell them. Charge 5 times more for your drinks, they'd still be cheap by western standards. Nobody cared. It's just baffling, this widespread apathy. Simple and effortless opportunities presented on a silver platter, and it's just met with complete indifference. There's different ways to frame the issue. You could say they underperform by the standards of global capitalism. Another way to look at it is that some/many reject performance culture altogether. For sure there are also other factors at play, historical, geopolitical, but a culture that "doesn't even try" is quite self-defeating.

tdeck 4y ago
I gotta be honest, this post reads like "just driving by I knew how to fix all these peolles' problems but they seem too lazy to care". Is it possible there's something you don't know about each of these scenarios? It's easy to construct some self congratulatory narrative when you're visiting a poor country, but it's also a trap. In the past, these narratives tended to be biological. Now they're "cultural" but the effect is often similar. Take the pipe example. Maybe the police don't let people just "crowd fund" repairs to public infrastructure and perform them themselves. Maybe what you saw on the video isn't representative of the whole problem, or your assessment of the repair difficulty isn't accurate. Perhaps your brilliant idea about pricing and selling ecotourism booklets isn't such a great idea after all. Maybe they already tried it and tried different price points and were too polite to tell you. That's common in "development" projects where there's a power/wealth imbalance between the person giving well meaning advice and the folks receiving it. Speaking of which, maybe home repairs that look cheap when you're driving by aren't actually cheap by local standards. Perhaps the materials aren't affordable or people have absentee landlords that don't take care of the place because it's not in their interest to do so. There are plenty of buildings like this in SF but the reason is economic incentives, not a culture of apathy. Who knows what's going on with your friend's construction business. As an absentee foreigner they may rely on a foreman who pockets a bunch of the workers' pay, making it a shitty deal for the workers.
- fleddr 4y ago
  Yes, I was wrong on all accounts. And even though locals will readily confirm and admit to these cultural issues and are equally frustrated by it, it's best to pretend they don't exist. Because I said it. And obviously my only possible agenda can be rationalize a sense of superiority, it can't possibly because I care.
- the_omegist 4y ago
  While I like that you try to show the situation(s) may be more complex than seen at first glance (which is true for any situation anyway), the sheer number of situations should easily explain there is one or many global causes for all these. I watch the video of a thai native going back to Thailand to make a restaurant and his experience is the same : paid the workers more to get them "committed" but they have this culture of "good enough/it's not important". You cannot expect civilizations with millenia of divergent cultures and climate to have evolved with the same cultural/traditional habits.
- luckylion 4y ago
  In what corrupt country have you seen the police super active to keep random citizens from fixing issues that affect them personally? In what countries do they even have the manpower to keep someone posted on each broken piece of infrastructure to guard it and make sure that it doesn't get fixed? It sounds like you're reaching for explanations and grasping at straws. At some point you either get to "maybe aliens did it" or you stop reaching and look for other explanations. > There are plenty of buildings like this in SF but the reason is economic incentives, not a culture of apathy. Yes, some things can look similar but be very much not the same. Look at the incentives, I'm sure they're not the same between a slumlord in SF and someone living in their own house.
  - fleddr 4y ago
    The grasping at straws is because I, a westerner, said it. Had a local expressed it, which they regularly do if one cares to listen, then none of the examples would be challenged. Half my examples are made by locals, they aren't even my personal take on it. Not only is any plain and simple observation I make incorrect, it is also not so subtly assumed to be driven by an agenda of biological or cultural racial hierarchy. Which is to suggest that I'm a supremacist looking to confirm my supremacy. That is what is implied. I can handle that bad faith toxic notion just fine, no issue there. The real issue is that this style of discourse strongly discourages people to call out very serious issues that are grounded in reality. Just pretend they don't exist. To remind what got this started: "I've always wondered why there's no black-majority country that's prosperous...it's always the same story of corruption, incompetence, and/or infighting. Now, before anyone brings out the pitchforks, I'm a black African residing in Nigeria...I'm just saying that we really have to do better than this." And where we're at now: Nah, it's all fine. Stop talking about it.
ericmcer 4y ago
That reminds me of a story of western businessmen offering 50% more to local workers to get them to work more. This totally works in the US, where overtime pay can easily get workers to show up for extra shifts. The result here was they worked 50% less and were happy to take home the same amount. Workers seem misguided in both cases, but it is clear that they had a totally different view and relationship to money.
hoseja 4y ago
No freeze. The grasshopper can just keep on fiddling.
Georgelemental 4y ago
I have heard similar stories, from people I kmow who have spent a lot of time working all around Africa. And countries where people are more proactive—Rwanda, Ivory Coast—are more functional overall. Climate seems to be a factor

by fleddr 4y ago

tdeck 4y ago

I gotta be honest, this post reads like "just driving by I knew how to fix all these peolles' problems but they seem too lazy to care". Is it possible there's something you don't know about each of these scenarios? It's easy to construct some self congratulatory narrative when you're visiting a poor country, but it's also a trap. In the past, these narratives tended to be biological. Now they're "cultural" but the effect is often similar. Take the pipe example. Maybe the police don't let people just "crowd fund" repairs to public infrastructure and perform them themselves. Maybe what you saw on the video isn't representative of the whole problem, or your assessment of the repair difficulty isn't accurate. Perhaps your brilliant idea about pricing and selling ecotourism booklets isn't such a great idea after all. Maybe they already tried it and tried different price points and were too polite to tell you. That's common in "development" projects where there's a power/wealth imbalance between the person giving well meaning advice and the folks receiving it. Speaking of which, maybe home repairs that look cheap when you're driving by aren't actually cheap by local standards. Perhaps the materials aren't affordable or people have absentee landlords that don't take care of the place because it's not in their interest to do so. There are plenty of buildings like this in SF but the reason is economic incentives, not a culture of apathy. Who knows what's going on with your friend's construction business. As an absentee foreigner they may rely on a foreman who pockets a bunch of the workers' pay, making it a shitty deal for the workers.

fleddr 4y ago
Yes, I was wrong on all accounts. And even though locals will readily confirm and admit to these cultural issues and are equally frustrated by it, it's best to pretend they don't exist. Because I said it. And obviously my only possible agenda can be rationalize a sense of superiority, it can't possibly because I care.
the_omegist 4y ago
While I like that you try to show the situation(s) may be more complex than seen at first glance (which is true for any situation anyway), the sheer number of situations should easily explain there is one or many global causes for all these. I watch the video of a thai native going back to Thailand to make a restaurant and his experience is the same : paid the workers more to get them "committed" but they have this culture of "good enough/it's not important". You cannot expect civilizations with millenia of divergent cultures and climate to have evolved with the same cultural/traditional habits.
luckylion 4y ago
In what corrupt country have you seen the police super active to keep random citizens from fixing issues that affect them personally? In what countries do they even have the manpower to keep someone posted on each broken piece of infrastructure to guard it and make sure that it doesn't get fixed? It sounds like you're reaching for explanations and grasping at straws. At some point you either get to "maybe aliens did it" or you stop reaching and look for other explanations. > There are plenty of buildings like this in SF but the reason is economic incentives, not a culture of apathy. Yes, some things can look similar but be very much not the same. Look at the incentives, I'm sure they're not the same between a slumlord in SF and someone living in their own house.
- fleddr 4y ago
  The grasping at straws is because I, a westerner, said it. Had a local expressed it, which they regularly do if one cares to listen, then none of the examples would be challenged. Half my examples are made by locals, they aren't even my personal take on it. Not only is any plain and simple observation I make incorrect, it is also not so subtly assumed to be driven by an agenda of biological or cultural racial hierarchy. Which is to suggest that I'm a supremacist looking to confirm my supremacy. That is what is implied. I can handle that bad faith toxic notion just fine, no issue there. The real issue is that this style of discourse strongly discourages people to call out very serious issues that are grounded in reality. Just pretend they don't exist. To remind what got this started: "I've always wondered why there's no black-majority country that's prosperous...it's always the same story of corruption, incompetence, and/or infighting. Now, before anyone brings out the pitchforks, I'm a black African residing in Nigeria...I'm just saying that we really have to do better than this." And where we're at now: Nah, it's all fine. Stop talking about it.

ericmcer 4y ago

That reminds me of a story of western businessmen offering 50% more to local workers to get them to work more. This totally works in the US, where overtime pay can easily get workers to show up for extra shifts. The result here was they worked 50% less and were happy to take home the same amount. Workers seem misguided in both cases, but it is clear that they had a totally different view and relationship to money.

hoseja 4y ago

No freeze. The grasshopper can just keep on fiddling.

Georgelemental 4y ago

I have heard similar stories, from people I kmow who have spent a lot of time working all around Africa. And countries where people are more proactive—Rwanda, Ivory Coast—are more functional overall. Climate seems to be a factor