4 ms·

So interesting.. can you give some examples of insanely informal underground economies?

• nicbou 3y ago
  I work in German immigration (see my profile). Most relocation consultants in Berlin know each other, and at one point or another might have worked together or sent each other clients. They know government office employees by name. They know which ones are cooperative and which ones have unusual requirements. They know the odds of an application getting through and the time it will take. They always know someone, whatever the problem. Many of them are in a group chat I created, frequently trading knowledge and saving each other work. They give me unprecedented visibility into an opaque system. They answer questions I couldn’t answer in weeks… in a few minutes. I bring them customers and share data points too. In this group chat, there is a programmer working at the immigration office. He takes feedback from us and lets us submit bug reports. The immigration office is the most unreachable office in Berlin, and we ar eon an ongoing conversation with them. This is one network. You wouldn’t believe how significant it is for my work of documenting German bureaucracy. They are my eyes and half of my brain. Yet we never exchanged money. It’s all informal.