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It's meaningful to a bored police officer in a less-than-democratic country who has nothing better to do than make my life annoying. I'm not denying that it's

It's meaningful to a bored police officer in a less-than-democratic country who has nothing better to do than make my life annoying. I'm not denying that it's security theater or claiming that it's more meaningful; I'm saying solely that there are physical expectations that are going to be very hard to shake once you go off the beaten path.

whimsicalism 2y ago
I took 'could possibly' + reference to cell service to mean that there is some sort of technical/infrastructural limitation. If your point is that the world is big and any effort to do this would take a long, long time to fully penetrate beyond a few highly developed Western countries, then I definitely agree.
- woodruffw 2y ago
  Yep, that was the sole point.
FreePalestine1 2y ago
I think things generally start off as experiments in first world countries then trickle down eventually to third world countries. That's just the reality. 20 years ago not everything could be digitized because internet/smartphone access isn't widespread, but now more or less every single person on the planet has some sort of internet access. Things change eventually, they gotta start somewhere.
- fragmede 2y ago
  More like 68% of people, which seems pretty far from "more or less every single person on the planet". https://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-internet-users-worldwide/#statisticContainer https://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-interne...
  - FreePalestine1 2y ago
    [dead]
  - umeshunni 2y ago
    But is probably very close to every single adult on the planet.
- rswail 2y ago
  I assume that you are excluding the US banking system from that "trickle down" effect.
  - anticensor 2y ago
    US banking is behind many developed countries due to security model mismatch.
technothrasher 2y ago
> It's meaningful to a bored police officer in a less-than-democratic country who has nothing better to do than make my life annoying. I've found that money is more meaningful than anything else to those bored officers. Either they don't actually care that much about your documents, or if they do, they're simply looking for a bribe. At least that's been my experience at out of the way border crossings in southern Africa. The most ridiculous experience I had was crossing into Zimbabwe with my 11 year old son. The officer wanted to see his birth certificate, which was still in the car that had already been driven across the border. So I had to leave the building, walk across the border, which nobody batted an eye at, get the document, walk back across the border, re-enter the building, and then present the document to the officer who didn't even look at it before letting me proceed to leave the building and walk across the border once again.
- tonyarkles 2y ago
  I’m curious about your experience with this. A friend did a big tour through Africa about 15 years ago and when he got home he commented that you had to be careful to right-size your bribe: if your bribe was missing it not big enough, you’d get hassled about paperwork or maybe have to pay a “fine” or “document processing fee” to make up for it; if your bribe was too big, though, then you and the people you were travelling with would be subject to intense scrutiny. From what I recall about $5 USD was about right and $20 USD could result in the contents of your suitcase getting dumped in the dirt and very thoroughly rummaged through.

whimsicalism 2y ago

I took 'could possibly' + reference to cell service to mean that there is some sort of technical/infrastructural limitation. If your point is that the world is big and any effort to do this would take a long, long time to fully penetrate beyond a few highly developed Western countries, then I definitely agree.

woodruffw 2y ago
Yep, that was the sole point.

FreePalestine1 2y ago

I think things generally start off as experiments in first world countries then trickle down eventually to third world countries. That's just the reality. 20 years ago not everything could be digitized because internet/smartphone access isn't widespread, but now more or less every single person on the planet has some sort of internet access. Things change eventually, they gotta start somewhere.

fragmede 2y ago
More like 68% of people, which seems pretty far from "more or less every single person on the planet". https://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-internet-users-worldwide/#statisticContainer https://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-interne...
- FreePalestine1 2y ago
  [dead]
- umeshunni 2y ago
  But is probably very close to every single adult on the planet.
rswail 2y ago
I assume that you are excluding the US banking system from that "trickle down" effect.
- anticensor 2y ago
  US banking is behind many developed countries due to security model mismatch.

technothrasher 2y ago

> It's meaningful to a bored police officer in a less-than-democratic country who has nothing better to do than make my life annoying. I've found that money is more meaningful than anything else to those bored officers. Either they don't actually care that much about your documents, or if they do, they're simply looking for a bribe. At least that's been my experience at out of the way border crossings in southern Africa. The most ridiculous experience I had was crossing into Zimbabwe with my 11 year old son. The officer wanted to see his birth certificate, which was still in the car that had already been driven across the border. So I had to leave the building, walk across the border, which nobody batted an eye at, get the document, walk back across the border, re-enter the building, and then present the document to the officer who didn't even look at it before letting me proceed to leave the building and walk across the border once again.

tonyarkles 2y ago
I’m curious about your experience with this. A friend did a big tour through Africa about 15 years ago and when he got home he commented that you had to be careful to right-size your bribe: if your bribe was missing it not big enough, you’d get hassled about paperwork or maybe have to pay a “fine” or “document processing fee” to make up for it; if your bribe was too big, though, then you and the people you were travelling with would be subject to intense scrutiny. From what I recall about $5 USD was about right and $20 USD could result in the contents of your suitcase getting dumped in the dirt and very thoroughly rummaged through.