281–290 of 291 posts
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It’s funny to me that this is increasingly how packages are delivered in the US, too. Asking someone who’s going that way already to drop it on their way is inherently efficient in some circumstances. Once there’s remuneration, it’s not a big jump to making the trip just for that. Add an app and the gig economy is born.
The first day of this new app... half the workers will be arrested after they ended up drugs mules.
We tried to ship company-provided laptop from Poland to somewhere in India. After long time the parcel was just simply labelled "gone". And we paid very similar amounts for all the shipping/taxes/clearances. Nice to hear that such stories end well sometimes.
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You have no way to know its higher than zero though
There are many ways of knowing if you actually want to find out. Third party auditors, evaluations, reputation… just… reading reports and looking at evidence of field work. Too many people use this as an excuse to throw up their hands and say “well I guess I have no choice but to keep all my money for myself and donate nothing, damn, darn, totally not the conclusion I was secretly hoping to reach, not at all, oh man,…
If you think corruption cannot go very deep then you may be too trustful.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are many ways of knowing if you actually want to find out. Third party auditors, evaluations, reputation… just… reading reports and looking at evidence of field work. Too many people use this as an excuse to throw up their hands and say “well I guess I have no choice but to keep all my money for myself and donate nothing, damn, darn, totally not the conclusion I was secretly hoping to reach, not at all, oh man,…
The same problem applies to auditors and third parties. Unless you join a field audit ultimately you have to trust an opaque party. If you think corruption cannot go very deep then you may be too trustful.
well I guess I have no choice but to keep all my money for myself and donate nothing
You can't donate without trust. By your reckoning any trust at all is to much trust. So you are saying: Never trust anyone. And you are not wrong.
I am actually following that advice. In general, I never donate money, but, I do donate my time. That is, I rather work less, and earn less money in order to have time to volunteer. That applies double now that I live in Africa. I do support some children that can't afford to go to school. But I know all these children in person. I see how they actually live, and in most cases, I give the money directly to the schools the children go to, because I could not even trust the children or the parents. In most cases that lack of trust was unnecessary, but in at least one case it turned out to be warranted. That child is not getting help from me anymore.
Now, once I started to ask people to help me supporting the children here, it became clear that anyone helping me has no way of verifying how the money is used. They have to trust me. And not only do they have to trust that the money goes to the children's school expenses but also that these children actually need the money. It is to easy to build up a narrative on how poor everyone here is. and unfortunately the whole charity industry (or however you want to call that) is built on those narratives.
That's one reason why I came here. To find out what is the actual reality. What is the truth. And, ultimately, what is really the best way to help. I don't know the answer yet.
My interim conclusion so far is to invest, buy, bring money into the local economy, ever which way. Most of it will not go to the neediest. But, actually, I believe only helping the neediest is not going to move the needle anyways. Sending money to the neediest will allow them to buy food, but sending money to the government will allow it to build infrastructure which will also benefit the neediest because it may give them access to clean water, electricity, internet, streets, which for example make it easier for those children to go to school.
People talk about the trickle-down effect, and how it does not work. But that's not what I mean here. At least not directly. The trickle-down effect assumes that giving money to the rich automatically leads to actions that benefit the poor. That's obviously not the case. What I mean is to actively invest into things that benefit everyone, including the poor, and give money to those who are building those things. That in turn is also easier to verify than any charity that helps individuals which you can not track.
That's my theory for now. Over time I hope I will learn more get a better understanding. I am unfortunately not in the position to make any investments myself, to test if my guess here is true. But I will keep observing and and learning, and I'll share what I learn in the comments here.
In other words, African governments are even more corrupt shitholes. (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.…
>(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.)
Often (but not always), even common people are corrupt.
I am Ugandan. I've shipped electronics and Laptops for Work quite a bit, and OP is right, the system is broken, it stays this way because a lot of corrupt individuals benefit from this mess. However, OP showed a degree of Hubris here, a mistake lots of us make when dealing with foreign countries, just because it works this way here, so it should work that way in XYZ. OP would have saved themselves lots of time and mo…
In fact there was one unusual event, compared to my daily experience, which was an event that blew the windows of his shop. So he divided his works across multiple locations for geographical diversity and carried on.
This is not how it works. My partner is Ugandan, we live in France - I'm used to ship to various countries in Africa. Never use the "regular" post - it is just as OP described. Don't use high-end couriers (DHL, Fedex etc.) either - very expensive for scant value added. Do what every local does: use one of the innumerable grey market freight forwarders. One way or the other (for a typical "line haul" example, they ent…
But this process, including sending smaller items first etc sounds like it would have taken longer than what the OP did? And the OP was trying to do it quickly to tie in with the beginning of the semester?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are many ways of knowing if you actually want to find out. Third party auditors, evaluations, reputation… just… reading reports and looking at evidence of field work. Too many people use this as an excuse to throw up their hands and say “well I guess I have no choice but to keep all my money for myself and donate nothing, damn, darn, totally not the conclusion I was secretly hoping to reach, not at all, oh man,…
The same problem applies to auditors and third parties. Unless you join a field audit ultimately you have to trust an opaque party. If you think corruption cannot go very deep then you may be too trustful.
Who's to say they didn't drug you, and you performed the "field audit" on a psychedelic trip from within a padded cell controlled by the nefarious cabal of do-gooders?
Frankly, if you believe your own eyes and ears aren't lying to you, you may be a touch naive.
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For better or worse, "person from 1st world country does what they think helps, based on their worldview - but never asks 3rd world recipient" is unfortunately a very common troupe. (I'm from a 3rd world country and have seen it over and over again.)
It’s “trope”, not “troupe”
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Where did you find it? Wikipedia only links IMDB and they have everything from plot info to production company to revenue to screenshots but not the obvious question anyone would have: how to actually watch it
Full thing is on youtube. https://youtube.com/watch?v=kOkrYW3vF0o
Thanks for the link anyhow! I'll store it for when a workaround becomes available, it sounded very interesting