[908B64B197]

> Sadly, with how things are with the courier and customs dep. here they can charge 30-40% of orignal price to receive electronic items

Something I never really understood, when going to less developed countries, why are customs always trying to fleece everyone? Normalized bribes, byzantine bureaucracy, astronomical import duties on computers and essential products.

What's the goal with this? Is there some kind of long term strategy I'm not seeing? Do they not want investments or a tech sector?

The unemployment and brain drain these countries suffer sure paints a bleak picture.

[Aromasin]

During my travels I met a family in Kenya who were some of the friendliest people I'd ever met. They showed us all around the the local towns and brought us to a fantastic bunch of places. In return, I wanted to support their son who was going through education at the time - either pay his fees or send him school supplies. Unfortunately, they said that there was no point because any money or supplies we sent to them would never arrive; they'd just be taken by the people at the post office as soon as they saw a foreign stamp. It wasn't even government mandated fees on customs. It was just theft. This was before the advent of digital currency and other means of sending money abroad, so we simple had no way we could support them other than giving them gifts while we were there.

I still think about them all the time, and how sad it is that people live in a society like that where blatant robbery was simply the norm. It gives me some hope though that with the proliferation of affordable mobile phones across impoverished regions, people finally have the means, however modest, to receive an education.

[BrandoElFollito]

I remember a story a few years ago about a boy in some remote area in Mongolia who could follow remote courses from MIT and improve his chances at getting a job.

I think that cheap computers and internet changed the game in education. I can learn to code in python anywhere. When I was studying, PC were few and you had to be at a university to have a reasonable chance to touch one. There was practically no internet.

[foolinaround]

> Do they not want investments or a tech sector?

The individual customs official or even the department is not incentivized to look at the benefit to the entire country. On the other hand, they are directly responsible to increase their collections, based on which they get a cut.

[krrrh]

I don’t know about Nepal, but traditionally places like Brazil pursued “import substitution” strategies of charging high tariffs on technology products to try to establish home-grown industries, and pursue autarky (self-sufficiency).

It’s an insane thing to do since the benefits to consumers and business users of these products is many times higher than the money made by the industries producing them. To a lesser extent the same pattern emerges in dirigiste-curious economies like Canada who limit foreign entrants into markets like telecom, resulting in a general tax on the entire population who suffer expensive and inadequate data plans in order to protect local oligopolies.

[908B64B197]

> To a lesser extent the same pattern emerges in dirigiste-curious economies like Canada who limit foreign entrants into markets like telecom, resulting in a general tax on the entire population who suffer expensive and inadequate data plans in order to protect local oligopolies.

That's something I never understood either. Telecom is a commodity. I also think that's what hurt Blackberry back when it was still relevant: They were developing these phones in an environment where the carrier had all powers and where data was so limited.

I remember them being incredibly skeptical at the iPhone because Apple was expecting data to become cheap and plentiful.

[foolinaround]

> the benefits to consumers and business users of these products is many times higher than the money made by the industries producing them

the money made by the industries producing them is tangible, and there are lobbies protecting it, whereas the benefits to customers are intangible.

If you think about it, it is not the insane thing, in fact, given the system, it is the sane rational thing that benefits these actors.

[Aperocky]

Less developed for a reason.

There are a significant amount of people who are basically milking the rest of the society with their power and doing so without any consequence. This is what entrenched corruption looks like.

There are no need to specifically break any laws that others are not breaking already, there just have to be so many that compliance is impossible and enforcement selective. When the gray area expand so significantly, you get the power broker rich as they enjoy competitive advantage.

[bugfix]

The high fees are used to discourage imports. Here in my country they say these taxes are used to "protect the local businesses/manufacturing", but it makes absolutely no sense, because most (tech) products aren't even made here. They usually charge you 60-70% of the retail price.

[bitcurious]

Emergent, not planned. But everyone gets a cut, so nothing changes.