Economics: The Value of "Price Gouging"

[Martin Hash]

WTH

Dudes, Zaire is what DRC used to be called. There’s Congo and DRC. Congo is anarchy; still like Tarzan days. DRC is a corrupt piece of shit.

[Speaker to Animals]

I have met some priests from Congo. They say most of us would never be able to imagine life there. We'd have to experience it to understand.

DRC is a shithole, but I think I can understand life there, as brutal as it may be. I am not sure I can imagine living in a remote village in the Congo, though.

[DBTrek]

Google needs to travel more, because they don't know the difference either.

[Speaker to Animals]

Congo has no real government. It all shows up on the map as one thing, but like the Pakistani frontier, the map does not tell the truth.

There is nothing in the deep jungle. Just remote villages along the rivers. No power. No electronic communications.

[heydaralon]

I have met some priests from Congo. They say most of us would never be able to imagine life there. We'd have to experience it to understand.

DRC is a shithole, but I think I can understand life there, as brutal as it may be. I am not sure I can imagine living in a remote village in the Congo, though.

There is a book called in the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz that discusses the DRC right before the Civil War. Everything was for sale there. The fucking air force used to undercut the airlines there and use military planes to give people rides there for the right price. Congolese diplomats fucking sold the DRC embassy building in Japan to some real estate company. Mobutu, the dictator there until 97 (I think) straight up said to their congress: "Only steal a little bit at a time. Don't steal so much at once." All of the infrastructure set up by the Belgians, including the mining equipment, which was the lifeblood industry of the country, was sold off by competing govt and army officials. They fucking looted that country until it was a bloody carcass and picked the bones clean. Picture a Democrat-run city in the US then multiply it by 10,000. Then add on a few million for good measure. Glad I don't live in that shithole.

[DBTrek]

I searched harder after posting and I see what happened here.
There's a Republic of Congo, and a Democratic Republic of Congo, and they're neighbors.

I guess one Congo wasn't good enough. It was so tasty they had to break it in two.

[heydaralon]

Google needs to travel more, because they don't know the difference either.

There is the Republic of Congo, which is the smaller country to the West. The DRC, which is the huge one that you occasionally see in the news for mass murder, corruption, and civil war, is the huge fucker that Leopold grabbed in the 19th century for rubber and whatnot. It is the one associated with Henry Morton Stanley and David Livingstone. That is the one in Heart of Darkness.

[heydaralon]

In the 90's, a bunch of Rwandan Hutus (the Génocidaires) from the 1994 slaughter, were allowed to cross into the Congo by the UN and specifically France. They went to work targeting the Banyamulenge (the Congolese Tutsis) and this ended up causing a Civil War that put Mobutu who was about to die from pancreatic cancer out of power. The country is still dealing with the fallout from this today...

[Speaker to Animals]

Even the DRC is not really one thing. The map is not accurate. Most of that shit in central part is remote as fuck. Then the place goes back and forth with various militias and rebel groups controlling different areas.

[heydaralon]

Even the DRC is not really one thing. The map is not accurate. Most of that shit in central part is remote as fuck. Then the place goes back and forth with various militias and rebel groups controlling different areas.

They just had a (graded on a curve) successful election. Nothing will change, but they are beginning to act like a country, despite the fact that for all intents and purposes, they aren't one.