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Tanzania is a country whose economy was basically wrecked for decades by a failed socialist master plan, and I figured my visit here would bring out my inner Milton Friedman — enthusiasm for the virtues of property rights, enforceable contracts, minimal bureaucracy and assorted other shibboleths from the quad of the University of Chicago. But in one area I’ve become area I’ve become a rabid enthusiast of government price controls: taxi meters. Of course, they don’t exist here, or, I presume, in much of the developing world. Every trip is the subject of a negotiation before departure, and I’m just getting clobbered. The amounts at stake aren’t much, but when it’s impossible to hide that you’re a tourist (and trust me, in my case, it’s impossible), and can you can barely communicate in Swahili, and it’s late at night and the city is dark, your leverage is zero.
Viva la taxi meter and the set rate per-mile! Meters and set rates would resotre some fairness to the process. So why don’t they exist? One reason is that without effective enforcement and licensing, cheating would be rampant. They’re also a capital expense. But my guess the real reason they don’t exist is their absence serves as a kind of informal tourism tax. Since presumably locals (who don’t much use them anyway) are better able to bargain, it’s always foreigners like me who pay above cost. Meters would destroy that flexibility to milk us for a little more. Personally, I’d be willing to pay above cost if I could receive in return a guaranteed rate-per-mile and be spared the process of negotiating. But that would presumably punish locals, and nobody much cares what I think.
Another interesting matter of public transportation policy innovation here: the hidden speed bump. Generally, of course, driving here is crazy, though without many cars on the road (unclear whether that helps or hurts). There are virtually no traffic lights and lane markers, and all but the main roads are dirt. On the main roads, where in the United States you would find speed bumps clearly marked with signs and paint, here they are just covered with the same black pavement as the rest of the road. And they are absolutely viscious - if you go over them at more than about 5 mph you will completely wreck your car. It’s disconcerting when taxis plow ahead at 50 mph and then break suddenly for no apparent reason to inch over these bumps. But at least they know where they are. Presumably some have learned the hard way.
In a way, if there’s a theory behind it, it’s not a bad one. If you’re not familiar with the area, you never know when you might hit a suspension-destroying bump, so you are incentivized to drive very slowly. If you know where they are, it signals you are familar with the area overall and serves as a kind of de facto, and not unreasonable, license to drive a bit faster. Brilliant, in a way.
Or maybe they just ran out of paint.
