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M-Pesa
Do you know what M-Pesa is? Pesa
is the Swahili for "money" (this blog
is nothing if not educational) and
the "M" stands for mobile. It is a
money transfer system in Kenya
and Tanzania for moving money
around using cheap (not smart)
phones. It is ahead of anything else
until, maybe, smartphones came
along. Almost nobody in those
countries has a bank account, and
so everything operated in cash. Of
course, if your son were in the city
and wanted to get money to you,
either he or a trusted friend had to
hop on a bus and give it to you in
person. Of course, lots of robberies
took place. M-Pesa now carries
nearly half the country's GDP. When
I was in Tanzania doing Kilimanjaro
a couple of years ago, there were
shacks at the side of the road with
M-Pesa signs that were effectively
mini-banks.
Mobile payments have been slow to
take off in the US because we already
have a good credit card system. It
even took a decade after most of
the world to put a chip in the credit
cards since there were pretty good
fraud detection systems by then.
Now Apple Pay works really well,
taking only a split second, whereas
those credit cards with chips seem
to take forever to do a transaction,
confusingly saying "thank you" and
then going back to telling you not to
remove your card.
Airports and Bridges
The US is famous for bad airports,
especially as compared to Asia.
Changi in Singapore is regularly
rated best airport in the world. To be
honest, I think we do OK here, and
SFO is fine, and with the best food
of any airport anywhere. Famously,
Paris's main airport CDG has really
bad food, especially for a country that
prides itself on its food. (And here's
another bit of education for you:
if you are in Paris, it is considered
hick behavior to call it "Charles de
Gaulle" airport - it is always Roissy,
the village beside where the airport
was built.) But again, part of the
problem is those bad airports (like
JFK) were built really early and it is
hard to rebuild an airport and keep
it running. The best solution would
be to build a new one and cutover
like Munich or Denver did.
However, there does seem to
be another problem with public
infrastructure projects in the US,
which is that they are not regarded
as a way to get infrastructure built,
but as a way to deliver patronage
and employ people. If we were
serious about building the Second
Avenue subway line in Manhattan,
we'd just get a Chinese company
to do it for 25 cents on the dollar
or less. Instead, we have a fiasco.
The line was planned in 1919 and
construction started in 1972. The
first small phase opened finally at
the start of this year. The "big dig"
in Boston, the new Bay Bridge,
every light rail line ever, all run
multiple times over budget in both
dollars and time because we are
not serious about getting them
built, we are more concerned to use
American steel, and union labor and
so on, and lots of it.
If you lived in the Bay Area about
ten years ago, you might remember
when a tanker truck caught fire
under a section of 580 and took
down a bridge. For once, people
subway station in Beijing
Mobile Payment
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