美国国家公共电台 NPR 'Uber For Poop' Aims To Break Up Senegal's Toilet Cartel

 

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

The laws of economics works smoothly¹ except when it comes to cartels. Cartels happen when businesses get together and fix prices. Think OPEC for oil or De Beers for diamonds. Cartels hurt competition, drive up prices. And that's generally bad for consumers. Robert Smith from our Planet Money team has a story of a cartel in Dakar, Senegal - a dirty and stinky one - and how a team of economists³ fought back.

ROBERT SMITH, BYLINE⁴: It is a cartel that deals exclusively with raw sewage. And the story starts in a typical bathroom. Like in lots of places in the world, it is pretty common in Senegal for toilets to flush into a septic tank that needs to be emptied every so often. And there are two ways to do it. Option one, the cheap option, is this guy.

JIBI: My name is Jibi. I live in Senegal. I am a baay pelle.

SMITH: Baay pelle means Father Shovel⁵ because that's how he does the dirty work.

You're the father of this shovel? This is your son.

JIBI: (Laughter).

SMITH: Father Shovel gets into the septic tank with his shovel and bucket, and then he empties the bucket into a hole in the street. Obviously this is not healthy. It makes people sick. There is a better option, though. A giant vacuum truck can come to your house and take the sewage to a treatment center. They're called toilet suckers, driven by Father doesn't-really-need-a-shovel.

CHEIK GUEYE: Hello. My name is Cheik Gueye.

SMITH: And here's the cartel part. If you want to hire a toilet sucker, you have to come to a parking lot like this one, where all the drivers are just hanging out next to their idle trucks. And when one of them gives you a price, you cannot walk around and try and get a better deal from the others. Even though they're separate businesses, they have decided⁶ as an association not to compete and to keep prices high - twice as high as paying Father Shovel to dig out the tank. And so people here will often use the sewage-in-the-street option just to save money. The government of Senegal decided to call in an economist².

MOLLY LIPSCOMB: My name is Molly Lipscomb. I'm an associate professor at the University of Virginia.

SMITH: Lipscomb brought in a team of researchers in the group Innovations for Poverty Action. She knew that they had to find a way to get the truckers to start trying to beat each other on price. And she thought, well, they do all have cellphones, and maybe she could set up a system where people could order one of the trucks by text message.

Do you hate it when people call this Uber for poop?

LIPSCOMB: (Laughter) No. No. You know, Uber is a very well-functioning market, and I think they've done great things for transportation. So if this is Uber for poop, that's great.

SMITH: The team set up a call center to run a sort of auction⁷. If you lived in Dakar and your septic tank was overflowing⁸, you could call this phone number, and the job offer would be texted to a dozen different drivers, seeing who would offer to do it for the least amount of money. One of the researchers, Josh Deutschmann, said at first the truckers would send back these outrageous⁹ prices.

JOSH DEUTSCHMANN: But then they would start seeing, OK, this is the price that wins in this neighborhood; maybe I can undercut that a little bit next time. And just watching sort of the real-time process of competition unfolding over the space of weeks and months was really, really exciting.

SMITH: The truckers were making less money on each job, but they were getting more work. More people in Dakar were choosing a cleaner option. One of the truckers I talked with, Cheik Gueye, says he wasn't happy about losing the high prices, but still, he sent in his bids.

GUEYE: (Through interpreter) Even though we used to be united - but now it's a competition. And you need to work hard in order to get something in your business.

SMITH: The experimental call center is now being taken over by a private company. They want to expand it to all of Dakar because, as the saying goes, competition happens. Robert Smith, NPR News.

1 smoothly   

adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地

参考例句：

• The workmen are very cooperative,so the work goes on smoothly.工人们十分合作，所以工作进展顺利。
• Just change one or two words and the sentence will read smoothly.这句话只要动一两个字就顺了。

2 economist   

n.经济学家，经济专家，节俭的人

参考例句：

• He cast a professional economist's eyes on the problem.他以经济学行家的眼光审视这个问题。
• He's an economist who thinks he knows all the answers.他是个经济学家，自以为什么都懂。

3 economists   

n.经济学家，经济专家( economist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The sudden rise in share prices has confounded economists. 股价的突然上涨使经济学家大惑不解。
• Foreign bankers and economists cautiously welcomed the minister's initiative. 外国银行家和经济学家对部长的倡议反应谨慎。 来自《简明英汉词典》

4 byline   

n.署名；v.署名

参考例句：

• His byline was absent as well.他的署名也不见了。
• We wish to thank the author of this article which carries no byline.我们要感谢这篇文章的那位没有署名的作者。

5 shovel   

n.铁锨，铲子，一铲之量；v.铲，铲出

参考例句：

• He was working with a pick and shovel.他在用镐和铲干活。
• He seized a shovel and set to.他拿起一把铲就干上了。

6 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

7 auction   

n.拍卖；拍卖会；vt.拍卖

参考例句：

• They've put the contents of their house up for auction.他们把房子里的东西全都拿去拍卖了。
• They bought a new minibus with the proceeds from the auction.他们用拍卖得来的钱买了一辆新面包车。

8 overflowing   

n. 溢出物,溢流 adj. 充沛的，充满的 动词overflow的现在分词形式

参考例句：

• The stands were overflowing with farm and sideline products. 集市上农副产品非常丰富。
• The milk is overflowing. 牛奶溢出来了。

9 outrageous   

adj.无理的，令人不能容忍的

参考例句：

• Her outrageous behaviour at the party offended everyone.她在聚会上的无礼行为触怒了每一个人。
• Charges for local telephone calls are particularly outrageous.本地电话资费贵得出奇。