

Doing business in Argentina: A constant feeling of crisis - nitfol
http://www.inc.com/magazine/201106/doing-business-in-argentina_Printer_Friendly.html

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OstiaAntica
I was in Buenos Aires a couple years ago and was talking to some U.S. oilmen.
They said Argentina was unbelievably corrupt and that it was easier to do
business in Egypt.

BA is beautiful but tragic, there are massive shanties surrounding a city
designed after Paris and built 100 years ago, when Argentina was among the
wealthiest nations in the world.

If you don't think politics matters, study Argentina and the way their elites,
inspired by the statist Peronista ideology, have ransacked the nation and its
people.

~~~
mrleinad
I'd also recommend you to read Eduardo Galeano, his book "Open veins of Latin
America", although written in the 70's, is an eye opener to understand why the
region is in its current state. I agree that corruption here in Argentina is
everywhere. But not all the money has gone to the elites. Most of that money
that was stolen to people went to North American companies.

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zfran
As stated by others in the article's comments, leaving the entrepreneurial
stuff aside, this is really close to being bullshit.

It quotes Alberto Cavallo, who's father was the minister of economy that led
Argentina to the 2000's crisis...

I live in BA and the situation isn't as bad as the article describes it.

Full article with comments: [http://www.inc.com/magazine/201106/doing-
business-in-argenti...](http://www.inc.com/magazine/201106/doing-business-in-
argentina.html)

~~~
bx_lr
Could you describe your experiences a bit more? Buenos Aires seems to be one
of the more interesting places in South America. Based on the typical news
about South America (or Mexico), just landing on that continent will get you
kidnapped, abused by the police, robbed, mugged, cheated, etc.

~~~
redthrowaway
>Based on the typical news about South America (or Mexico), just landing on
that continent will get you kidnapped, abused by the police, robbed, mugged,
cheated, etc.

That's like saying, "Based on the typical news about Miami (or Anchorage), you
will get eaten by polar bears and die of hypothermia".

Mexico is _not_ South America, and it's _nowhere close_ to Argentina. The
distance between Juarez and BA is about the same as the distance between
London and Seoul. Seriously. Worlds apart.

You can't generalize South America. It's bloody ginormous, and has far more
cultural diversity than North America. It's far from homogenous. There are
some places in South America that are dangerous. Most aren't. Similarly, you
don't judge San Francisco by Detroit.

I've travelled through Argentina, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador. Buenos Aires is
basically Paris or Madrid, but a little run down and depressing (much better
night life, though). Bolivia is mostly alpine desert in the south and jungle
in the north, and almost all poor. Peru ranges from modern metropolis (Lima)
to shacks on a beach (Mancora), to mountains, jungles, etc. Ecuador is the
only place I ever felt unsafe, and only in parts of Quito and Guayaquil. The
worst places for crime and personal safety were apparently Venezuela and parts
of Brazil.

Anyways, the point is you're trying to shoehorn an entire continent with
dozens of countries and hundreds of cultures into a single mental schema, and
that's just a dumb thing to do. It would be like saying "Asian culture" and
thinking you could fit China, North Korea, Japan, Thailand, and India in one
label.

~~~
bx_lr
Firstly, I didn't suggest Mexico was part of South America. Secondly, I'm not
trying to shoehorn South America under a single mental schema. I'm actually
trying to do the opposite, i.e. figure out what South America really is.
Doesn't seem I can do that based on news, articles, whatever, and rather have
to tour the place myself to come to a conclusion.

~~~
redthrowaway
You can talk to people who've been there, but each country is pretty different
and there are major differences within countries, as well.

As far as the violence goes, it tends to be cyclical. Certainly in parts of
Columbia FARC activity is still a major issue, and Venezuela is bad for petty
crime and assaults. You get the occasional Shining Path incident in Peru, but
it's very low-level. Bolivia has regular strikes that bring the riot police
out in La Paz, but the rest of the country seemed perfectly safe. Never had a
problem in Argentina, or heard of anyone having problems in Chile, Uruguay, or
Paraguay. Brazil is mostly kosher, but I heard of a few people getting robbed,
or more likely picking up a girl from a club and getting mugged after.

But seriously, do go down if you get a chance. I had a blast there.

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ferostar
Living in Buenos Aires, i have to said that the article is a big rant. Sure,
let's make a complete insight about the economy of a complicated, third world
country by well, touring a little bit and talking with a couple of
entrepreneurs.

This country has lots and lots of issues, corruption, you name it, but is not
that bad at all. In fact, it has improved a little bit since 2001. And what is
even more important to this place, it has a little but important entrepreneur
community (Pallermo Valley, for instance).

Perhaps, constant adversity helps people to sail agains the wind or any other
cliché you might love. And don't start talking about politics without knowing,
we were never one of the richest nations of the world, just a couple of very
rich people that thought we did and made a couple of history books about it
;).

~~~
kkowalczyk
Nothing you said contradicts the article.

I can understand the "it's not that bad at all" sentiment from a personal
perspective but it doesn't mean that things aren't bad on a rational,
comparative basis.

I grew up in Poland, a country at the time under communist regime. It would
take a book to describe all the ways the economy and life was fucked up
compared to west countries.

It really was a terrible country to live in. But at the same time 40 million
people did and on some level our lives weren't all that different from people
in richer, cleaner countries where people could buy toilet paper every day.
People have amazing ability to adapt to very adverse environments.

From reading the article I get the impression that Argentina is truly,
factually fucked up country, compared to other countries, just like Poland was
under communism.

While your reassurance that "it's not bad at all" is a testament to adaptive
power of humans, unless you challenge the facts described in the article
you're not very convincing.

As to your claim challenging the notion that Argentina was a rich nation,
well, the rich people you speak of were very successful at rewriting the
history. According to Wikipedia:

"Argentina increased in prosperity and prominence between 1880 and 1929 and
emerged as one of the ten richest countries in the world, benefiting from an
agricultural export-led economy as well as British and French investment.
Driven by immigration and decreasing mortality the Argentine population grew
fivefold and the economy 15-fold."

~~~
mrleinad
_"Argentina increased in prosperity and prominence between 1880 and 1929 and
emerged as one of the ten richest countries in the world, benefiting from an
agricultural export-led economy as well as British and French investment.
Driven by immigration and decreasing mortality the Argentine population grew
fivefold and the economy 15-fold."_

Sure, if you consider the top upper class as the whole country. The people
never saw that kind of wealth and prosperity in those days. Field workers
lived in the most absolute poverty while the owners of those fields lived in
luxury and traveling abroad for vacations. North of Argentina still remains
one of the poorest regions in Latin America, as it was those days. Sure, we
were exporting goods everywhere. Not much was being invested on improving the
well being of workers everywhere. At least, not until Peron grew to power.

~~~
justincormack
Wealth was more unequally distributed back then in all the rich countries, at
least compared to say the 1970s which were the recent equality peak. The US
had Getty and Rockerfeller and JP Morgan and also mass poverty, look at the
Great Depression. Was Argentina that different back then?

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kragen
There was a really good comment thread on this article when it was posted here
18 days ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2603104>

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wisty
The last part is interesting - you can't make a buck there (due to the taxes),
but you can build a back-office.

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william42
This has been posted before.

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pandres
We are doing pretty well right now, actually.

~~~
imasr
"Right now" always seems to be our problem. I just tried to rent a flat and
they were trying to enforce 10% price rices every 6 months, even though it's
illegal. That's just one example of the "right now". Because I can make a
buck, I will, don't matter what; then we blame on the politicians. There's so
much we have yet to learn.

~~~
ferostar
Great insight on human nature, or is it on argentinian human nature?
Complains, complains, complains.

