"When do you think Zimbabwe will collapse?" asked Tama Muru, from the BBC's HARDtalk.
"It has already collapsed," said Whythawk.
Zimbabwe, for all the posturing by Robert Mugabe - their increasingly detached tyrant - is a fairly open economy. Their people are used to processed goods imported from outside the country and Zimbabwe has given up the pretence of producing very much for itself. North Korea it isn't.
Yet 80% of the working-age population, 4.5 million people, are unemployed. Inflation is estimated to be 11 000% Other countries in history that hit these types of levels collapsed in anarchy and civil war; when they didn't involve their neighbours as well.
A Whythawk Ratings analyst recently spent time in Zimbabwe and can offer insight on what prevents this instability.
Remittances and Inflation There are 3.5 million Zimbabweans living in exile in South Africa and the UK. They all send money home as often as they can. Modern telecommunication systems allow them to send foreign currency via email, SMS or even money-wire services.
Gideon Gono, the Zimbabwe finance minister, can raise interest rates to the moon but he will be unable to reign in spending money donated by the outside world. The foreign currency flood is not just assisting people to survive, it is also acting to undermine the central state.
The currency in circulation must represent the underlying value of the economy. Foreign currency entering the market has a solid, negotiable value. Each wave of remittances acts to further deflate the value of the Zimbabwe Dollar.
During the Second World War both the Allies and the Axis powers would distribute fake banknotes to undermine their enemy's currencies. The US did the same prior to the war in Iraq.
The Zimbabwean people have no weapons to fight the state so they're undermining its power.
The recent crackdown by Zimbabwean troops to enforce their government's decision to halve all prices (in effect, to revalue the Zimbabwe Dollar) is part of that war. Sadly for Mugabe, those goods will run out the door and be sold at their real value on the informal market further undermining his state.
Failed states are less likely to experience catastrophic collapse if they have a large diaspora sending lots of money home.
Informal markets as bellwethers Hernando de Soto, writing in "The Mystery of Capital" about Peru, “All we had to do was make sure the costs of operating legally were below those of surviving in the extralegal sector ... and then watch hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs happily quit the underground.”
The same is true of every single country in the world. When citizens feel that the cost of being subject to the authority of the state is too great then they opt out. They can do so by going into tax exile, or hunkering down behind a mountain of weapons in isolated huts hidden in the wilderness.
As more and more people leave the formal market, recognised by the state, the informal, or parallel, market starts to grow.
There are base levels of unemployment and informality in even the most popular and sophisticated states. It acts as a vent for various pressures that may build up to unhealthy levels. Ideological states that require of their people to believe in a cause have no room for dissent. From Iran to North Korea, the frustration that would normally be used to exit the state has no release point and is channelled by their leaders into protests and animosity levelled at their enemies.
In relatively open economies the scale of the informal market provides a good approximation to the real level of support for the state. At 20 – 30% of the economy a government would do well to look to its policies. At 40 – 60% the state is in danger of losing all authority.
At 80%, Zimbabwe's level, the state is functioning in name only. While it may have the largest army and be able to terrorise the masses, it has lost.
Bringing the informal market in from the cold When de Soto wrote that all Peru had to do was lower the barriers to entering the formal market and people would come, he was simplifying the difficulty.
For starters the informal market is not a nation-state. There is no central structure. Rather it is a regression to the past of city-states. Each community makes up its own market and enforces its own rules. A central state must engage with each on its own rules.
The central state may be incompatible with the needs of the people. Simply reducing compliancy costs or cutting red tape may have no impact at all. Government policy may be artificially constraining growth so that the formal economy is not creating jobs as rapidly as the informal economy.
When an uncoordinated informal economy is able to outgrow a coordinated central state with access to credit then there are some serious structural problems in that economy.
Broadly, though, de Soto is correct. If the formal economy can offer greater advantages than the informal economy then people will naturally migrate to the safety and consistency offered by it.
Keeping the bellwether No government should ever get rid of its informal economy, even if it were possible. It is a wonderful tool for understanding the true desires of the people living within that state.
Politicians may lose the confidence of their people but, until they leave the formal state for fragmented informal markets, they are still happy with their nation.
Governments keeping a casual eye on their informal markets can learn more about the performance of their rule than any number of market surveys.
To learn more about this author, visit Gavin Chait's Website.
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