This is not just about information asymmetry. If you want to do something well, you have to find someone that truly cares about doing it well. Price is almost irrelevant, in fact, it may actually be a negative signal, because the best performers are often not motivated by money alone.<p>> So, in Korea, there's some service like Amazon where you can order an item and, an hour or two later, you'll hear a knock at your door. When you get to the door, you'll see an unlabeled box or bag and the item is in the unlabeled container. If you want to return the item, you "tell" the app that you want to return the item, put it back into its container, put it in front of your door, and they'll take it back. After seeing this shipping setup, which is wildly different from what you see in the U.S., he asked someone "how is it possible that they don't lose track of which box is which?". The answer he got was, "why would they lose track of which box is which?". His other stories have a similar feel, where he describes something quite alien, asks a local how things can work in this alien way, who can't imagine things working any other way and response with "why would X not work?"<p>This gem near the end of the article ties in with Marc Andreeson’s quote at the beginning of the article. The fact that he thinks hiring can’t be more efficient sounds to me like typical American head-in-sand insular thinking. He’s stuck in a cognitive frame, and in a particular system where people can’t imagine doing things differently, because they simply haven’t seen anything else. Try living somewhere else for an extended period of time, and you’ll realize that a lot of things you didn’t even think about could actually be better. The author gives the example of deliveries in Korea. I say the same about many things in Eastern Europe, including deliveries, payment systems, and just everyday services like dentists - a LOT of things work better than they do in the West, not because of monetary incentives, but because things are simply done differently here, and some things are done better.