Today I visited Tataouine.
Star Wars fans know it as the inspiration for Tatooine, the dust bowl planet that Luke Skywalker can’t wait to escape.
It’s earth based original is much the same.
Tatooine sits at the foot of the Saharan Atlas Mountains, separating Tunisia from the vast desert.
The French used to have a penal colony there. While the British were exiling all the way to Australia, the French considered Tataouine to be “the end of the world”.
And yet here I am sending emails from my phone from a cafe that’s hijacked the wifi from the neighbouring phone repair store.
What amazes me is the inertia that I can see in the markets here.
The literal market. A town square with guys selling spices, leather bags and Berber robes as worn by Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Thirty seconds on Etsy and I’ve found the same stuff at 10x the price, and I can tell by the number of reviews that it’s selling in bigger numbers than this square would do even in peak tourist season.
Basic ecom arbitrage, doesn’t even need a Shopify store. Not AI assisted Not paid for in crypto.
Whatever your skill set, there’s a vast tract of the world that still needs it, and some people still profiting from it.
Stolen WiFi and a discarded phone is all you need.
