Here in S.Africa, the hundreds of thousands of Matata-taxis [16 seater kombis]
which each serve a fixed route have no written destinations signs displayed.

If you're waiting at a location, where taxis going to 3 different destinations
pass by, you are expected to know what hand-signs to show for your destination,
so that the drivers know whether to stop or not.  Of course if you are not a local,
you'll not know the hand-sign for your destination, so you hope that someone
else, who can advise you, will be waiting at your pick-up location.

This stupidity is an extension of the negro-jazz mentality, where the player doesn't
read the score, but communicates via 'feeling'. It's good for jazz, but not for
organising an economy.
------------

In contrast it is know that "every thing is written in Germany", so that people
can be making rational decisions based on written information, instead of jabbering
like monkeys or school children.

I again came across strange commercial reasoning from the far east, which we can't
excuse as being from pre-literate societies. Trying to buy an iRiver-notes device
which is a bit more expensive/advance than the more well known kindle, I
could not find out if it could transfer plain-text from a PC and edit and return
the edited text to the PC.  

The devices 'hand book' consists of ONE multi-folded page in about 10 languages.

I'm reminded how some decades ago, SHARP launched a hand-held LCD-display BASIC
computer, which was very advanced technology for the time.  But it had a crappy
Japanese-English handbook, which didn't do justice to the physical device.

Soon the device was marketed by the US company 'Radio Shack' with a proper handbook
and no mention of the name "SHARP", and sold in quantity.

Also I once bought 2 camping florescent lights from Hong Kong before the Chinese
export boom, and when they both failed I examined the component assembly, and
was astounded that the assembly was as if done by drunkards. 

The cost of the physical components had been totally wasted by the unwillingness to
add a small extra cost to do proper assembly.

Similarly with the SHARP and iRiver, I can't understand the commercial logic
of not adding the final requirements to make the product a success.

What do the iRiver [Korean originated] makers think, with no hand-book, so that
even the sales-man doesn't know the subtle details of the product? And no web
published handbook either. Unless the clowns expect one kiddie to buy a device and 
experiment and spread the knowledge by word of mouth, like the African commuters do?

Can anybody explain this apparently irrational behaviour of these very literate 
societies ?

TIA.