The first impression, when visiting countries like this one, obviously always is, that there are soooo many things either missing or done so badly, one could almost do anything.
The truth is, it ain't that simple.
The DR certainly is one of the most difficult working environment around. As mentioned, it's not a true free market environment, locals have several ways to deal with competition which may seem unfair, to put it mildly and because some many things are lacking, unless one finds a business which need no materials, no tools and requires no outsourcing to reliable, capable third party firms... things can quickly seem "cloggy".
I've written several times about this little experience here, but it serves well as a typical example.
A couple of months back, I volunteered to fix a broken wooden living room chair, which to begin with had been made by a local "carpenter" apparently implicitly seeking to defy every and all rules of carpentry and logic.
I glued the broken parts back together, but fearing that because of bad initial workmanship, I decided I need to run two 10" long 1/2" dia. wooden dowels into the planks across the fibers, so to reinforce them.
First bump... NO dowels! None! Not even short ones one would expect being used in carpentry and furniture making every day!
So, I log onto e-bay and bootleg a dozen 3 foot long dowel rods onto the island from some Northern State in the US.
Then, no auger drills.... actually No WOOD drill at all.
Back to e-bay, back to the smuggling biz...
All that, just to try to fix a couple of dern locally "made" living room chairs.
Cost? Do you really want to know?
I have never been so inactive as I am since I moved here... resigned to consulting, giving advise and supervising and controlling trolls working with either no tool, the wrong tools, broken tools or stolen tools and having for most part NO clue.
I talk to engineers which come to me with things like trying to convince me that water runs slower up hill than downhill (hint, water does NOT run uphill... but you go tell them). Architects insisting on roof slopes facing inward to the middle of the home and civil engineers which will NEVER accept the world wide demonstrated advantages of humidity barriers bellow a home's ground floor... never like in NEVER.
You think it looks easy? You try!
And yet yes, there is a lot of money being made and to be made here.
... J-D.