Since we are at it, I suggest reading John Perkins's "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man":

https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins...

Also, any book on past and current colonialism (say, current actions of the US military in Africa).

How do you like your illegitimately rich country?

Can you give some examples of corruption that actually hindered you? I consider corruption to be a minor-to-non-existent problem for areas like IT/tech here.

The main problem to me is the lack of entrepreneurship and the fact that there are lots of "stealth-startups" in Romania that will probably not even be incorporated in Romania ever, so they'll never show up on the radar as "Romanian startups", they will simply "pack up the whole team and move" abroad after the first big foreign investor spots them and invests/acquires with a "relocation requirement".

There are also entrepreneurs that run their companies disguised as outsourcing-shops while the real startup is actually the outsourcing-shop's client registered somewhere like USA-Delaware/Hongkong/whatever because it leads to better perspective from the customers. Of course, this is also a short term arrangement before the team of the company is swallowed by a bigger fish.

There is a lot going on, but int this part of the world very few of what's happening actually shows up on the radar as what it is.

Also... coming back to corruption, imho the greatest problem is lack of entrepreneurial spirit because the society and education actively discourages smart people from becoming entrepreneurs... so they end up engineers, doctors etc. ...or emigrate. Corruption really makes little difference because real innovation doesn't happen while working on projects for the state anyway. I think that a certain level of corruption can even help economic growth if used selectively - ie a bribe that sabotages a bigger international corporation from getting a contract for a state-financed development project in favor of a local startup (where, for example, one of the investors happens to be a local senator or whatever... probably not the best example but to get the point across) can actually result in more money funneling back into the local economy and fueling its growth... Everything can be a double edged sword in the bigger economic game.

The American obsession with corruption in other countries is imho more out of fear of being out-maneuvered by foreign local businessmen in the international economic game when it comes to uderhanded tactics :) (see http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/... for context)

This is a great project, the only thing that concerns me about it is the very large loan from the IMF denominated in USD they took out in order to build it. Could well have been the work of EHMs

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/...