The cyclists train on locally bought, poor-quality mountain bikes.
Previously, up to 90% of the more than 400,000 people retiring each year bought poor-value annuities to generate an income for life, but the number likely to take this option is expected to slump.
Many deals in other sectors look ropy, a consequence of buying poor assets.
Most big companies publish accounts drawn up on the western model.So now rich firms are buying poor ones, and pepping up the management.
But we can't all have a Louis Vuitton custom iPod trunk (although if you want to buy poor, sad Kanye West - the self-styled 'Louis Vuitton don' - a present to cheer him up, look no further).
As one distributor said: 'They buy the wrong products, they buy poor quality ones, they use them incorrectly.
We buy poor children milk and food and we buy them their hockey sticks and balls".
This is well understood by a new breed of "venture philanthropists"—people like Eli Broad, who is funding training for public school staff, and Ted Forstmann, who is buying poor kids a ticket out of failed public schools.
Wealthy can buy; poor have to sell".
In many instances, votes were outright bought; it was not uncommon for the machine to "buy poor folks' loyalty and trust with a fiver".
And the local-food movement's aims, of course, contradict those of the Fairtrade movement, by discouraging rich-country consumers from buying poor-country produce.
