Sand heists and property rights in the Caribbean (Summer School)

Imagine a nation where, for the residents, land is for the claiming. You walk down the street, pick out a nice looking plot of land, and just plop down a marker. No rent, no taxes, no deed – just free land. That’s the communal system of property rights that governed a small Caribbean island for over a century. This week on our Summer School World Tour we make port on the small economies of island nations, a great place to explore how different experiments play out. Every small change – the good and the bad – has big consequences. First, the fascinating test case on the island of Barbuda, where the people there have found a way to run things without the usual, formal land rights. Then, we consider the vulnerabilities of small nations as we dig into a mysterious sand heist in Jamaica. A stolen beach – yes, you read that right – and something called “sand forensics” reveal the importance of this seemingly infinite resource and the challenges of protecting public spaces when there’s money to be made. Along the way we found ourselves asking: Does property have to be private? What happens when it’s not? How can you protect scarce resources when they’re part of the vast, public spaces everyone shares? Featured Episodes: The Island No One Owns (2020) https://www.npr.org/2020/01/31/801645818/episode-969-the-island-no-one-ownsPeak Sand (2018) https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/07/13/628894815/episode-853-peak-sand Featured Terms: Tragedy of the commonsProperty rightsPath dependenceOwnership in common Support: NPR+ (sponsor-free listening & bonus episodes) https://n.pr/3HlREPzAnd please click “follow” in your podcast app so you don’t miss an episode. Read: Our book: Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life https://lnk.to/i3AukBdD (Audiobook here https://open.spotify.com/show/509P7k1QPcwgzOSCqVCDCZ) Our weekly longform Planet Money newsletter https://n.pr/3zrFvUBOur weekly Indicator link round-up newsletter https://www.npr.org/newsletter/indicatorFollow: Instagram https://n.pr/3FqLuwsTikTok https://n.pr/3sGZdrqYouTube https://lnk.to/iCVDaW3CFacebook https://n.pr/3h92GwS This episode of Planet Money Summer School is hosted by Robert Smith. It was produced by Sophia Paliza-Carre and edited by Planet Money Executive Producer Alex Goldmark. It was fact-checked by Leyla Doss and engineered by Annlie Huang. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

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• 0:49Speaker 02

  Welcome back, everyone, to Planet Money Summer School World Tour, if we can ever get this thing off the ground. The only international economics degree where the textbook is written in sand, beautiful white beach sand. Because this week, we are headed to Jamaica and a couple of other islands nearby. We have been saving this episode because we want our semester abroad to at least sound like we're working hard. Now, at this point in the series, we can relax, lie in the sun, and let the economics wash over us. Because, and I am contractually obligated to say this, you can learn a lot about how economies function by looking at the tiniest nations. Small changes there can have huge effects, both good and bad.

• 1:33Speaker 02

  And we can take those lessons and a few shells back with us to the mainland. Today's lessons will feature two fascinating stories from the islands, a case study about a group of people who challenged the very foundation of economics, property rights, and a mystery caper about the foundation of beaches: sand.

• 2:00Speaker 02

  Our tour guide and professor today is waiting for us in Kingston, Jamaica. His name is Damian King, and he is the executive director of the, I actually don't know. Do you say Caribbean or Caribbean?

• 2:12Speaker 04

  So in the Caribbean, we say Caribbean. Outside of the Caribbean, people say Caribbean.

• 2:18Speaker 02

  All right, we're going to do this like they do in the islands. Damian is the executive director of the Caribbean Policy Research Institute, a think tank in Jamaica.

• 2:26Speaker 04

  That's correct.

• 2:27Speaker 02

  Nailed it. All right. So Jamaica has 3 million people. And I know the other island nations around you have far fewer people. And economists often talk about the challenges of being a small, open economy. That is a place where you have to import a huge share of what you use. How does that affect life in the islands?

• 2:48Speaker 04

  When I talk to my economist colleagues around the region, we talk about vulnerability. You know, hurricanes come along, earthquakes come along, and economic shocks come along. Oil price fluctuations affect us much more than it affects the United States. Global interest rate changes affect us greatly because we are all highly indebted economies. So this idea that your economic fortunes depend upon forces outside of your control is an ever-present consideration because it affects the long-term decisions that you make.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  So if I have a plot of land in Jamaica, I might be afraid to do something ambitious, like build a factory or an office building. I might just build, you know, a hotel.

• 3:31Speaker 04

  Well, even worse than that, you may build a hotel, but are you going to build the cute boutique hotel that has an over-the-water bar for which you can charge a much higher room rate? Because the first hurricane that comes along is going to wipe out the overwater bar. Whereas if you build a concrete behemoth, then it is more resilient to the storms. So the idea really is that it affects all of your investment decisions.

• 4:04Speaker 02

  So you have these small nations, very similar economies based on tourism. They share similar threats. So why not band together? Will there ever be a United States of the Caribbean?

• 4:17Speaker 04

  Well, the answer is no. But, you know, it was tried. In the late 1950s, when former British colonies were becoming independent, the English-speaking islands in the Caribbean formed a federation, the West Indian Federation. It didn't last two years before Ireland started pulling out of it. And this is unfortunate because it has created economies that are probably below the threshold of economic viability. So it was tried. It didn't work. And it is never going to happen again.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  What was the main problem?

• 4:53Speaker 04

  The main problem was political. Policy promises that are electorally successful are not necessarily the ones that are best for the actual economy.

• 5:03Speaker 02

  I hear you. I hear you, Damian. In our first case study today, we actually deal with this challenge of balancing economics and politics. Coming up after the break, we'll visit a magical place that breaks the primary rule of capitalism. Can you run an island without private property?

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• 6:20Speaker 02

  All right, class, stay together. Stay together. We do not want to miss the ferry to the island of Barbuda. Now, don't get confused. Do not get on the boat to Bermuda or Barbados. We are going to a tiny island with a couple thousand residents called Barbuda. Professor Damian King, what should the tour group keep in mind as we visit this island?

• 6:40Speaker 04

  The great thing about looking at small economies is it has a way of exposing what are really fundamental economic issues in a way for everybody to see because of the small scale. So this episode really is about the importance of property rights.

• 6:59Speaker 02

  Of course, property rights. But the question raised in this first case study is, does property have to be private? Can we come up with other ways of owning property collectively that better serve the people who live on it? The story originally aired in 2020 and was hosted by Scott Gurean and Sarah Gonzalez.

• 7:18Speaker 06

  There are two ways to get to Barbuda, on a seven-seater, unreliable plane, or a rocky ferry. Oh, my God!

• 7:27Speaker 07

  Really rocky. The ferry leaves once a day from Antigua. Antigua and Barbuda are two islands that make up one country, and the trip takes about two hours.

• 7:37Speaker 06

  Antigua is mountainous and touristy with about 98,000 residents. That's where the government is. Barbuda is flat. Like, flat, flat, like, it looks like... Flat like a penny. Wow. I've never seen an island that flat before.

• 7:52Speaker 07

  You could drive across Barbuda in about 30 minutes. It's rural, just about 1,000 homes, 1,500 residents.

• 7:58Speaker 06

  Goats!

• 8:00Speaker 07

  Probably more animals here than people.

• 8:02Speaker 06

  Goats and sheep. It's the kind of island where wild donkeys just walk into your home. The houses are all like pastel, turquoise with gray, mint green with peach, peach with orange, and where no one wants lobster anymore.

• 8:18Speaker 07

  We have lobster for breakfast. We have it for lunch. We have it for dinner. We eat lobster three times a day. So a piece of chicken in between is not bad.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  The land of sun and sea. Beautiful Barbuda.

• 8:34Speaker 06

  This is Natalia John.

• 8:36Speaker 07

  Natalia was born in Barbuda. Her mom and her grandma were too. She actually lives in her grandma's house. She has her own plot of land too, but she hasn't built anything on it yet.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  No, not as yet. But I have my sand and my stone on it. So nobody can go and take it.

• 8:52Speaker 06

  What does that mean, your sand and your stone?

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Just to show that something is going to happen on that land soon.

• 8:57Speaker 06

  You put some sand and some stone down just to show that something's going to happen on that land soon. So don't take it. Because in Barbuda, land isn't something you buy and sell. It's something you just have for free, no money.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  For free, no money. So that's how I grew up.

• 9:18Speaker 06

  Not even taxes?

• 9:19Speaker 01

  Not even taxes.

• 9:21Speaker 06

  Free, free. No paperwork, no lease, no rental agreement, no title. Just a whole 62-square-mile tropical island, shared, communally and informally.

• 9:33Speaker 07

  This is why we came to Barbuda.

• 9:36Speaker 06

  Barbudans say they don't just own the plot of land they put a fence on. They own and share the whole island collectively, all its resources, all the land. They use it in common. That's what it's called. Barbuda has the greatest land deal on earth.

• 9:51Speaker 07

  This is Albert Paddy Simon.

• 9:52Speaker 06

  They call me the Griot. The Griot? Oh, you don't know that? For those who are not familiar with the term...

• 9:58Speaker 05

  It simply means a verbal historian.

• 10:01Speaker 07

  We wanted to talk to Patty because he knows how Barbuda got this special land arrangement.

• 10:06Speaker 06

  Once upon a time, no one lived on Barbuda. Even when the Caribbean was all indigenous populations, they would just come to Barbuda to hunt and fish and then go back to the other islands they lived on. Barbuda was never inhabited.

• 10:20Speaker 07

  And then during the 1600s colonization times, this English guy, Christopher Codrington, comes along and says, I have a plan for that island.

• 10:28Speaker 05

  Oh, yeah. Codrington was a slave master.

• 10:30Speaker 07

  He leases the whole island from the King of England.

• 10:34Speaker 05

  And his payment was a fat sheep.

• 10:36Speaker 07

  One fat sheep.

• 10:38Speaker 05

  He had his slaves over there, and it was like a supply.

• 10:42Speaker 06

  The whole island was made up of 500 enslaved people at its peak and one white manager and his family, sometimes maybe no more than a handful of other white workers, too. So, schools and churches and all the other things that Antigua had, they didn't really get built in Barbuda because there were no white people.

• 11:03Speaker 07

  And for almost two centuries, a bunch of different Codringtons run Barbuda this way. Slavery is abolished in 1834, but that doesn't actually change anything for several more decades.

• 11:13Speaker 06

  Eventually, the Codringtons leave, their lease expires. And when they leave, there are no white people left, just formerly enslaved people. So, they stay. And as they're there, living, no one ever came up and said, wait, but you need a property title. Technically, the King of England had claimed the land and considered the people of Barbuda tenants, but there's no evidence that anyone, like, paid rent or anything like that. So, for more than 100 years, people on this island were pretty much left alone to use the land however they wanted. And they never took on a formal property rights system.

• 11:52Speaker 07

  And people didn't really fight over land either, like, who gets what, because there was plenty of it. 62 square miles, most of it undeveloped, and not that many people. In 1981, Antigua and Barbuda gained their independence and become one country with one prime minister. Around that time, they set up a Barbuda Council, kind of like a city council. When Barbudans want to build something, they check with them.

• 12:16Speaker 06

  And at some point, the council does start leasing land to developers. There are a few beachfront hotels and resorts on the island. Princess Diana used to vacation here. But Barbudans never sold the land. They just rented it out to whoever they wanted. And then in 2007, Barbudans get this special informal land system, formalized into law. Parliament passes the Barbuda Land Act, which says, yes, Barbudans, you now officially own the land in common. And it stays this way until 2017, when a hurricane hits. Hurricane Irma.

• 12:53Speaker 07

  It's September 6th, 2:00 AM, dark out.

• 12:56Speaker 01

  The wind started to pick up.

• 12:58Speaker 07

  This is Natalia again.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  So, the water started to come in, like, rushing in.

• 13:04Speaker 06

  Not so much rain, but water from the sea.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  Seawater, yes. It was a lot of water.

• 13:09Speaker 06

  And remember, Barbuda, flat as a penny.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  A lot of wind.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  And then you just hear the windows started to burst, the doors, pash, you know?

• 13:21Speaker 06

  All over the island, just shells of buildings were left. No doors, no roofs, open to the sky. Barbudans were totally exposed. And then they heard another hurricane was coming in three days. Hurricane Jose.

• 13:36Speaker 07

  And the prime minister, who, remember, lives in Antigua, he doesn't really come to Barbuda, Antigans rarely do. He does this kind of dramatic thing. He gets a private helicopter, takes himself and a cameraman to Barbuda, lands, jumps on the bed of a pickup truck, and makes a big announcement.

• 13:52Speaker 06

  The entire country has been decimated. I have never seen anything like this before. He orders a mandatory evacuation of the island.

• 14:01Speaker 07

  Barbudans were sent to shelters. Some went with family in Antigua. But actually, the second hurricane never hit. It ended up turning out to sea.

• 14:10Speaker 06

  So, everyone is like, OK, we're going to go back now. The prime minister calls all Barbudans to a meeting at some university in Antigua. Like, every Barbudan come to this meeting? A little weird. The prime minister, the guy who flew in on a helicopter, he's still the prime minister today, Gaston Brown, he tells Barbudans, you know that lot you've already been living on for free all these years? New plan. We're going to sell it to you for $1, Eastern Caribbean, about 37 cents US. And now, now you'll have a title. And titles open up all these opportunities. You can take a title to a bank.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  If the individual is going to take responsibility and would want to get a mortgage or short-term loan to rebuild or to repair his or her home, he would require ownership. So, it was a sensible thing to do to help them to unlock capital so that they could rebuild.

• 15:03Speaker 06

  Meaning that they could go to the bank with their title in their hands and say, use my property value as collateral to give me a loan. For $1. For $1.

• 15:12Speaker 07

  Which sounds a little strange to many Barbudans. They're like, hold on, your rebuilding plan is to sell us the land we already own for $1 each?

• 15:22Speaker 06

  And he's like, yeah. Because this whole communal land thing, I think it's just a big misunderstanding, a myth.

• 15:32Speaker 02

  In the 1700s, 1800s, Barbudans carrying that type of myth, one could empathize with them as individuals who were illiterate. Today, we're in the 21st century. It is unconscionable, inconceivable, that any educated person could believe in that myth today. It is a form of ignorance that has to be broken.

• 15:59Speaker 06

  You say that Barbudans have been thinking that they own the land and that it is a myth that they own the land. But there is a law that Parliament, the Antiguan and Barbudan government passed that says Barbudans own the land.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  It was a law that violated the constitution of the country and a law that had sought to give credence to a longstanding myth.

• 16:20Speaker 07

  Barbudans are challenging this whole thing in court. It'll likely go to their version of the Supreme Court. But for now, under the prime minister's new plan, communal land is out and property titles are in. He says now Barbudans can have actual legally binding titles to whatever plot of land they had been living on.

• 16:37Speaker 06

  But just that plot, though. The rest of the island, which is about 90% of the island, that'd be open to foreign investment and development. The prime minister wants Barbuda to become a big vacation spot. And at least in Barbuda, his plan is not super popular.

• 16:53Speaker 03

  Barbudans are not stupid.

• 16:55Speaker 07

  This is John Musington. He lives in Barbuda.

• 16:57Speaker 03

  And let me tell you why. As a Barbudan, I own 62 square miles.

• 17:03Speaker 07

  Remember, the prime minister is only offering Barbudans ownership over the little piece of Barbuda where their homes are built.

• 17:09Speaker 06

  And John, John does not live on some prime beachfront property. No one in Barbuda does. They're like, why would we build a house on a beach? Beaches are dangerous. They all live on one strip in the middle of the island. So, it's not like hotel developers are going to be super interested in their plots of land.

• 17:27Speaker 07

  So, John says it feels like the prime minister is stealing the island.

• 17:32Speaker 03

  62 square miles is not just the physical land. It is the resources which are sustained by that 62 square miles, the farming resources, the animal resources, the real estate value which increases over time, the food security, the clean air, right? If every single Barbudan accepted that offer, in one stroke of the pen, we would have converted our ownership of 62 square miles to one little itsy-bitsy piece of that.

• 18:06Speaker 07

  And Natalia, she says she actually would like to see Barbuda developed more, but she thinks people on the island should have a say over what projects get approved, the way it's always been.

• 18:16Speaker 01

  We just want it to be just like what it is.

• 18:20Speaker 06

  Just pink and peach and mint greenhouses and mango trees and pomegranate trees and watermelon and flowers.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:27Speaker 06

  OK. I can see why you would want that.

• 18:31Speaker 01

  Just us.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  That was Scott Gurean and Sarah Gonzalez from the year 2020. Here in 2026, there is still a legal fight over the land in Barbuda. One court ruled that the residents there have limited property rights, not communal ownership, and a new law allows for the development of resorts on the island. But the High Court is still considering an environmental challenge by Barbuda residents over a new private development. Let's get our professor back in here, Damian King. Hey, Damian.

• 19:09Speaker 04

  Hi, Robert.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  Why is the debate on Barbuda about land so important to the economics world? I can see how excited you are to talk about this.

• 19:19Speaker 04

  If you were to ask me, what is the single most important institution that underpins the tremendous growth in prosperity through the history of mankind? My answer would be the invention of the idea of property rights. Once property rights are invented, and I think this was probably 5,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, then for the first time, people have an incentive to save a part of their current product, to invest in the property. And then you get the miracle of compounding. You invest a little in the capacity of your productive resource. Then you produce more.

• 20:05Speaker 04

  Then you reinvest in it again. And that underlies the exponential growth of property.

• 20:10Speaker 02

  That all makes sense. But growth means wealth. And there's a question in this story of who gets the wealth eventually? Who benefits the most? The prime minister argues that if residents have title to the land, then banks will lend them money to improve the land. But some of these residents have no income. They have no assets. It's not guaranteed that banks will want to let them borrow money. So it seems like land ownership alone can't guarantee prosperity.

• 20:39Speaker 04

  No, it's not a sufficient condition. Other factors have to be in place other than private property rights. So you need to have a secure environment so that whatever you earn from your economic activity, you have a reason to believe it is safe, that it's not going to come and be stolen. In particular, you need to know that it's not going to be stolen by the government itself. So as much as property rights are an important institution, there are other institutions that need to be in place for an economy to invest and grow.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  I guess it's also a question about whether the people themselves can form those institutions. There have been successful rural land cooperatives around the world in places like Spain, Portugal, Mexico, where land is shared in common among the farmers. And Barbudians have figured out how to avoid the tragedy of the commons, where people abuse the collective land. Why isn't that system enough on Barbuda?

• 21:42Speaker 04

  There are institutions and practices which Barbuda engaged in, which eliminates one aspect of the tragedy of the commons, which is the main aspect, which is just overexploitation of a common resource. But it doesn't solve the problem of there being no incentive to invest in the common property, to put up a costly investment that will have a high return because it is common property. Then there is no way for the investor to keep the returns to themselves.

• 22:16Speaker 02

  Listening to this story reminded me of an interesting economic concept called path dependence, which is that sometimes the accidents of history can last, not just for generations, but for centuries. And in the case of this particular story, the way the island was ignored for so long, the history of slavery on the island and the people who brought them there, those historical facts have lived all the way up to this very moment. I feel like you see this accident of history issue pop up a lot in the Caribbean.

• 22:47Speaker 04

  You know, that's actually a great point. It's a great example of path dependence because there is no other island on which they have a history of individual private property that are considering changing to communal land ownership. So it does make the point that where you start out kind of determines down the road what your interests are and what you want to maintain.

• 23:11Speaker 02

  Damian, I've been reporting on economics a long time. So I do understand the private property arguments. I understand what the prime minister is saying. But I can't help but root for the Barbudians to pull this off. Like, it is a tiny island. What is the harm in letting Barbudians run it like they want to run it?

• 23:30Speaker 04

  The people don't know what's good for them.

• 23:34Speaker 02

  Sounds like you should run for political office in Antigua.

• 23:38Speaker 04

  I don't think the people don't know what's good for them is a good political slogan.

• 23:41Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 23:42Speaker 04

  Thank you. Thank you, but I won't.

• 23:46Speaker 02

  Up next, a mystery, a crime thriller, complete with a hard-nosed detective, a chase scene, and a Planet Money host seeking the truth that no one wants to hear. The game is afoot after the break.

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• 25:17Speaker 02

  Hello, class. It is Jamaica time, which does not mean we're doing a story on the economics of rum and reggae. That would be too obvious. This is an elite educational institution. We are going to talk about the allocation of scarce resources. And yes, okay, the resource is a beautiful white sand beach overlooking azure waters. And I am not out on the rum part. But first, our professor Damian King is here. What should our students keep in mind as they listen to this mysterious case study about sand?

• 25:50Speaker 04

  They should think about any resource that is large or vast, like the rivers, the seas, the oceans, the air, that is difficult to police.

• 26:04Speaker 02

  How do you police the unpoliceable? I like it. And one other thing to keep in mind as you listen to this story, sand is very valuable, not just for tourist beaches, but as construction material, to make concrete, to make glass. Modern life needs sand. This story first aired in 2018, and it was hosted by Karen Duffin. And once again, with the difficult beach assignment, Sarah Gonzalez.

• 26:33Speaker 06

  There's this rustic little beach town in northern Jamaica, one reggae bar on the beach with a tin roof. When the tropical rain comes out of nowhere, everyone runs into this bar. A self-described rasta man is in there singing reggae, calling everyone girlfriend.

• 26:49Speaker 00

  Girlfriend. From the very first time, I blessed my eyes on you, girl. It's not the kind of beach town that tourists flock to. This is a local beach.

• 27:00Speaker 06

  Okay, it's called Silver Sands. And it's because it's white, glistening sand against blue waters. Sandra James loves this water. Oh, live on the beach, a water girl. The waves just calms you. But Sandra feels protective, very specifically of that white, glistening sand, because everyone seems to want it. It happens a lot in this area, sand theft. Sand theft. A lot in this area. You can hear the trucks at night moving with sand. In Jamaica, sand is valuable.

• 27:44Speaker 00

  So valuable that a few years ago, just down the road, an entire beach was stolen.

• 27:51Speaker 06

  There's a lawyer in Kingston, Michael Hilton, real quiet talker, born and raised in Jamaica.

• 27:58Speaker 00

  Michael was running what is essentially the Justice Department in Jamaica. And then he decided to go into private practice. And in 2008, he gets a call.

• 28:08Speaker 06

  A beach has been stolen, taken in the dead of the night, hauled out in dump trucks. So there were witnesses who saw trucks in the night moving sand, but who could not see where the sand was being taken. And Michael Hilton, his job was to find this missing sand. The challenge would be to prove where the sand went, who took it, and who benefited from it. So Michael heads to the scene of the crime, drives down a rocky, overgrown dirt road. And peeking out through the beautiful mango trees is that aqua-blue Caribbean sea. And then he sees it.

• 28:51Speaker 06

  There were holes that were probably 10 feet deep. Oh, there were holes? Well, there were trenches.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Deep trenches. Like, if someone went down one of these, you probably would not be able to see them. Digging trenches like this would require some kind of excavator-type of equipment. The amount that was stolen was not something that you could just hide in some warehouse. It was way too much sand. So Michael thinks there has to be a huge just pile of sand somewhere on this island.

• 29:24Speaker 06

  It must have been spread out somewhere. And where would sand be spread out?

• 29:30Speaker 01

  And who has the money to buy a million dollars' worth of sand?

• 29:34Speaker 06

  Beachfront resorts. They become Michael's primary suspects. Michael sends one of the owners of the stolen beach, a sand scientist and a justice of the peace, on a mission, up on a helicopter.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  And this scrappy eagle-eyed sand squad, they noticed something at two particular hotels.

• 29:53Speaker 06

  These hotels looked like they were built on beaches that had brown sand. And it kind of looked like white sand had been sprinkled over the brown sand. The pilot lands the helicopter on the border of one of these private resorts. The sand scientist runs out, collects some sand samples, and then runs back onto the helicopter.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  And while they were flying around in helicopters, a guy from the United Nations was wandering around the beaches.

• 30:22Speaker 06

  Hello, can you hear us over there?

• 30:24Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely. Hello, Sarah.

• 30:25Speaker 06

  This is Pascal.

• 30:27Speaker 02

  I'm Pascal Peduzzi. I'm from Sichuan.

• 30:30Speaker 06

  Pascal is with the environmental arm of the United Nations. He happened to be in Jamaica at the time, doing research for the UN, talking to the locals.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  In one village, we-- people told us that some people came overnight, the guns and trucks, and they stole the sand. They stole the beach away overnight.

• 30:49Speaker 06

  And he discovers that this sand theft in Jamaica is just one tiny part of a huge and growing sand shortage. And a ton of money is at stake.

• 31:00Speaker 02

  Oh, the sand business is big. At the very minimum, $250 billion per year.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  Most sand is actually just bought and sold legally. But humans are extracting sand faster than the earth can create sand, because it takes forever to make. So Pascal takes all of his research, and he publishes a report, calls it "Sand: Rarer Than One Thinks."

• 31:24Speaker 02

  And we think it's just infinite, and it's not.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  And where sand is running out, things are getting violent.

• 31:31Speaker 02

  And in fact, people have been killed in Mexico and India and probably in many other areas just for sand extraction.

• 31:37Speaker 01

  And Pascal says the biggest sand importer in the world these days is Singapore. They have imported hundreds of millions of tons of sand.

• 31:46Speaker 06

  Singapore is, in terms of landmass, they don't have a whole, whole lot. Where do they put their sand?

• 31:51Speaker 02

  Oh, they do seal reclamation. So they take-- they expand the territory by placing sand in the sea.

• 31:57Speaker 06

  Singapore dumps all of the sand that it buys onto the edges of the country to make Singapore bigger. You can see this from satellite images. Singapore used to get all of its sand from Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia. But then Vietnam, Thailand, and Indonesia started shrinking. They were literally selling their countries to Singapore. The UN says around 24 Indonesian islands disappeared. They no longer exist because all of their sand went to Singapore.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  Now, Pascal, he did eventually leave Jamaica. But Michael, he would be on the trail of the missing sand for years. Michael needs to prove that the white sand grains they saw from the helicopter and snuck off with came from his beach.

• 32:47Speaker 06

  He hires sedimentologists and marine geologists to run forensics on these tiny white sand grains. And Jamaican police are also on the sand forensic beat. They're knocking on these hotel doors like, "Excuse me, we have a warrant to collect some sand samples." There was a whole criminal case. Who would have brought the criminal case?

• 33:08Speaker 02

  The government, the Crown, yes.

• 33:09Speaker 06

  The Crown? As in Queen Elizabeth?

• 33:13Speaker 02

  Of course, she's the queen of Jamaica.

• 33:15Speaker 06

  But is she really-- it's a long story.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  Long story.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  Jamaica is part of the Commonwealth, the old British colonies, and nobody messes with the monarch's sand.

• 33:26Speaker 07

  Because you don't steal beaches from parts of anybody's country.

• 33:30Speaker 06

  That's Mark Shields. He was the head of the National Police Force in Jamaica during this sand heist.

• 33:36Speaker 01

  Mark is thinking, how many people were involved in this scheme?

• 33:40Speaker 06

  And how high did this crime go up? There were allegations that police were escorting these dump trucks, helping them make a clean getaway.

• 33:50Speaker 07

  Quite clearly, the police would not, under normal circumstances, be escorting sand from one location to another.

• 33:59Speaker 06

  Years into this case, the Crown says that their main witness starts getting death threats. "Real and specific intimidation," they said. The witness no longer wants to testify, and the Crown is forced to drop the charges.

• 34:14Speaker 07

  It was clearly quite a conspiracy. And some of the people that were involved in this would be quite influential.

• 34:21Speaker 01

  So in the end, the hotels just settled with the beach owners without admitting guilt.

• 34:26Speaker 06

  Jamaica's great sand heist, so big the evidence could be seen from a helicopter, whoever did it got away with it.

• 34:35Speaker 02

  My disappointment in this case is how it ended. There's a part of me that would almost have preferred to have lost the case than to not have gotten a verdict. So it's not my favorite case.

• 34:48Speaker 01

  And since that theft and the UN report, the problem has just gotten worse. In India alone, the UN is aware of thousands of illegal sand mining sites.

• 34:59Speaker 06

  When I was in Jamaica, I went to one of the resorts that was accused of buying that stolen sand. Pools and bars and rum everywhere. Catamarans and tiki huts on stilts in the middle of the water. And of course, a big, expansive, white sand beach. And everyone I spoke to for this story told me the same thing. Wherever this hotel got that white sand from all those years ago, that sand is long gone.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  That was Sarah Gonzalez and Karen Duffin from 2018. After the break, we'll talk about a possible solution to the problem of sand theft, where the tourists aren't going to like it.

• 35:50Speaker 00

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• 36:09Speaker 05

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• 36:40Speaker 02

  We are back with our Jamaican economist, Damian King. Thanks for showing us around and for being a professor today.

• 36:46Speaker 04

  Happy to be here and happy to be discussing lessons that the Caribbean can teach the rest of the world.

• 36:52Speaker 02

  One of the reasons I love this story is, in my mind, sand is infinite. We say something is as numerous as the grains of sand. But of course, it's not infinite. The right sand in the right place is actually a scarce resource. And once you're dealing with scarce resources, then you are dealing with economics.

• 37:11Speaker 04

  In economics, scarce doesn't mean that there is not a lot of it. It just means that there are more uses for it than the amount that exists, that just that the amount is finite. The big concept here is it is inherently difficult to protect numerous or vast public access spaces. Rivers, oceans, air, coastlines. It's difficult, even in countries that have great public bureaucratic capacity and have lots of money. It's even worse in a small island in which the government's capacity is weak and poor simply because they don't have enough people and they don't have enough money.

• 37:56Speaker 02

  There's an economic term we've gone over before for this kind of situation. And that is a negative externality, which is something bad that happens that is not accounted for in the cost of a good. So when I go to a beautiful resort in Jamaica, I pay a lot for the rum and the food and the towels. But I am not paying for the environmental damage that could have happened in the public beach next door.

• 38:20Speaker 04

  Very much so. And I'm going to remind you of this the next time you're on that beach and I happen to walk by.

• 38:28Speaker 02

  You know very well there are guards to keep rogue economists from walking onto the beach.

• 38:33Speaker 04

  I see.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  But why not raise the taxes on the tourists and on the resorts to fund a police force to protect the natural resources? That would work.

• 38:45Speaker 04

  You know, when 10% to 20% of your GDP is the tourism sector.

• 38:52Speaker 04

  Then the tourism interests are going to say, well, I'm not going to build a hotel. And they can and do hold governments to ransom. And the point is that this is not sort of blaming the investors in hotels. The government itself is not going to be willing to make that step because the governments tend to be desperate to get investment. And so they are really not making that calculus.

• 39:20Speaker 02

  So Damian, we are asking all of our professors this season to give us a lesson we can take back with us to the United States. So is there anything that Jamaica does economically that we should steal here in the United States?

• 39:34Speaker 04

  I'm kind of sorry that you added economically because I was going to say, you know, that with a hundredth of your population and 1,000th of your GDP, we produce world beating sprinters.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  Like in the Olympics, like Usain Bolt?

• 39:50Speaker 04

  Yes, Usain Bolt and Shelley and Fraser Price.

• 39:53Speaker 02

  All right, but economically, what can a country like the US learn from the Caribbean as a whole?

• 39:58Speaker 04

  When you look at the different Caribbean islands, they have pursued different international trade policies over the years. And all of the countries that had high import tariffs are the ones that have done worse in the Caribbean over the last half a century. So that might be a lesson for the United States in the effect of import tariffs, even though they are going to have a smaller effect and take a longer time to be manifest.

• 40:26Speaker 02

  So you're saying the lesson to take from the Caribbean is the value of free trade?

• 40:31Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 40:32Speaker 02

  Our students will have to pass a test on the concepts we have discussed today, so we'd like to review them here at the end of the show. We talked about the perils of being a small, open economy, and one of those dangers is vulnerability. What is that?

• 40:46Speaker 04

  Vulnerability refers to the fact that developments outside of the control of the residents of that country greatly affect their economic fortunes.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  And that can be hurricanes or the price of oil. A small economy is like a cork bobbing in the vast ocean. Professor, can you, in one sentence, just one, remind us of the importance of property rights?

• 41:13Speaker 04

  Property rights incentivizes individual investment, which increases wealth.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  Excellent. And we talked a bit about how Barbuda ended up without private property, and that was path dependence.

• 41:27Speaker 04

  Path dependence is the idea that where a system ends up is dependent on your starting point.

• 41:36Speaker 02

  Damian King is the executive director of the Caribbean Policy Research Institute, a think tank in Jamaica, and a former professor of economics, I should say, and our professor today. Thank you so much, Damian, for doing this. We appreciate it.

• 41:49Speaker 04

  It's been a joy to become a part of the Planet Money Academy.

• 41:53Speaker 02

  We'll send you a fake diploma, please.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  If you want more stories about how a government can influence the economy of a small island nation, may I recommend page 51 of the new Planet Money book where they talk about Taiwan. Whole different experience, great new lessons. That's Planet Money, a guide to the economic forces that shape your life. And hey, if you've ever lived in a country with some sort of smart economic idea that the rest of the world should know about, please tell us and you might be featured in our graduation episode. Get in touch now. Email us at [email protected] and put summer school in the subject. Summer School is produced by Sophia Paliza Carr and edited by Alex Goldmark. It is fact checked by Leila Das. This show is engineered by An Li Huang.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  I'm Robert Smith, and you know, when I'm not hosting Summer School and stuck on the tarmac in an airplane, I'm also the host of the new podcast Business History, a show about the history of business. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.

• 43:02Speaker 06

  Ladies and gentlemen of Planet Money Summer School World Tour, I'm sure the jet lag at this point is really setting in, so make sure and get your naps in because we are not done. Next up on World Tour, we'll be heading south to Argentina to learn about what happens when inflation goes off the rails. Next up on Planet Money Summer School World Tour, next Wednesday.

• 43:23Speaker 05

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

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