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

Summary

Planet Money – Summer School World Tour

Episode: Sand Heists and Property Rights in the Caribbean
Date: August 5, 2026
Host: Robert Smith (NPR), with Damien King (Caribbean Policy Research Institute)
Featured Reporters: Sarah Gonzalez, Scott Gurion, Karen Duffin
Main Theme:
Exploring fundamental economic forces—property rights, resource allocation, and vulnerability—through two extraordinary Caribbean case studies: a communal island wrestling with private vs. collective ownership, and a secretive sand heist that marks a global shift in how we value and police natural resources.

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Episode Overview

This episode takes listeners to the Caribbean to examine how small island economies highlight the most fundamental issues in economics. The two case studies—a communal land system in Barbuda and an audacious sand theft in Jamaica—show how concepts like property rights, negative externalities, path dependence, and resource scarcity play out in outsized, sometimes surprising ways. Planet Money’s “professor” for the week, economist Damien King, helps unpack these lessons for both Caribbean locals and listeners abroad.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Vulnerability of Small, Open Economies

[02:30–05:08]

• Host Robert Smith sets the stage: Small Caribbean nations import most goods and are highly sensitive to external shocks (hurricanes, global price changes).
• Damien King: “This idea that your economic fortunes depend upon forces outside of your control is an ever present consideration.” [02:53]
  • High debt loads and exposure make ambitious investments risky.
• Political unity (e.g., the short-lived West Indian Federation) was attempted but failed due to political, not economic, barriers.

---

Case Study 1: Communal Land and Property Rights on Barbuda

The History

[06:20–12:54]

• Barbuda: A flat island, a thousand homes, ~1,500 residents, where wild donkeys are more common than tourists.
• Land is held in common: “No paperwork, no lease, no rental agreement, no title. Just a whole 62 square mile tropical island shared communally…” – Sarah Gonzalez [09:23]
• Historical context: Colonized and leased to Codrington family for just “one fat sheep” [10:34]; after slavery ended, the formerly enslaved population remained and collectively used the land.

The Communal System

[12:54–13:58]

• The Barbuda Land Act (2007) formalized communal ownership.
• “Barbudans say they own and share the whole island collectively, all its resources, all the land. They use it in common.” – Sarah Gonzalez [09:34]

The Crisis: Hurricane Irma’s Aftermath

[12:54–16:38]

• Hurricane Irma devastates Barbuda in 2017. The Antiguan government proposes a radical change: sell land titles to individual Barbudans for $1 Eastern Caribbean.
• The Prime Minister: “Now you’ll have a title. And titles open up all these opportunities. You can take a title to a bank…” [14:10]
• But residents are suspicious—wouldn’t this narrow their ownership from the whole island to only their home lots, leaving the remainder vulnerable to outside (foreign) development?

The Economic Debate

[16:38–23:47]

• Core issue: Can communal land beat the tragedy of the commons? Barbuda’s system worked due to low population and tradition, but lacked incentives for investment.
• Damien King: “Once property rights are invented... for the first time, people have an incentive to save... to invest in the property...” [19:19]
• On path dependence: “Where you start out kind of determines down the road what your interests are…” – Damien King [22:48]
• Resident John Mussington: “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.” [18:06]
• Legal dispute ongoing; courts granted only limited rights to residents, enabling foreign-backed resort developments.

---

Case Study 2: The Great Jamaican Sand Heist

The Crime

[25:07–32:20]

• In 2008, a whole beach’s worth of white sand disappears overnight, trucked away by the dump-truck load.
• “You can hear the trucks at night moving with sand. In Jamaica, sand is valuable.” – Sarah Gonzalez [27:22]
• Sand is crucial for both tourism (beaches) and construction; demand far outstrips supply, creating a black market.

The Investigation

• Michael Hilton (lawyer): “The challenge would be to prove where the sand went, who took it, and who benefited from it.” [28:16]
• A team—owners, sand scientist, UN researcher—follow clues: white sand mysteriously appears at nearby luxury resorts.
• UN’s Pascal Peduzzi: “People told us that some people came overnight with guns and trucks and they stole the beach away overnight.” [30:29]
• Satellite images show how sand mining leads to islands vanishing altogether: “Vietnam, Thailand and Indonesia started shrinking... [losing] around 24 Indonesian islands.” [31:39]

Sand Scarcity Goes Global

• Sand is the world’s #1 resource extraction business after water, worth at least $250B/year. [30:49]
• Singapore built out its landmass using imported sand, even at the expense of other nations’ geography.

Fallout and Injustice

• Police suspected of participating; main witness receives death threats.
• Prosecutors: “It was clearly quite a conspiracy, and some of the people... were quite influential.” [34:02]
• Charges dropped, resorts settle privately, and the issue of policing vast natural resources remains unresolved.

---

Economics Debrief: Lessons from Sand and Small Islands

[36:11–41:26]

• Scarcity and Negative Externalities:

  • “The right sand in the right place is actually a scarce resource.” – Robert Smith [36:23]
  • Tourism and resource extraction generate spillover costs (“negative externalities”) not paid by users (e.g., environmental loss).

• Policing the Unpoliceable:

  • Small island governments lack resources to police vast coastlines.
  • Raising resort taxes isn’t a panacea: “When 10-20% of your GDP is the tourism sector... tourism interests can hold governments to ransom.” – Damien King [38:16]

• What Can the U.S. Learn from the Caribbean?

  • Free trade is linked to long-term economic health: “All of the countries that had high import tariffs are the ones that have done worse in the Caribbean... That might be a lesson for the United States.” – Damien King [39:30]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “No paperwork, no lease, no rental agreement, no title. Just a whole 62 square mile tropical island shared communally and informally.”
  – Sarah Gonzalez [09:23]

• “Barbudans are not stupid... as a Barbudan, I own 62 square miles.”
  – John Mussington [16:55]

• “Once property rights are invented... you invest a little in the capacity of your productive resource, then you produce more, then you reinvest in it again. And that underlies the exponential growth of property.”
  – Damien King [19:19]

• “If every single Barbudan accepted that [$1] 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.”
  – John Mussington [18:06]

• “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...”
  – Damien King [36:43]

• “Path dependence is the idea that where a system ends up is dependent on your starting point.”
  – Damien King [40:59]

---

Segment Timestamps

| Segment | Timestamp | |-----------------------------------------------|--------------| | Introduction & Small Island Vulnerability | 00:27–05:08 | | Barbuda: Communal Land System | 06:20–18:40 | | Living Under Communal Land (Barbudan Voices) | 08:34–12:54 | | Hurricane Irma & Push for Private Ownership | 12:54–16:38 | | The Economic Debate (King & Residents) | 16:38–23:47 | | Case Study: The Jamaican Sand Heist | 25:07–35:21 | | Sand Scarcity: The Global Stakes | 30:11–31:41 | | The Economics of Resource Policing | 36:11–41:26 | | Final Lessons & Takeaways | 39:05–41:26 |

---

Takeaways for Listeners

• Small islands reveal foundational economic dilemmas—how to allocate, own, or protect resources when state capacity or individual incentives are lacking.
• Property rights matter for long-term growth—but their history and implementation are shaped by unique local circumstances (path dependence).
• Scarcity isn’t intuitive—resources like sand are being extracted at unsustainable rates, creating global “sand wars.”
• Negative externalities and public good problems often outstrip the ability of government (especially small, poor ones) to respond.
• Free trade, while sometimes unpopular domestically, has been essential for the Caribbean economies that have thrived.

---

Closing Note

Planet Money’s Caribbean “summer school” episode connects economic theory with real-world intrigue and local perspectives, reminding listeners that issues of ownership, natural resource management, and political power are always close to home—whether you live on a pink-sand beach or far inland.

Transcript

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[Planet Money Narrator]

this is Planet Money from NPR.

[Robert Smith]

You know, if you're going to hit seven continents in eight weeks, eventually, eventually you are going to hit a flight delay. So folks, from the flight deck, we have about, between about 13 and 15 aircraft ahead of us for takeoff.

[Damien King]

Thanks for your patience. Appreciate it.

[Barbudan Resident]

Thank you.

[Robert Smith]

I guess we're going to have to start the show from the plane. 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. 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 found of economics, property rights, and a mystery caper about the foundation of beaches sand. Our tour guide and professor today is waiting for us in Kingston, Jamaica. His name is Damien King and he is the executive director of the. I actually don't know. Do you say Caribbean or Caribbean?

[Damien King]

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

[Robert Smith]

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

[Damien King]

That's correct.

[Robert Smith]

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?

[Damien King]

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.

[Robert Smith]

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 a hotel.

[Damien King]

Well, even worse than that, you may build a hotel, but are you going to build the cute boutique hotel that has a 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 over water bar. Whereas if you build a concrete behemoth, then it is more resilient to the storms.

[Planet Money Narrator]

Hmm.

[Damien King]

So the idea really is that it affects all of your investment decisions.

[Robert Smith]

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?

[Damien King]

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.

[Robert Smith]

What was the main problem?

[Damien King]

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

[Robert Smith]

I hear you. I hear you, David. 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?

[Sponsor/Advertiser]

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[Patty (The Griot)]

It's.

[Sponsor/Advertiser]

It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. What's in your wallet. Terms apply. See capitalone.com bank capital1NA member FDIC support for this NPR podcast and the following message come from Carvana. Selling your car. Carvana has offers so good they're almost inexplicable. Sell your car 100% online in minutes. Visit Carvana.com today.

[Robert Smith]

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 Damien King. What should the tour group keep in mind as we visit this island?

[Damien King]

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, of course, property rights.

[Robert Smith]

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, who live on it? The story Originally aired in 2020 and was hosted by Scott Gurion and Sarah Gonzalez.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

There are two ways to get to Barbuda. On a seven seater unreliable plane or a rocky ferry.

[John Mussington]

Oh, my gosh, 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.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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 flat like a penny. Wow. I've never seen an island that flat before.

[John Mussington]

You could drive across Barbuda in about 30 minutes. It's rural, just about a thousand homes, 1500 residents. Probably more animals here than people, goats and sheep.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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.

[Patty (The Griot)]

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.

[Barbudan Resident]

The land of sun and sea. Beautiful Barbuda.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

This is Natalia John.

[John Mussington]

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.

[Barbudan Resident]

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

[Sarah Gonzalez]

What does that mean, your sand and your stone?

[Barbudan Resident]

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

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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.

[Barbudan Resident]

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

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Not even taxes?

[Barbudan Resident]

Not even taxes.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Free.

[Patty (The Griot)]

Free.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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

[John Mussington]

This is why we came to Barbuda.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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.

[Patty (The Griot)]

Barbuda has the greatest land deal on earth.

[John Mussington]

This is Albert, Patty, Simon.

[Patty (The Griot)]

They call me the Griot.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

The griot Creole.

[Sponsor/Advertiser]

Oh, you don't know that.

[Patty (The Griot)]

For those who are not familiar with the term, it simply means a verbal historian.

[John Mussington]

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

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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.

[John Mussington]

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

[Sponsor/Advertiser]

Oh, yeah.

[Patty (The Griot)]

Codrington was a slave master.

[John Mussington]

He leases the whole island from the King of England.

[Patty (The Griot)]

And his payment was a fat sheep.

[John Mussington]

One fat sheep.

[Patty (The Griot)]

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

[Sarah Gonzalez]

The whole island was made up of 500 enslaved people at its peak, and. And one white manager in 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.

[John Mussington]

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.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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.

[John Mussington]

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.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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.

[John Mussington]

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

[Barbudan Resident]

The wind started to pick up.

[John Mussington]

This is Natalia again.

[Barbudan Resident]

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

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Not so much rain, but water from the sea.

[Barbudan Resident]

Sea water? Yes, was a lot of water.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

And remember Barbuda, Flat as a penny,

[Barbudan Resident]

A lot of wind. And then you just hear the window started to burst, the door, pash, pash,

[Sarah Gonzalez]

you know, 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.

[John Mussington]

And the prime Minister, who, remember, lives in Antigua, he doesn't really come to Barbuda, and Teigen's 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.

[Patty (The Griot)]

The entire country has been decimated. I have never seen anything like this before.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

He orders a mandatory evacuation of the island.

[John Mussington]

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.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

So everyone is like, okay, we're gonna 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 U.S. and now, now you'll have a title. And titles open up all these opportunities. You can take a title to a bank.

[Patty (The Griot)]

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.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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.

[John Mussington]

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?

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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

[Patty (The Griot)]

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.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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.

[Patty (The Griot)]

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

[John Mussington]

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, property titles are in. He says now Barbudans can have actual legally binding titles to whatever plot of land they had been living on.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

But just that plot, though the rest of the island, which is about 90% of the island, is 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.

[Damien King]

Barbudans are not stupid.

[John Mussington]

This is John Mussington. He lives in Barbuda.

[Damien King]

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

[John Mussington]

Remember, the Prime Minister is only offering barbudans ownership over the little piece of Barbuda where their homes are built.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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.

[John Mussington]

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

[Damien King]

62 square mile 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.

[John Mussington]

Right.

[Damien King]

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.

[John Mussington]

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.

[Barbudan Resident]

We just want it to be just

[Sarah Gonzalez]

like what it is, just pink and peach and mint. Greenhouses and mango trees and pomegranate trees and watermelon and flowers.

[Patty (The Griot)]

Yes.

[Robert Smith]

Okay.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

I can see why you would want that.

[Barbudan Resident]

Just us.

[Robert Smith]

That was Scott Gurion 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.

[Damien King]

And.

[Robert Smith]

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. Damien King. Hey, Damien.

[Damien King]

Hi, Robert.

[Robert Smith]

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.

[Damien King]

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, then you reinvest in it again, and that underlies the exponential growth of property.

[Robert Smith]

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.

[Damien King]

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.

[Robert Smith]

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 barbudans have figured out how to avoid the tragedy of the commons, where people abuse the collective land. Why isn't that system enough?

[Damien King]

On Barbuda, 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.

[Robert Smith]

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 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.

[Damien King]

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.

[Robert Smith]

Damien, 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 Barbudans to pull this off like it is a tiny island. What is the harm in letting Barbudans run it like they want to run it?

[Damien King]

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

[Robert Smith]

Sounds like you should run for political office in Antigua.

[Damien King]

I don't think the people don't know what's good for them is a good political slogan. Okay, thank you, thank you. But I won't

[Robert Smith]

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

[Sponsor/Advertiser]

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[Robert Smith]

It is Jamaica time, which does not mean we're doing a story on the economics of rum and 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 Damien King is here. What should our students keep in mind as they listen to this mysterious case study about?

[Damien King]

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.

[Robert Smith]

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.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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 ras. A man is in there singing reggae, calling everyone, girlfriend, girlfriend.

[Planet Money Narrator]

From the very first time, I bless

[Damien King]

my eyes on you, girl.

[Planet Money Narrator]

It's not the kind of beach town that tourists flock to. This is a local beach, okay?

[Sarah Gonzalez]

It's called Silver Sands, and it's because it's white, glistening sand against blue waters. Sandra James loves this water.

[Robert Smith]

Oh, live on the beach.

[Planet Money Narrator]

A water girl.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

The waves just calms you. But Sandra feels protective, very specifically of that white, glistening sand, because everyone seems to want.

[Planet Money Narrator]

Happens a lot in this area.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Sand theft. Sand theft a lot in this area. You can hear the trucks at night moving with sand. In Jamaica, sand is valuable.

[Planet Money Narrator]

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

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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

[Planet Money Narrator]

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.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

A beach has been stolen, taken in the dead of the night, hauled out in dump trucks.

[Robert Smith]

So there were witnesses who saw trucks

[Patty (The Griot)]

in the night moving sand, but who could not see where the sand was being taken.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

And Michael Hilton, his job was to find this missing sand.

[Patty (The Griot)]

The challenge would be to prove where the sand went, who took it, and

[Robert Smith]

who benefited from it.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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.

[Patty (The Griot)]

There were holes that were probably 10ft deep.

[Robert Smith]

Oh, there were holes.

[Patty (The Griot)]

Well, there were trenches, Deep trenches.

[Planet Money Narrator]

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.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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

[Planet Money Narrator]

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

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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, and this

[Planet Money Narrator]

scrappy, eagle eyed sand squad. They noticed something at two particular hotels.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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.

[Planet Money Narrator]

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

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Hello, can you hear us over there?

[Robert Smith]

Yes, absolutely. Hello, Sara.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

This is Pascal.

[Robert Smith]

I'm Pascal Peduzzi. I'm from Switzerland.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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 in one village,

[Robert Smith]

people told us that some people came overnight to the guns and trucks and they stole the sand, they stole the beach away overnight.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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.

[Robert Smith]

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

[Planet Money Narrator]

Most sand is actually just bought and sold legally. But humans are extracting sand faster than the earth can create sand because it takes fore ever to make. So Pascal takes all of his research and he publishes a report, calls it sand rarer than one thinks.

[Robert Smith]

We think it's just infinite and it's not.

[Planet Money Narrator]

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

[Robert Smith]

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

[Planet Money Narrator]

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

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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

[Damien King]

Oh, they do sea reclamation.

[Robert Smith]

So they expand their territory by placing sand in the sea.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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.

[Planet Money Narrator]

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.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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 hole. Criminal case. Who would have brought the criminal case?

[Patty (The Griot)]

The Crown.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

Yes, the Crown, as in Queen Elizabeth.

[Robert Smith]

Cause she's the Queen of Jamaica.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

But is she really? It's a long story.

[Patty (The Griot)]

Long story.

[Planet Money Narrator]

Jamaica is part of the Commonwealth, the old British colonies, and nobody messes with

[Damien King]

the monarch sand because you don't steal

[Patty (The Griot)]

beaches from parts of anybody's country.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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

[Planet Money Narrator]

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

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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

[Patty (The Griot)]

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

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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.

[Patty (The Griot)]

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

[Planet Money Narrator]

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

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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

[Patty (The Griot)]

My disappointment in this case is how it ended.

[Robert Smith]

There's a part of me that would almost have preferred to have lost the

[Patty (The Griot)]

case than to not have gotten a verdict. So it's not my favorite case.

[Planet Money Narrator]

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.

[Sarah Gonzalez]

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.

[Robert Smith]

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. But the tourists aren't gonna like it.

[Sponsor/Advertiser]

Support for this podcast and for Planet Money summer school comes from Capital One. With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to handle your banking needs. It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. What's in your wallet terms apply. See capitalone.com bank capital1na member FDIC.

[Robert Smith]

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

[Damien King]

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

[Robert Smith]

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.

[Damien King]

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, 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.

[Robert Smith]

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.

[Damien King]

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.

[Robert Smith]

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

[Damien King]

I see.

[Robert Smith]

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.

[Damien King]

You know, when 10 to 20% of your GDP is the tourism sector, 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. 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're really not making that calculus.

[Robert Smith]

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?

[Damien King]

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 1000th of your GDP, we produce world beating sprinters like in the Olympics.

[Robert Smith]

Like Usain Bolt.

[Damien King]

Yes, Usain Bolt and Shelley and Fraser Price.

[Robert Smith]

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

[Damien King]

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 on and take a longer time to be manifest.

[Robert Smith]

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

[Damien King]

Yes.

[Robert Smith]

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?

[Damien King]

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

[Robert Smith]

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?

[Damien King]

Property rights incentivizes individual investment, which increases wealth.

[Robert Smith]

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

[Damien King]

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

[Robert Smith]

Damien 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.

[Damien King]

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

[Robert Smith]

We'll send you a fake diploma.

[Patty (The Griot)]

Please.

[Robert Smith]

If you want more stories about how a government can influence the economy of a small island nation, may I recommend page 50 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 [e-mail] and put Summer School in the subject. Summer School is produced by Sofia Polica Carr and edited by Alex Goldmark. It is fact checked by Leila Doss. This show is engineered by An Li Huang. I'm Robert Smith and you know, when I'm not hosting Summer School and stuck on the tarmac in an airplane, I am also the host of the new podcast Business History, a show about the history of business. This is npr. Thanks for listening.

[Barbudan Resident]

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.

[Sponsor/Advertiser]

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[Sarah Gonzalez]

This message comes from Whole Foods Market with their Summer Fruit Fest, highlighting seasonal organic produce, complementary pairings like prosciutto and cheeses, and proteins raised without antibiotics. Savor the season. Shop Summer Fruit Fest at Whole Foods Market. This message comes from Charles Schwab with their original podcast, Choiceology. Choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people's decisions. Download the latest episode and [e-mail] podcast.