Economists at all times in the evolution of this sacred profession have had difficulty in assigning the real value of an asset.What is the value of labour? To what extent should it be valued in terms of blood and sweat, ingenuity and skill and talent?One bucket of blood and sweat could be worth just one push of an electronic button to manufacture a commodity.
And what is the value of money? Through the ages money has always had nominal value. In the first place, an ounce of gold is intrinsically valueless. In the market it is invaluable.
Secondly, princes, kings, emperors, cabinets, ministers of finance and the treasury, banks and presidents and prime ministers have all conspired at some time or the other to devalue the weight of metal currency. Today the US is printing paper money as if money has gone out of style; yet the US dollar maintains its value in the world market.And what is the value of a social or ecological assets?
High Court judge Justice James Aboud felt these could be valued in terms of dollars and cents. When the Highway Reroute Movement sought relief from the courts to protect its social, economic and ecological assets, the court ruled that although the Government was insincere in its dealings with the HRM, and failed to provide protection in the form of a promised review, damages, not injunctive relief was sufficient to compensate the claimants.
In other words, the court made a decision that money could have compensated for the value of assets such as land tenure systems, systems of inheritance, the loss of 300 homes, systems of kinship, the loss of wetlands, systems of connectivity, businesses and cultural institutions; and the labour which 13 communities had expended in building themselves over four or five generations.
The fact that the High Court case was appealed illustrates that the claimants felt that money could not provide equity, could not be a fair value, for the loss of their assets. The fact that these citizens have fought so heroically and peacefully, so patiently and persistently, for ten years suggest that they value their community economies and assets. They do not think that a highway, in their districts where there is no traffic, is worth what they own. Not worth the real value of their assets.
That is why they have proposed an alternative, an Optimum Connectivity Proposal, a reroute option. In other words, the Government's traffic model–a mathematical instrument isolated in its own vacuum–and the justification for the proposed highway, isolated from real social, economic and ecological costs, are not fair exchange.
When citizens stand up so powerfully, so plaintively, and cry foul, cry, this is not fair exchange, what should the party that is on the other side of the counter do? Lie? Prevaricate? Stonewall? Bamboozle? Insult? Arrest and haul them before the courts?Ignore their calls for transparency, justification, accountability, mediation? Should they employ bogus certification, rationalisation, consultation?
You ought not force someone to accept bogus exchange. To trade assets and value unfairly. To accept the counterfeit coin of "progress" and "development." The human species developed systems of trade and exchange in order to avoid war. If you want someone's assets, you ought not to steal it. Grab it. Filch it. You ought to take it from them with their agreement. If the other party in an exchange or trade does not agree, you have no agreement. If you alone and your partisans agree there is no agreement.
Agreement must be between the persons owning the assets and those prepared to acquire it. Agreement denotes consent. This matter has been shamelessly handled by the PP Government. It badly needs to make amends. Only bandits take without agreement. Only warmongers. Only gun and knife-toting mobsters.
This is why the human species developed trade, exchange, covenant, agreement, contract. To prevent people from begging, borrowing or stealing what you have. It is a crime for a government to beg, borrow and steal, when there exists the time-worn principle of fair exchange and trade. And when there exists an econometric, as outlined in the Armstrong Report, for giving a credible value for the people's assets.
Wayne Kublalsingh