Vanity Fair has a fascinating story about Iceland, a nation whose economy is far worse off than our own. Its no wonder: until last month, the nation’s central banker was a poet, the finance minister a veterinarian, the business minister a philosopher.
Iceland: Beautiful and broke.
Photo by stuckincustoms.
How did this happen? Back in the 1970s, the nation privatized its ocean fisheries by giving percentage shares of fishing rights to fishermen. This gave the fishermen an incentive to promote, rather than overfish, the fisheries. Plus, they could sell their shares or borrow against them. “In a single stroke the fish became a source of real, sustainable wealth rather than shaky sustenance,” says writer Michael Lewis.
