Today, young 21st Century Virgin Islands has ended up with a household where her own people are outnumbered. She has nearly a hundred departments and most of her people work for her, but they’ve changed management three times in the last ten years and might even change it again in another two. Despite all the money, VI has made and spent — she has a lot of schools now and even a college, but it seems like most of her children are no longer graduating at a standard where they are capable of getting jobs in the businesses in VI. Even when she sends them away to university or they can afford to go on their own, they are increasingly unemployed if they return home, and they blame her for it.
Her managers allowed the immigrant workers to stay here so long they’ve sort of become part of the household. But the system has run amok — there’s no clarity about who is or isn’t entitled to become an adopted member of the household. Some of her people are really resentful about the entire situation. They feel unwelcome in their own home because there are so many outsiders in the house making a profitable living while they are having difficulty. The former immigrants are resentful too. They’ve contributed a lot to making the house comfortable but are constantly reminded about their precarious position in it. A lot of children have been born in VI, but VI, or at least her managers and employees, can’t seem to decide if they belong to her or not. Meanwhile, residents from different parts of the world are busy setting up their own little enclaves inside her house. Especially, lately, she wonders if the United Kingdom government is moving in to shut her business down or take it over.
Millions of dollars of her money have been spent on a project to build a hospital that has been a never-ending problem. It is still unfinished, and even when finished she hasn’t got enough of her people trained to staff it, and she will again have to hire from outside.
‘Her children’
What is going on? The reason VI got into business in the first place was to house, clothe, feed, educate and take care of her children. Faulkner’s protest sparked by lack of medical facilities was how her people had ended up being her managers in the first place. She’d got a little busy when business started to pick up so quickly and became immersed in the excitement of it all — but how could it all have gone so wrong so fast? She could have been on the verge of declaring bankruptcy, she realised —because there had been no proper audit in years, no real financial tracking, so she hadn’t really been sure of her exact position. One hopes her managers caught it in the nick of time.
At the moment she is living on cashflow — just making payroll and essential payments and not much else. Her vendors and contractors are mostly going unpaid. Her debt is at record high levels, most of it sunk into that dysfunctional hospital project that will not bring in significant revenue when completed. She is trying to find money to deal with infrastructure and transportation (airports and seaports), but the UK government has implemented financial controls limiting her access to new debt capital. Her present managers are jumping through hoops trying to get the go ahead to borrow, even while the same UK government is making her put in place new rules that could well reduce whatever revenue she does have coming in from her business address fees — effectively reducing her capacity to pay for any new loans.
‘Breaking down’
It’s all a bit of a pickle. On top of which, if the new rules kill her cash-flow, better transportation will be absolutely critical since conventional wisdom dictates that the only solution is to greatly increase the number of visitors to offset the loss. But VI, while still beautiful, doesn’t look quite as good as she used to. Her popular floating hotel spots are overcrowded, and the parking lot system (mooring buoys) is breaking down. She’s now attracting floating houses (megayachts) owned by the mega-rich, but no one has told them where to park, and their anchors are tearing up what little coral she has left on her seabed. In fact, she faces social, environmental and economic problems at every corner of the house. I could go on… and on… and on… but you get the picture.
Young 20th Century VI had no economy. Young 21st Century VI has blossoming economy. Even if not in full flower at the moment, everything needed to take it to the next level is there. Every Virgin Islander can tell you where there is no vision the people will perish, but what now is the vision? What is our mission? Where are we going? And why?
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