Our View

We Can Do Better
How Condé Nast readers ranked Longboat Key on a scale of 1 to 100.

Beaches...............88.4
Scenery................83.6
Ambience............ 83.3
Restaurants........ 80.6
Friendliness........ 78.0
Lodging................76.5
Activities...............68.7

We shouldn’t settle for No. 2.

It would sound so much better to say: “Longboat Key is No. 1!”

And it would do a lot to bolster your real-estate investments.

Community Editor Robin Hartill reported last week in our Welcome Back edition how Condé Nast readers for the first time ranked Longboat Key the second-most preferred island destination in North America.
What a nice boost. These are exactly the types of travelers Longboaters would like to attract.

It’s not that the Condé Nast reader survey is the be-all-end-all measurement of what Longboaters often refer to as their little paradise. Those who live and own property on Longboat Key don’t need a magazine survey to tell them what they have long known.

But the survey results come at a fortuitous time: when town leaders and residents are trying to finalize a vision for the Key for the next 20 years.

The Condé Nast survey certainly provides some direction.

As the table shows, Condé Nast readers ranked their vacation and travel destinations on the basis of seven criteria. Longboat Key’s scores put the Key behind top-ranked Kiawah Island, S.C., by a 21.6-point margin. With 100 being the top score, you clearly can see where travelers feel the Key is lacking:

• Beaches — Longboaters are all over this and have been for the past 20 years. They know they are the key to the Key, and there remains a strong desire to keep them maintained and attractive.

• Scenery — It’s good, could be better. Gulf of Mexico Drive and, in spite of the federal stimulus money wasted last summer, the entrances to the Key still could be more lush and beautiful.

• Ambience — How do you measure ambience? Ambience is the overall atmosphere and environment. And because this survey is targeted at the world’s affluent travelers, you have to guess that “ambience” is everything to them — the services they receive at whatever resorts or accommodations they are staying; the friendliness and quality of the service and food at the restaurants; a feeling of welcome (or unwelcome) wherever they go; and the quality of the towels, bed linens, furnishings, et al, at their accommodations.

It doesn’t take much to conclude Longboat Key could take it up a notch in ambience.

• Restaurants — Longtime Longboaters like the Key’s award-winning restaurants. And that presents a challenge for the restaurateurs.

Longboaters like the reliability, predictability and consistency of their favorite restaurants and don’t want that to change. That works for the restaurateurs as well; they know they must cater to their customers.

At the same time, injections of new, fresh and different cuisines and a more dynamic epicurean scene would add to a visitor’s overall experience. But this is much easier said than done, particularly given the seasonality of the Key. Indeed, how plausible is it to create a more vibrant cutting-edge restaurant scene?
This is where St. Armands Circle and mainland Sarasota come in.

• Friendliness — A lot of Longboat residents will take issue with this. Everyone here knows dozens of friendly people and neighbors. If those Condé Nast readers paged through The Longboat Observer week after week, seeing all of the photographs of happy people participating in Longboat events, surely they’d change their ratings.

But admit it. There is, frequently, a notable degree of crankiness here.

Blame it on age and the nature of the Key. Most of the Key consists of retirees who want peace and quiet, not more people and traffic.

Nonetheless, a steady flow of new travelers is essential to the vitality and strength of the island as a resort, retirement and second-home community.

We could use a “friendliness” campaign during Season, and we would be wise to do more of what the Rev. Edward Pick urges at the close of each of his Masses: “Be kind to one another.”

Lodging — We know we are lacking. And here is what all Longboat property owners must accept: The quality and variety of the lodging accommodations are important foundations for Longboat Key’s future.
Lodging is where it begins. You have heard this again and again: As a Longboat Key Club and Resort consultant told the Town Commission last year, nearly all travelers follow a pattern. If they have a great experience the first time, they’ll come again. And again. And then longer and longer. And eventually they will buy.

This is why we need the Key Club project and a revitalized Colony Beach & Tennis Resort.

Activities — This is puzzling. Apparently those who filled out the survey did not talk to many Longboaters, weren’t here during the winter or didn’t make much of an effort to find out what’s available. As we all know, rare is the “retired” Longboater who isn’t utterly exhausted by the end of the season because of all of the activities and events. And if you think it’s boring here, it’s your own fault.

Altogether, the Condé Nast criteria can serve as a useful guide for every business, resort, condominium, house of worship, organization and the town government. Look at yourself and determine how to improve. We could see the chamber of commerce as a driving force to organized and reinforced efforts at improving the traveler experience here.

Commit these seven criteria to memory and action. There’s no doubt that would fulfill the long-term vision of a better, prosperous Longboat for all.

Our Fetish with Inflation: What Others are Saying about Dollar, Gold

Any time you start talking about money supply and the gold standard at a cocktail party, the crowd dissipates and the remaining eyes glaze over.

It’s obtuse stuff. But it has real consequences.

When the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank increases the supply of dollars in circulation, i.e. prints more money, the value and purchasing power of the dollar in our pockets falls. That’s why all of the foreign governments — and now groups of U.S. economists — are protesting Ben Bernanke’s latest move to stimulate the economy with $600 billion in new money.

Americans aren’t protesting because they don’t get it. That is, until they line up at the grocery checkout and see that what they bought last year for $100 doesn’t buy as much.

This new money, of course, has rekindled economic arguments for going back to a gold standard to stabilize the value of prices and dollars. (President Richard Nixon ended that practice in 1971, prompting Nobel winner Milton Friedman to dub Nixon as the worst president in Friedman’s lifetime on economics.)

In the two passages that follow, we have excerpts that explain 1) how the gold standard would put power back in the people and take it out of the hands of politicians; and 2) how politicians would never let gold become “money” again.

+ Gold: Power to the people
(Professor) Nouriel Roubini … listed a series of merits of gold without recognizing them as such: gold limits the flexibility and range of actions of central banks (check!); under gold, a central bank can’t “stimulate growth and manage price stability” (check!); under gold, central banks can’t provide lender of last resort support (check!); under gold, banks go belly-up rather than get bailed out (check!) …

As Murray Rothbard emphasized, the essence of the gold standard is that it puts power in the hands of the people. They are no longer dependent on the whims of central bankers, treasury officials and high rollers in money centers.

Money becomes not merely an accounting device but a real form of property like any other. It is secure, portable, universally valued and rather than falling in value, it maintains or rises in value over time.

Under a real gold standard, there is no need for a central bank, and banks themselves become like any other business, not some gigantic socialistic operation sustained by trillions in public money.
Imagine holding money and watching it grow rather than shrink in its purchasing power in terms of goods and services.

That’s what life is like under gold. Savers are rewarded rather than punished. No one uses the monetary system to rob anyone else. The government can only spend what it has and no more. Trade across borders is not thrown into constant upheaval because of a change in currency valuations.
Llewellyn Rockwell,
Ludwig von Mises Institute

+ Why gold won’t be our $$
The very concept of a “reserve currency” is fraught with danger, only too well exposed by the history of the U.S. dollar since World War II. The suggestion now — notably from China — is that no single country should have the power to produce what the world uses as its reserve currency.

Instead, this privilege should be “shared” between a group of countries or even given to an international organization (like the IMF) which is supposedly “representative” of the nations that adhere to it.

The only long-term solution to this dilemma is not a “money standard,” it is a STANDARD MONEY.

That is, a money which is uniformly used everywhere in the world. The obvious candidate for this role is a certain weight and fineness of gold as the monetary unit … (But) gold as money is incompatible with unlimited majority rule and scoffs at the idea that money is just “credit.” … Most importantly, (gold as money) SEVERELY curbs the power of government to interfere in the lives of its citizens.

No assembly of national “leaders” brought together to “modernize” a financial system will ever agree to its use as money. But let one nation anywhere implement it, and the lid blows off.
William A.M. Buckler,
The Privateer