Friedrich Neuser
speaker
57 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard Nov 2024
Friedrich Neuser’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
After the break, the Ossing Verlosung allows Friedrich one more shot at getting those good plots of soil.
Like Friedrich. He got a few pieces of land he doesn't want because they're far from his other plots and they're not great for growing potatoes. And that's bad for Friedrich. That would mean half as many crops in a year on those plots. But that's also bad for the economy because this land would be great for farming corn or wheat. And so Friedrich getting this land is kind of a waste.
So the lottery's fair, but maybe not efficient. That's why the people of the Ossing have a second part to the Ossing Fair Lausanne. The celebratory tent has turned into a trading pit. Farmers like Friedrich can go to another farmer and outright trade for a better plot. There are more than 600 other plots, hundreds of potential deals.
A secondary market has emerged because even though the lottery is designed and executed to be totally, completely random, after the plots are assigned, the new landowners can all trade with each other. Essentially, Marcus says, it's like this game we all kind of know.
The goal of trade is to maximize what lots we get in life. And that is precisely what everyone here in the osing is doing. Farmers can trade a plot for a plot, but they can also add money to a deal.
Yeah. Is that wrong? Friedrich and his son start trying to make some trades. They want to get rid of their bad, schlumpy plots.
Did a deal happen?
Next, Friedrich and his son try making a deal with one of the big farmers, the ones with lots of plots. A lot of the big farmers have set up makeshift headquarters on the beds of their pickup trucks. Smaller farmers like Friedrich and his son seek them out, hoping to make a deal.
No, it is no fun. So Friedrich finds the next farmer and they huddle over his map of the Ossing. Over the course of the day, it's become covered with smudged names and phone numbers and all kinds of notes.
All around us, these strategic trades are happening. And the farmers have different strategies. One of the farmers has a notebook with a list of 15 deals he needs to make to get all of his land together. Markus talks us through an exchange between the two farmers.
And with each trade, the land itself gets closer to its most efficient use. In theory, trading means the land can end up with the farmer who will make the most of it, help it yield its highest value. And after all the trading is over, the farmers and the land will be better off. And we see some of this happening right in front of us.
The crowd in the tent starts to thin. We check back in with Friedrich and his son. They've had dozens of conversations and the prospects of a few three-way trades... But no handshakes. They decide to pause their trading for the night. And Friedrich tells us, yes, this whole system is confusing. But it is what they have. They can't change it. Whether it's beautiful or not.
Hasan Bayt says, yeah, this is out of date. A hundred years ago, it was okay. But it's 2024.
Just doing this every 10 years is enough. It's enough. It's all enough. And so another chapter in this thousand-year-old fairy tale is coming to an end.
If they did, maybe one village or one family would have gotten all the good plots, amassed a lot of wealth, maybe become the noble families of the area.
A few weeks after the lottery, we spoke with Friedrich. In the end, he made seven trades and got all the land he wanted. And he's going to get to farm it happily ever after, or at least for the next 10 years.
Alex Goldmark is our executive producer. Thank you to Karina Tall. Adam Berry, Caitlin Carroll, and Caroline Drees provided interpretation help. And thank you to Mary Claire Peete for first telling us about this land lottery a couple years ago.
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