Facebook’s Zuckerberg sues to force land sales
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Property rights are the foundation of civil society. Due to variety of factors, Hawaii has destroyed property rights on some parcels due to degenerate laws and legal customs.
Just consider one point raised by the article: one small parcel has over 300 informal owners who are descended from a Portuguese immigrant who bought the land over 110 years ago and that "individual ownership fractions range from about 1/7 (about 14 percent) to 17/333,396 (less than a one-hundredth of 1 percent)."; when everyone owns something, no one owns it. This is an enormously complicated legal problem and there are no simple answers for how to resolve it.
the rich have really been sucking it up lately.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/20...
You don't raise civilization by chopping off the top.
In absence of saying "that fraction is approaching zero", you could assume the intent of the original buyer that they wanted anyone from their family living there.
At least this way, all the owners are finally identified (at considerable cost to the plaintiff, I might add), and they are properly monetarily compensated for the land.
If the current owners really did want to live on the land, they are more than free to band together and bid on the parcel themselves in the auction -- especially the ones who didn't know about the land before.
Let's say 20 people own parts of the house in front of yours. It's confusing, so you whine a lot, and suddenly a public auction is triggered?
At the very least, he must understand that he is _not_ the owner, so everything else is kinda moot right?
EDIT: seems like he bought out certain percentages of ownership on these parcels, and there's a law that can help to force a sale when the ownership gets too confusing.
Seems like the sort of law for billionaires wanting to have their own private beach.
Having this law makes sense, because as ownership gets more diluted you would never be able to get everyone to agree on anything.
why is everyone in denial about it
There is something I find very odd and unsettling about Zuckerberg. One day I think we will yet rue making him such a success.
With that in mind, I feel that the issue of privacy with respect to one's home/private property is very different. With this, Zuckerberg is likely thinking about the physical safety of himself and his family.
I'd be curious to hear more about what you find unsettling about him.
Indigenous people around the world have lived for centuries with widely different concepts of property ownership. In many cultures, once you reach a working age you build your house where land is available and do your bit (say farming, or crafts) towards a functioning society. There is no land ownership record, but rather it's based on trust. Once these lands become part of countries without adequete protection for indegenous cultures, they become susceptible to exploitation. Interpreting their culture through our legal system is one way to do this.
The indigenous people of Hawaii (and elsewhere in the world) are the true owners of that land. Even if you get legal rights from each one of the current owners, it still deprives the unborn children of their rights.
It's unfair at best. At best.
And then, don't fill a lawsuit to put people out of their homes in order to void these duties.
It seems that – some problems within the tribal administrations non-withstanding – the external legal relationships are solved pretty well within that framework.
Hmmmmm
Would you mind expanding on this a bit, I'm having trouble understanding what you mean? Does this only hold true for land or other types of private property as well?
With regards to land ownership, was it really solely based on trust, or servitude and force? I'm no expert on traditional Hawaiian land ownership but didn't all the land essentially belong to the King/Chiefs who then allowed others to use the land in exchange for payment or loyalty?
Also, how would you propose land ownership disputes be settled among indigenous communities who went to war with other indigenous communities? Didn't the unification of Hawaii by Kamehameha I involve forced annexation of other islands? Who does the conquered land rightfully belong to, the ancestors of the winning Hawaiian tribes or the non existent ancestors of those Hawaiians who were killed fighting unification?
Not op, but I believe the idea here is that use of the land has a cultural dimension, and not just the usual economic dimension. The concept seems quite foreign to me (and probably most) but that may be because nature has a much lower significance in christian mythology compared to others. Maybe as an analog: if Trump were to suggest selling the declaration of independence to the highest bidder (or everything in the Smithsonian, or Yellowstone etc.), could you imagine people invoking their not-yet-born grandchildren, and their right to see these things?
Regarding your other points, I know there were many communities with a structure much closer to egalitarianism than we can imagine among the pacific islands, and even where "chiefs" existed, their position was probably something completely different than what we're bound to imagine upon hearing the term. But I have no specific knowledge of Hawaii.
I'd imagine it might be different though because companies are regulated and there are things like the FTC, and a company is an organization, so certain concepts like "liability" and "rights" to utilize the property are better defined than for a random parcel of land, but still, it's not like "ownership by many" is that foreign.
are you sure that indigenous people want your version of civil society?
>when everyone owns something, no one owns it.
yes. And isn't it how many tribes own their land?
It's one a set of rights generally considered essential, i. e. "human rights". But among those it doesn't seem to be considered very special. The UN charter of human rights (written in no small part by the US) finds 16 other rights to list before it gets around to property: http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights.
But anyway, I fail to see how even utmost reverence for the centrality of property would change anything about this:
> one small parcel has over 300 informal owners who are descended from a Portuguese immigrant
People inherit stuff. They leave it to multiple children. Therefore it gets split up. To force any of them to sell against their will is obviously infringing property rights – not that it's not possibly justified, but it seems pretty clearly on the side of a less strict application of "property rights".
And "when everyone owns something, no one owns it" is just wrong-ish, at least in the intended sense of neglect and uselessness. The Statue of Liberty is owned by everyone and no one, as are the airwaves, most of the Rocky Mountains and the works of Shakespeare. All of them seem to be doing fine.
For the exact opposite view of property, that it is in fact the sign of barabrism and the law of the jungle, read Proudhon's "What is Property?".
Zuck's using lawyers to force a sale is a huge problem. What specifically entitles him to have a special case for purchasing without going thru all the motions?
Maybe it's because the king enables those above the peasants to retain that position? It's really interesting, actually. Kind of a (10th-to) last place aversion-like response. [1]
[1] http://www.nber.org/papers/w17234
An interesting quote. Notice how the behavior I describe is actually the opposite of this. It's kind of Stockholm syndrome like, actually (people on the top end, but not anywhere near the top, wanting to maintain the status of those at the top, in hopes of getting their themselves).
> Last-place aversion – and the accompanying lack of support for redistribution – is particularly pronounced when people near the bottom of the distribution have their attention focused on keeping the people below them down, rather than on redistributing wealth from those at the top. [2]
[2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/occupy-wall-stree...
> Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
- purportedly by John Steinbeck
> It is a crime for an American to be poor, even though America is a nation of poor. Every other nation has folk traditions of men who were poor but extremely wise and virtuous, and therefore more estimable than anyone with power and gold. No such tales are told by the American poor. They mock themselves and glorify their betters. The meanest eating or drinking establishment, owned by a man who is himself poor, is very likely to have a sign on its wall asking this cruel question: “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?
> Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves. This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say, Napoleonic times.
- Kurt Vonnegut
> If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.
- Lyndon B. Johnson
1: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/12/opinion/the-triumph-of-hop...
I didn't see anything in that article that was definitive proof that blue collar workers are voting against their own interests.
If you give a tax break to the rich, how is that against your own interests? You still have the same money you did before.
If everyone around me gets wealthier and I stay the same, I'm worse off economically, because all that new wealth affects the price of everything. Look at what happens to prices when an area becomes gentrified.
> identify more with the upper class rather than their own class and voting against their own interests.
points pretty clearly at conservative blue-collar workers voting for republicans, no? Although I guess if someone were to actually believe that raising the minimum wage or curtailing payday loans is bad for the working class, then possibly...with enough bending...and some trickle-down, you could come to the opposite conclusion, yes.
Aussies don't want to see themselves as poor, or in the lower socio-economic group. They all have aspirations of grandeur, and act as if pay day is just a great idea away. This is epitomised by the concept of the "little aussie battler" and the "Great Australian Dream".
As Donald Horne wrote in his book, The Lucky Country: "Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise."[0]
This is basically employing eminent domain to strength Zuckerberg's little fiefdom.
It is also absolutely a case of an ultra elite (basically a "king" of today) white man is availing himself of state (ultimately, military) support to force native Hawaiian people off their lands.
You made an error in your comment. You said their shares were useless. Clearly, they have a use to the individuals in question - both the natives and Zuckerberg.
I don't like this topic, but when someone talks about this I'd like to know their opinion on this:
- what is his/her ethnicity - what ethnicity does he/she think jews have.
Why I raise these questions? Becase if someone talks about this topic this is pretty sensite, and also pretty context sensitive.
Do "privilieged white" people consider jewish people also "privilieged white" people, or of a different ethnicity?
Do jewish people consider themselves "privilieged white" people?
Do other ethnicities consider them as the same?
What ethnicity does Mr Zuckerberg consider himself? His is of jewish herritage, as far as I know.
This "white people" narrative is pretty destructive, but also is an overgeneralization, and just as destructive as overdifferentiation. I beleive both are a form of destructive, retrogade racism which has crept into Public language lately and is plaguing the thinking of people and destroying the progress of the last half cetury.
I don't blame you for using it, and I don't beleive you wanted to say anything nasty, nor do I want to do so, just formulated some questions the topic raises in me.
I'm no Zuckerberg apologist, but it's clear from the article that there are varying situations represented here and at least some reasonable fraction of them are totally happy to sell him whatever percentage they own. The one person interviewed who actually had a connection to the land is supportive of the sale, because he probably can't pay taxes on it, at which point it goes to the government.
1%: The Politicians, Bureaucrats & Friends.
19%: The Rich paying with money.
80%: The Poor paying with freedom.
The 1% is primarily made up of people who have enough money that most of their income is passive, in the form of investment income, dividends, etc. Also it's worth pointing out that there's a couple ways of calculating whether or not you're in the 1% -- you can do it based on annual salary or net worth. The people who are _really_ in the 1% are there based on net worth, and it takes almost $9M in assets to get there.
I'd break your list down into 4 categories:
The 1% who can fund a politician's campaign, primarily through super PACs and other funding mechanisms that don't come with limits on the size of a donation.
The people who may look and feel wealthy (they may have a fancy car, a job that pays well, but also a lot of expenses and haven't passed the point where their money has given them enough leverage to trade it for time -- instead they're still trading time for money). These people are the next 5% or so, with a minimum net worth of $2M. They are also likely to be the scapegoats for the true 1%.
Next up are _some_ politicians (the ones with real influence -- your local mayor may or may not count, depending on the size of the city you live in. Your governor may or may not count, depending on the state you live in. Your House representative may or may not count, depending on how long they've been in office, which party currently controls the House and what committees they're on. There's your Senators -- hey! they probably count!) These are the 1%ers of politians -- the rest of them don't make a ton of money _and_ don't have a ton of influence. These guys are hoping to get cushy boardships, lobbying jobs, speakers fees, etc -- stuff that they're well-trained for by being a career politician.
Then you have everyone else... Roughly 90% of Americans, just trying to keep their heads above water, hoping they have enough money to pay the mortgage, the rent, their kid's college education, the electric bill, or what-have-you. They are translating their time into money, but have almost no economic mobility -- meaning they have almost no chance to join 1%, and will only join the 5% at retirement at best.
I am, of course, ignoring the prospect of truly insane shit like starting a nuclear war with Russia. That would affect me pretty dramatically. :) But low level bureaucrats don't have the power to start a war, thankfully.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ease_of_doing_business_index
[2] https://qz.com/860230/here-a-raid-there-a-raid-everywhere-a-...
In an immediate and direct sense, perhaps. Of course that cop and many, many others are just one of many means by which the governor excercises power over you.
Surely its nothing compared to Govts with multi-trillion dollars in (extorted) revenue because thats what have been my observation.
Personally, this kind of article doesn't "gratify my intellectual curiosity" and I don't think it belongs on HN.
But maybe it just happens that in order to become wealthy, people more often than not have to repeatedly choose wealth over generosity, exploit other people, take advantage of resources that less privileged ones pay for without explicit consent.
Also, it often happens that people who are already wealthy and possess more than what they and their children would need for comfortable royalty-level lives, continue accumulating wealth, focusing their disproportionally large power in more exploitation, more privilege, more wealth.
I'm not sure where the line between not quite evil and ok, clearly evil lies but sometimes I wonder if accumulating a lot of wealth while creating more and more suffering for many other humans is a healthy behavior.
Many people are wealthy because they have exploited the labour of others, exactly as any other commodity might be exploited. I would say this is the biggest screw-over: this great capitalist machine.
Of course there are companies that choose to limit their profit in exchange for better conditions for the ones exploited.
As for your statements implying that I am somehow conflating good/evil with the excuse of the poor(/lazy) or that I am somehow dissatisfied with my own status, I don't hold either of these views.
I am dissatisfied with privileged people like me blaming less privileged for their lack of privilege as if that was a function of choice. Being poor is caused by being born that way more often than by anything else.
I am well aware that the conservative view conflates wealth with virtue. Yet somehow, with 62 people owning roughly as much as half the world's population, I have my doubts. That'd be a lot of virtue!
First, I had no idea about these kinds of land titles in Hawaii, pretty interesting stuff for me at least.
Second, as someone of pretty low education, I enjoy coming to HN because I get to be in the company of posters who are much smarter and more knowledgable than myself. Admittedly though, this leads me to fall into the trap of viewing everyone posting here as being well informed. Articles like this, and some of the subsequent comments that to me at least sound as if posters didn't even read the article, force me to consider that even people with great domain specific knowledge aren't necessarily open minded or knowledgable about subjects outside of their domains.
As opposed to inherently thinking anything rich people do must be evil? And that all your problems are caused by the "1%" ?
Maybe most people just take responsibility for their own lives and their finances.
But if half of the people are born on someone else's land, have to work multiple jobs to cover basic expenses, have no chance of getting good education without becoming debt slaves and get thrown under the bus if they ever get sick, then maybe, just maybe, the expression "personal responsibility" has completely different meaning for them from the meaning that the people born as land owners, and can enjoy free* (or very affordable) education and healthcare as well doors opening for them throughout their whole lives because of their name or relations.
(For a household making $2m or more per year, a $60k/year education is close to free.)
"The system operates through a complex of inducements, privileges, class interests, etc., relying on the tendency of much of the intelligentsia to conform to power (while proclaiming their courageous independence of mind), and the unwillingness to endure vilification, lies, and denial of the opportunity to work and publish, as punishment for telling the truth."
Put down your pitchforks, no one is being driven off their land.
The practical effect is some people get a windfall check in the mail that they weren't expecting at all.
For some of us though, the historical context of the US invasion and overthrow of Hawaii means that this sounds quite distasteful, although reasonable.
[0] http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/34289685/facebook-ceo-sui...
Hmm.. so the man who wants all of us to "open up" on his conglomerate of social networks - sometimes even if we don't want to [1] (it is not for him, you see, it is for this grand vision of connecting the world together) is troubled by a reduction of his privacy.
Even more priceless stuff:
"Defendants have 20 days to respond to the legal complaint after being served with a copy. If they don’t respond, they get no say in the proceeding. If they choose to participate, it could be expensive if they want to be represented by an attorney."
Hmm.. I wonder if the timing of the court filing might have to do with some other major event happening around the 20th of January which might drown out this "not-fake" news. Like, say, the inauguration of the President of the USA?
It is very interesting that by the time this news shows up on HN - the 20 days are already up. Is it possible that FB could have suppressed this news in the name of stopping fake news from spreading? I can't prove that the suppression happened, but can you prove with certainty that it didn't?
The best part in all this is how tuned out FB employees are about these kinds of things. I bet they don't even see the connection between what they claim is good for everyone (a private entity purporting to connect the world as its grand mission and violating all manners of decency in the process) and what they claim is good for their boss (an individual who knows exactly what it is like to be on the receiving end of privacy invasions). "Do as I say, but not as I do". But it is important to show how tuned out they are, because otherwise you can bet they will come back a little while later claiming that they had no idea these things are going on.
The writer invokes the word "kamaaina," which a lot of folks here are interpreting as "Native Hawaiian." It literally means "child of the land," but is used locally to mean "Hawaii resident." If you've lived in Hawaii long enough to get a Hawaii driver's license, congrats, you're kamaaina, as distinct from "malahini" (newcomer) or "kanaka maoli" (which does mean Native Hawaiian).
[1] http://www.oxfam.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2016/01/...
[2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...
If they want to use it purely to irritate Zuckerberg, that's their business.
Interestingly, there's a similar "dilution of ownership" in FOSS projects. Unless the project is operating under one of the nonprofits that foster/require copyright assignment for contribution, the IP of a FOSS project under a license like the GPL is effectively "owned" in part by every individual contributor. But each claim to the copyright of the work as a whole is very, very diluted.
If this petition went through, and the relevant case law were set, one could perhaps claim to be able to freely violate the GPL by creating a derivative commercial work, under the argument that because so many people each own so little of the project, nobody really owns it enough to be able to sue over it. (After all, nobody owns enough to be able to do other things requiring majority-ownership, like relicensing the project!)
According to the article, the owners of the parcels have the right to traverse the land he already bought. From the sound of the article, this is making a mountain out of a molehill.
He wants his privacy and, thanks to bizarre land ownership practices in Hawaii, these parcels are fractionally owned by hundreds of individuals making it impossible to make a traditional offer. This legal process, far from being abusive, is the standard process when dealing with these sorts of parcels since it clarifies who actually owns the properties. It sounds like once the list of owners is established by the court, he'll make a traditional offer rather than forcing an auction.
If Zuck is using the court to force a sale, then it's a total asshole/dick move. If he's using the court to sort out ownership of land so that he knows who he needs to deal with to buy it (as a normal transaction), that's another story.
"Enough" is not a word in some people's vocabulary.
Who is to judge how much is and is not enough? Do you want an international tribunal allocating a "fair and equitable" amount of square meterage of various quality levels of real estate to individuals?
How so? It's clear that voters don't know how (in aggregate) to make rational choices.
Given the (for a single example) well-known strong-arm get-out-the-vote collusion between Chicago's elected city officials and Chicago's regional street gangs, I'm not sure that I would trust a hegemonic oligopoly any less.
The book that this is based on is pretty interesting:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gsMeasuring wealth is a pretty poor way to measure inequality.
If you're a recently graduated brain surgeon with $400K in student debt, you have less wealth than a homeless person with a $100 bill in their pocket.
You can be sure 95%+ of brain surgeons have paid off all their student debts and have a lot more wealth than a homeless guy, considering their median salary is $395k per year.
Net income is a much better metric than wealth.
Is it fair to say all those people are poorer than people in India who have a few dollars to their name?
For example, income has its own issues -- a retiree can have little income but a big retirement fund to draw down.
In an ideal world, you'd probably measure something like current net wealth + discounted expected future earnings, and maybe use PPP instead of GDP, except now you're trying to measure two things accurately instead of one, and making guesses about the future too.
Ted Turner would say that's not enough.[1]
[1]https://qz.com/615048/these-are-the-10-biggest-landowners-in...
Yes, it may be legal, but it definitely doesn't look good.
Also, is it just me or is Zuck becoming rather paranoid about his privacy and security?
(1) He apparently has SIXTEEN bodyguards at his house: http://pagesix.com/2016/02/14/mark-zuckerberg-has-16-bodygua...
(2) He bought all the houses surrounding his in Palo Alto to protect his privacy: http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/09/15/palo-alto-mark-zuckerb...
(3) He tapes his laptop camera and microphone: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/22/mark-zuck...
(4) He goes jogging with FIVE bodyguards: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3464044/Isn-t-work-T...
(5) THIS current article.
Obviously a famous rich guy will need more security than the average person, but other billionaires don't seem to take it this far.
http://fortune.com/2011/05/26/mark-zuckerbergs-new-challenge...
""The only meat I'm eating is from animals I've killed myself," says the Facebook founder and CEO."
Some of the high clan families resorted to charging rent to those who settled on what was traditionally their land, which seems somewhat reasonable than just evicting them, but this still causes some friction because even that isn't really that traditional either, it's not like, AFAICR, we had a concept of rent back then.
Moreover, we never traditionally had a concept of strong property rights or ownership, there are stories that our original contact with Europeans turned violent because my ancestors stole goods from visiting or marooned ships, not because they were thieves but because their concept "ownership" wasn't nearly the same as that of European tradition. To this day, when I visit my parents, my cousins and friends hanging out in my house would just take small things and sometimes not return them, and I would think nothing of it because that's socially acceptable and just how things are.
I think the point I'm making is that this story reminds me somewhat of Palau because it is an attempt to mold two cultures together in certain places where they aren't very congruent. It sounds like there were no "owners" of the land, no one had a title(s), they just lived there because their parents did and their grandparents did and so on. In Palau, people who culturally had no strong concept of ownership have to grapple with some families who do, and it would not surprise you to know that these traditional land-owners are today the wealthier and more politically-connected class, using an amalgam of two cultures, Palauan and Western to their benefit.
I understand how it is difficult here. One person just wants to buy land (in the abstract, Zuck is the sixth wealthiest human on Earth) and have a clear concept of ownership for him/er but they have to contend with people who might not. Like Palau, I don't really know the answer but it's just valuable to be mindful where these issues come from.
Yes, I completely understand that.
I guess what I was trying to say is that Zucks entire problem might boil down to a function of the 'collision' of those two kinds of cultures, as you put it, and the oddities of 'ownership' as they are transcribed from 'Pacific Islander' terms into 'Western legal terms' ...
In Canada we have similar issues with land management, particularly wherein there is resource extraction: the Aboriginal communities have some legal right to input, but how exactly they go about that as a 'clan' is kind of a grey area.
>Close to a dozen small parcels within Zuckerberg’s Kauai estate are owned by kamaaina families who have rights to traverse the billionaire’s otherwise private domain.
...that suggests to me there are essentially landlocked parcels owned by the natives, perhaps? And if they are land locked, well, the people have to cut through his property to access their land, I suppose.
So my guess is Zuckerberg is using the quiet title suit to get the names of all the players. He then just needs to get enough of the fractional owners of each property on board and he can then pay the legal fees to help them with their partition actions and then purchase the properties and clear his title.
This reeks terribly, I was unaware this was even legal, but this is almost literally depriving someone of their property because you have the money.
Are you implying that he's going to hire PR people to police reddit and hacker news comments? I think that would just make the PR situation worse. It's actually very hard for a rich guy to defend against these kind of attacks because people want to believe you're a bad guy.
Then tough luck for him. He should have figured that out before he blew 100 million dollars on it. This "weird land practice" is likely meant to protect native Hawaiian people from being forced out of their homeland which, if this article is accurate, is what Zuckerberg intends to do.
EDIT: I did go looking and a few others are reporting on this. A lawyer representing Zuckerberg claims that Zuckerberg "has no intention of contesting any co-owner who can prove their interest in any of the land parcels." We'll see, I guess.
http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/34289685/facebook-ceo-sui...
That seems like wild speculation on your part. Any evidence to back up your claim?
"Under the Kuleana Act of 1850, those lands are also passed down to people who now only own fractions of an interest in the property."
And from Wikpedia:
"Another notable part of the Great Mahele was the Kuleana Act of 1850."
"The Great Māhele was one of the most important episodes of Hawaiian history, second only to the overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom. While intended to provide secure title to Hawaiians, it would eventually end up separating many of them from their land."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_M%C4%81hele
So that was the intention, but if you read further into the Wikipedia article it explains how many poorer Hawaiians did not understand the new laws and therefore lost their land to rich Hawaiians and the nobility.
Lying to his co-founder and diluting his participation.
Stealing an idea and betraying his original partners.
Lying about being religious (probably).
Doesn't care about your privacy.
Makes profiles about you, even when you don't use his service.
Complies with oppressive governments in an attempt to gain access with fb.
etc...
I am in maui currently. It's a beautiful place. While the world is a much better place I'm kind of against a billionaire owning so much of land here and filing lawsuits left and right against the natives.
It's their land. Does one guy really need 700 acres to feel secluded? People have lived there for generations.
The great thing about hawaii is a lot of places are publicly accessible. I would hate some billionaire asshole to ruin it for everyone else.
In Hawaii (or the US in general) can people own beaches below the high tide mark? Surely it's impossible to have 100% seclusion anyway as people can land by boat when the tide is low and enjoy at their leisure?
But Zuck doesn't spend his time on the beach on his property.
So his property is adjacent to a land reserve so it is much more secluded than just the land he owns. He is building a massive wall in front of the house that is obstructing some of the views of people on the other side of the street which they are not happy about (you can google to see it) and many of the houses are now for sale. As for the beach front, by law all beaches in Kauai are open to the public. However... his property is on a hill and it appears that many people plant these extremely thick bushes that create a thick thorned wall of shrub (many dozens of feet wide) that prevents access (in addition to requiring you to walk up a steep slope). Just getting down to the beach from the public access point took 15-20 min.
That said, I don't think the beach can be accessed by boat efficiently (very rocky once you get past the sand) and swimming in it is very dangerous. For those of you who have not visited, there are very aggressive undertows in Kauai that can easily kill a kid or novice swimmer.
On the one hand this is one in a continued series of "I don't care how it looks" real estate moves by Zuck.
EG like his plan last year to build fake houses on 4 zone residential lots around his Palo Alto residence and turn the block into his private compound http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/09/15/palo-alto-mark-zuckerb...
And I get it, can you imagine being internationally famous for being a YOUNG billionaire?
Life would be very strange.
I can see it seeming "fair" that you could use some of that wealth to claw back what you can't have anywhere - privacy - when on the other hand you're trying to be "macro good" as one of the world's largest philanthropists? (1 / 2)
So what do we do put a green checkmark in the "Good guy" column and a red checkmark in the "asshole" column?
Sort of like any of us except his checkmarks are super sized?
(1) http://mashable.com/2014/01/02/zuckerberg-charitable-donatio...
(2) http://www.pcworld.com/article/3010838/software-social/zucke...
And donations are always so ambiguous. For one, I wish someone would attempt to quantify how much less a donated dollar helps than a dollar made at the expense of the population hurts (ounce of prevention vs. pound of cure). For example, what percentage of that donation is going straight to that organization's advertising budget? Moreover, what is Zuckerberg getting in return? Political clout? Further control over the city?
And if this is how he justifies kicking people off their land (which, yes, clearly he is), it simply doesn't add up on the existential scales.
Isn't this basically saying that a ridiculously wealthy individual like Zuckerberg could force a family to sell their inherited lands to him at whatever price he wants to pay, as long as no one offers a higher price? Without meaning to be glib, how is this even constitutional? What does it matter how many owners there are? Don't they collectively have a say? If the family voted "no," it seems that vote should be respected.
My understanding of what the article said, was that if these Hawaiians showed up and had proof of their ancestral ownership (probably ancestry records of some sort), then they would be added to the title and at that time Zuckerberg could negotiate with them for the sale of their ownership interest to him. Could be a big payday for some Hawaiians as you have a lot of leverage.
But if they don't know about the trial and/or don't show up, then they forfeit their interest.
Enhance the seclusion, LOL. So, 700 acres on an island in the middle of the pacific ocean is not secluded enough. Of course, he'll win "because money", but what a sad story.
One of the big four millionaires in San Francisco build a spite fence around the undertaker who wouldn't sell the property to him for his mansion. The undertaker in turn build a giant coffin on the roof, visible over the spite fence.
Here's the fence, before the coffin: http://i.imgur.com/n1o7S3T.jpg
Whether or not Zuckerburg is right or wrong, locals have significant power to disrupt the actions of rich and powerful outsiders.
Too much of the comments here are analyzing the legal issues and the not the political / social forces involved in a haole vs local conflict.
With a friend, you could really push up the price and make a ton of money.
Having read the entire article, it doesn't seem a single Hawaiian involved has a problem with their land being "taken away". Maybe they just didn't quote those people, however it seems like this is all pretty legitimate.
Wait, I thought only the government could force the sale of a piece of land, via Eminent Domain? How can a judge rule that a private party must sell their property to another private party?
If the law says you can do it, and nothing in the state or federal constitution prevents it, then why not?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-18/this-team...
Basically doing the state's work for them, getting rid of that state's antiquated cop-out law.
<s>Whats the use of owning 700 acres of beachfront property if you can't exclude all the humans that used to live there. It's not like you could have avoided displacement by purchase of a smaller plot to enjoy. It's not like he could have chosen a less populated island to start with.
Privacy advocate Mark Zuckerberg deserves more privacy at the cost of mere mortals. Sue that underclass till they break Mark! /s