Usually, news stories that read as black-and-white as this one are spun somehow. But here I can't figure out how. Beyond it being odd for a billionaire to embark on a legally futile quest to kick people off a beach at the expense of nearly his entire reputation.
"Khosla said he kept the beach open after the sale despite the $500,000 to $600,000 a year in costs for maintenance, liability insurance, infrastructure and other expenses. He said insurance alone was $30,000 a year, but he kept the beach open for two years even though he was losing money....Most of the beach has eroded away over the years and it is often dangerous, with sneaker waves and riptides, he said. He said only two or three people a day were visiting the beach and it was unreasonable to expect him to pay the costs to maintain public access....Khosla said he tried for three years to get a hearing with the Coastal Commission in an attempt to come up with a reasonable solution, but the organization refused."
It feels like either you own the beach and can do whatever the heck you please, or you don't, and then it's not your dime nor your responsibility...
PR nightmare though, anyone made a flash-game where you try to sneak upon Khosla's beach while being hunted by him and his security guards yet?
Just the gate. All beaches in CA are public property.
People hang out all day around Khosla's house. In order to access the beach, they have to cross his property. It feels like trespassing, although it's legal in this case. Sometimes they park where they shouldn't. Sometimes they are loud and disrespectful. Sometimes someone litters. Quite often people trespass on his portion of the beach, as there is no clear markings delineating public and private property. The gate that leads to the beach is clearly his, so he has decided not to open it and facilitate access anymore. Leaving the gate open at night is perhaps seen by his security staff to be inviting problems.
Now, here's my actual position: don't like surfers? Don't buy beach property in California.
Probably there are quite a few rich Californians who would be happy to see Khosla win, are backing him privately and are grateful to him for volunteering as the public villain.
With that being said, I'll never understand why people who have so much already would be so eager to have a little more at the expense of most of the public hating you.
In general, sure, wealth and political power do correlate pretty strongly.
In this particular case of this particular wealthy person and this particular area of politics, well, there has been a law passed directly as a result of this controversy [0], and its one that Khosla tried to stop [1].
> With that being said, I'll never understand why people who have so much already would be so eager to have a little more at the expense of most of the public hating you.
People who end up having so much often do so because they aren't the kind of person who ever is not seeking out every way to have more.
[0] http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?...
[1] http://martinsbeach.blogspot.com/2014/05/khosla-hires-lobbyi...
Oh no. Khosla is worth $1.7B. Every year this goes by costs him almost 0.2% of his net worth. In five hundred years, they'll bankrupt him.
He's earning that much a day in interest on investments alone. Why would he care?