It is clear that almost no one commenting here has actually read past the first few paragraphs of the article (if that). It is very well written and explain that this is an extremely complex issue.
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.
I am surprised by the number of people who claim this is rich bashing.
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.
I agree with you that the social structures we've set up have largely forced the hands of the indigenous people who want to keep their lands in their families in perpetuity to sell. How can we actually make sure these lands stay within families forever possible though? To do something like disallowing the sale of these lands outside of their communities doesn't seem particularly ethical either. In this case, that could mean that some of the landowners who might be hard pressed for money might have a pressing need to sell, so how could we forbid that? Just like preserving our diverse cultures, I totally understand the value proposition, but how can you ethically force cultural preservation? Not a perfect analog, but I'm curious how you think a more equitable system might work here.
Isn't that the exact problems that Indian reservations were set up to solve? A kind of community-administered perpetual land grant, basically.
It seems that – some problems within the tribal administrations non-withstanding – the external legal relationships are solved pretty well within that framework.
I was talking about today's reservations as a legal vehicle to allow perpetual group ownership & administration of land, so as to preserve it for a culture. I may have forgotten the part where, once the structure is set up, owners would voluntarily add their property if their shared this objective.
Just accept that the property which you buy is provided with agreements granted to neighbours, and that by buying the property, you inherit the duty to said neighbours.
And then, don't fill a lawsuit to put people out of their homes in order to void these duties.
>Even if you get legal rights from each one of the current owners, it still deprives the unborn children of their rights.
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?
> 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?
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 want to know why there are considered to be "indigenous peoples" of Hawaii at all, it was a normal, internationally-recognized country ruled by a Hawaiian with subjects as its inhabitants for almost a hundred years before the US annexed it. It had formal land ownership laws before it became part of the USA.
the part I don't get here: What's the legal framework for allowing Zuckerberg to force a sale?
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.
He claims he is pro-privacy, and that if people get into problems by sharing too much on social sites, it's their fault. He himself is not sharing too much.
I think a lot of his stances and statements on privacy are with respect to internet privacy as it pertains to Facebook's users and the success of his company. His stance, in my opinion, focuses more on users having control over what they post and what they choose to share, but in general that sharing information online is a good thing. Unsurprisingly, his views seem to coincide with some encouragement of users to share information via social media.
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.
He'll get pretty close. The terrain along the shoreline makes the beach in question pretty much inaccessible. It's not unusual in Hawaii to flaunt the law by making public access as inconvenient as possible by buying the surrounding land and removing roads/paths so people who do want access have to trek miles to the beach.
> Property rights are the foundation of civil society.
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.
IANAL and IANA business/stocks person, so allow me to vomit nonsense, but how is this not unlike equity in a start-up? Or stocks in a public company? Especially in the latter case, one can have theoretically a 17/333,396 stake in a company.
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.
It didn't sound like any of the parcels had occupants nor were the ownership rights concentrated in a single individual. I'm not sure how I feel about this but it isn't a cut and dry issue.
If the land was going for a public use, I might be a bit more sympathetic. However, it's being bought for a private use by a person who can well afford to pay for it and the number of owners of a piece of land isn't the problem.
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?
You could err on the side of the living ancestor(s).
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.
And how could you enforce that -- sue the owners to force them to live on the land?
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.
Good grief. Any child with $2 in pocket money has more wealth than 2bn people. If you are a doctor with a massive student loan, you're probably in the bottom 10% of humanity in terms of wealth.
Is there a historical precedent for those above the peasants, but still below the king, to constantly rationalize and serve as king apologists? I notice an interesting trend with a large chunk of the discussion being centered towards why [rich person's] [behavior] is not [as bad] as you think.
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]
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]
I think it's more of a knee jerk reaction to the "wealthy people are evil" narrative that is quite common in the media. Some people just read the headline and immediately assume it's another instance of this, whether they are right or wrong.
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.
The idea that rich people got rich because they screwed other people over is quite common but also a made up generalization. It's an excuse that people who worry about their own socioeconomic status make to feel better about themselves. "I'm poor but at least I'm not evil like those rich people.". Instead of searching for reasons why rich people are evil, why not just be happy with your own life? You don't need to be rich. Stop worrying about status and get on with whatever you enjoy.
Capitalism exists on exploitation and maximizing profit by squeezing as much as possible from people serving it. In this environment it is only logical that the ones standing on top are standing at the top of pyramids of both wealth and suffering of all who were exploited in the process.
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!
>The idea that rich people got rich because they screwed other people over is quite common but also a made up generalization.
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.
I agree that this article, or at least the title, the article itself is actually pretty well written, is somewhat sensationalist, but I found it gratifying for two reasons.
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.
> 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.
An old article, I'd like to see the results today now that America has gone through the latest recessions. But from 2003, "Nineteen percent of Americans say they are in the richest 1 percent and a further 20 percent expect to be someday." [1]
There's nothing wrong with having aspirations per se. The issue is when these aspirations lead people to identify more with the upper class rather than their own class and voting against their own interests. For a very recent example, see the case of people who depended on the Affordable Care Act regretting voting for Trump. (https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-voters-didnt-t...) Also, you don't see something seriously wrong with the statement "Nineteen percent of Americans say they are in the richest 1 percent"?
I'm as far out left as they come, but I cringe at this "voting against their interests" argument. There are millions voting against their (economic) interests when they vote democratic as well.
Thank you. I find the "don't you know you're voting against your own interests" a pretty arrogant argument. How do you know they are voting against their 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.
I feel a lot of these quotes are true of, not just America, but many of its allies, such as here in Australia.
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".
Indeed. Although I think one big difference is that Australians are occasionally forced to face reality en masse, the last time being around the late-80s early-90s. I think we're due for another dose of reality, now that the mining boom is over and we can no longer sustain our current economic model (which is indistinguishable from a ponzi scheme).
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]
Yes, in socialist terms it's us "the intelligentsia" -- the educated people "engaged in the complex mental labours that critique, guide, and lead in shaping the culture and politics of their society". Take Noam Chomsky's comment for example:
"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."
You are making many arguments on the 'philosophical anarchist' spectrum. Michael Huemer's "The Problem of Political Authority" may be of interest to you.
Erm, not to be all factual and shit, but politicians generally aren't in the 1% until after they're out of office. There are exceptions of course (the Clintons, because of the sheer length of service and variety of positions they've each held) but being a politician doesn't actually pay that well. There are perks, but you won't get into the 1% on perks.
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.
You missed the point. The 1% is not about wealth its about power over 99%. Even your random low level bureaucrat has more power than the 5% (wealth-wise).
The cop who pulls me over on the highway has more power over me than my mayor does, or even my governor. Looking at the policies Trump talks about that I can actually analyze ("Make America Great Again" doesn't count), none of them will affect me to the tune of more than $1K / year at best/worst.
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.
And thats for a country in Top 10 Ease of doing business [1].
In others politicians/bureaucrats are truly someone to be afraid of. Case in point: The Current Income Tax Raid Raj in India [2].
> The cop who pulls me over on the highway has more power over me than my mayor does, or even my governor.
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.
While we're being condescending, it seems like some people have Zuckerberg derangement syndrome. Guess Aaron Sorkin's quasi-fictional biopic was effective. I don't see how anyone who reads this article will think Zuckerberg is hurting anybody. A bunch of people who previously owned useless fractional shares are going to get some cash.
It's a perfectly rational thing for Zuckerberg to do.
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.
This is far mode complicated than the privilieged white man narrateive you used here.
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.
Really? Some of these people, as reported in the article, didn't even know about the land they have a share in, and that share is minuscule to the point of uselessness.
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.
The "fair price" is what the current owner is willing to sell it for and not the price set an auction where only Zuckerberg and the original owner would be willing to bid.
This is basically employing eminent domain to strength Zuckerberg's little fiefdom.
>I notice an interesting trend with a large chunk of the discussion being centered towards why [rich person's] [behavior] is not [as bad] as you think.
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.)
Zuckerberg purchased the land from all serious parties, and now his lawyers are doing their due diligence to track down anyone who might own even a "1/3,276" share, and are hardly treating anyone unfairly.
Put down your pitchforks, no one is being driven off their land.
Indeed. Another article quotes his lawyer as saying "Zuckerberg has no intention of contesting any co-owner who can prove their interest in any of the land parcels."[0]
For some of us though, the historical context of the US invasion and overthrow of Hawaii means that this sounds quite distasteful, although reasonable.
No, the issue is identifying the owners, at Zuckerberg's own personal expense, most of whom seem to be completely unaware that they are partial owners.
The practical effect is some people get a windfall check in the mail that they weren't expecting at all.
It's a two-step process. First, they learn about their part ownership of some land, which is probably a nice thing, although one shouldn't mistake it with a gift or winning the lottery or some such. After that, their land is exchanged for money, possibly against their will. That seems very much like any eminent domain case, except for the whole for-the-good-of-the-public aspect.
"Three Zuckerberg companies — Pilaa International LLC, Northshore Kalo LLC and High Flyer LLC — filed eight quiet title lawsuits Dec. 30 in state Circuit Court on Kauai."
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.
If Zuckerberg is trying to dislodge residents from their homes, that's reprehensible. On the other hand, if he's merely trying to gain clear and unencumbered title to land that he's already bought and paid for, that's ... just common sense? Unfortunately the article doesn't really make it clear which scenario is operating here.
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).
What the article doesn't mention is that we only got to this situation in the first place after centuries of nastiness and dirty tricks that deprived the native Hawaiians of their land in a similar fashion to the way the native Americans on the mainland were deprived of theirs. What is "legal" today is only "legal" because some rich white guys decided to make it so using methods that would horrify most of us today. But the reason that these methods are no longer used is not because the rich and powerful have developed a more refined sense of morality, it's because the populace has been subdued to the point where they are no longer necessary.
You could argue some of the land parcels in question are owned by growing numbers of family members with each new generation, and that therefore it's likely some (even most) owners wouldn't utilize the land. However, it's also interesting to digest this situation alongside Oxfam's report [1] on 62 people accumulating more wealth than half the world's population combined. Zuckerberg owns 700 acres of Kauai[2]. Why isn't that enough?
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.
It's only Bizarre to you, it's not Bizarre to the people who own the property I'm sure. What's Bizarre is being forced to sell land that you've owned for generations.
Some of these pieces of land have hundreds of owners. In this case one of the owners has an interest of less than a one-hundredth of a percent. Most of the owners do not even know what they own. The legal fees to establish who has a fractional interest in the property would outweigh the value of the property normally for each individual owner, but with Zuckerberg footing to bill to find out the family tree all of the owners will benefit.
This sounds like the sort of thing where you have to sue someone to force the court to sort out legalities. Sort of like the RIAA/MPAA suing Joe Does that are associated with an IP to figure out who is on the other end of it.
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.
Something I learnt from the Martin Shkreli drug price increase story is that if you're going to defend someone who's being abused, first see if they even exist. Even then, see if their culture and laws make this an actual horrible suffering or not. What this isn't is some poor low income native being forced out of his house that he inherited from his family on land that he grew up on.
That kind of law exists in other places too, if your property cuts access to other people's property they have the right to cross it. It's not only in Hawaii, i've seen it in many other places , in Spain in rural areas is quite common.
Who has the right to 700 acres of privacy? I don't care how rich you are, there should be reasonable limits on what you can deny the public access to. In Sweden and Norway (and other places, I'm sure), they have a law called allemansrätten, which states that anyone has the right to roam on and camp on all land, as long as you don't cause any damage and reasonably respect others privacy. If the US had such a law, he probably wouldn't be engaging in this lawsuit.
To take the discussion a little wider - land is a finite and productive resource unlike almost all other property. History is full of land reappropriation when it falls into ineffiecent use - whether as goverened as such or through violence when governments fail to do so. As a simple premise governments shouldnt allow land to remain significantly underutilised
Yes in a way. My point is really that land ownership should not be seen as a fundamental 'right' in the same way as other more fundamental 'rights'. Its actually treated this way in most international instruments (not as a right or given serious caveats) although in common conception many in the west assume otherwise.
Your argument is weird. How would mark zuckerburg use 700 acres of property? Who decides what effective use of property is? This is an absurd act of bullying people who may have otherwise had no desire or intention to sell their property, legal loophole or not.
It's a well known fact that fuckerburg is a cylon and needs the 700 acres to build a fleet to go looking for kobol. The sooner he jumps out of the solar system the better for humanity. So my appeal to everyone is to please just give him what he needs.
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?
While there may be no legal entity making a decision on the question "how much is enough," people are allowed to make value judgements on the actions of others based on how much they personally think is "enough" for said others.
Assuming you aren't joking, why would you trust the members of the tribunal? I have yet to see any evidence that humans have found a way to overcome the principal-agent problem in governing bodies.
Elected == accountable...generally speaking. Of course there would be corruption and errors. I would trust it over a hegemonic oligopoly though. Have to google the principal-agent problem though. I'm not familiar with that term.
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:
> You could argue some of the land parcels in question are owned by growing numbers of family members with each new generation, and that therefore it's likely some (even most) owners wouldn't utilize the land.
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!)
Identifying one edge case doesn't really prove an argument. Net wealth is not a perfect metric, but is probably the best one we have.
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.
Those wealth statistics really are dodgy. Another edge case: you're earning so little that you don't save, but spend it all on food/housing/etc. Now your country's economy takes off and you suddenly earn 20% more. You're still spending it all, enjoying much better and healthier food. To those statistics, nothing changed.
Well, show me a perfect metric that doesn't have similar edge cases?
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.
It reminds me of old maps of Swedish villages. In the 1700s there was a big push to accurately record who owned what in each village. The fields were divided into strips of ownership divided between children and by the 1700s this meant that each map has fields made up of long strips just a few feet wide. There were various schemes called 'skifte' to rationalize things, e.g. Solskifte (literally "sun shift") where the big farms were numbered clockwise (the direction the sun goes in) and the fields likewise and assigned. Of course they also took account of how good the fields were etc. My own house was built by a farmer selected to move from a village quite a long way away and given land to move to 1850. We have a list of timber etc he was entitled to take from his farm, which reads like a shopping list of the materials used to make the very grand new house.
I'm struggling to make sense of this....Zuckerberg purchased 700 acres of land, but other families are still using that land (or have the right to)? How can you purchase land that others legally own?
>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.
I think it's possibly more complicated - there's kind of a 'collective ownership' scheme whereby there are tons of people who 'share' ownership of pieces - many of the titles may be lost, people don't know they've effectively inherited them, some may be owned by deceased who have no identifiable heirs so the ownership is ambiguous etc. etc. etc..
I'm a pacific islander, not a Hawaiian, and while my culture (or rather my parents' culture, of Palau) has somewhat more well defined concepts of land ownership, it is was traditionally somewhat communal with families and clans owning land. It didn't help that in the aftermath of WWII our island was mostly in shambles, and people just set up shop where they could and eventually wound up on other families' land. Today, land court cases in Palau are contentious and common.
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.
"we never traditionally had a concept of strong property rights or ownership"
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.
Here is my IANAL understanding. If multiple people own a property all it takes is one person who wants to sell and they can force a partition sale.
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.
The news story also reaks of a cliche smear-job though. I have a hard time Zuckerberg sits on moneybags in his house cursing the filthy peasants. Seems like it's more just a weird land practice (many people own the land he thought he bought) and he wants some privacy.
> (many people own the land he thought he bought) and he wants some privacy.
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.
"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."
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.
> Zuckerberg has more than enough resources and respect to defend himself.
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.
More like be able to share a Facebook post and turn eyes to it, or if necessary, publish an op-ed or something. He at least has the connections and popularity to do that.
Coming from Australia and learning about the indigenous history there, it was quite a shock to learn how the land was stolen, men killed, women raped and the children brainwashed. An entire generation lost.
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.
Surely his lawyers informed him of the situation when he bought it.
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?
I actually saw his property when my GF and I were in Kauai a few months ago and visited the beach in front of his lot for fun.
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.
Real property rights vary by state. Here in WA, you can own some beach and, based on my very limited knowledge, there is some process to acquire tideland rights in order to, say, build a dock.
WA beach owernishp is to mean low tide. Not sure how socks work but I know in most places in the places in the Puget Sound won't let you build bulkheads out into the beach anymore to protect the environment.
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?
Look, donating a small percentage of ill-gotten gains, however impressive the number sounds, does not change anything. At all. How expensive has Facebook's ecosystem of control been to humanity? Surely more than a morsel of that very institution's stock?
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.
I admit this is confusing to me, but the premise of this makes no sense to me. It seems that the sale should still require some vote on the part of the identified shareholders on whether or not to sell.
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.
All states can have different laws so it is hard to comment as a non-Hawaiian. That said, my wife helped settle the estate of her great uncle who held title to property with his deceased ex-wife. One option was a quiet title hearing where you try to contact everyone who might have an interest in the property, and then inform them of a court hearing. In Washington state if they show up and can prove they should have part owner ship, then the court creates a title which includes them as owner. If nobody shows up the court can update the title to make the person who is currently possessing the land the exclusive owner.
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.
$3 billion for Oculus, which is 'just' a headset, and $100 million for 700 acres of land, it seems strangely backwards! But forcing people from their lands sounds pure evil.
> Now the Facebook CEO is trying to enhance the seclusion of his property [...]
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.
That's what money is for. So you can buy things you want. To do that you also have to give away your money to the person who used to own those things, so they win too. The reason he got so much money is because he gave a lot of other people things that they wanted and they gave him their money. There's nothing wrong with that - unless you think trade is wrong and we should all be self-sufficient hunter gatherers, or that people who work hard to serve others should not be rewarded for it.
Kind of reminds me of the Crocker "Spite" fence, on Nob Hill in SF.
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.
the Facebook CEO is trying to enhance the seclusion of his property by filing several lawsuits aimed at forcing these families to sell their land at a public court auction to the highest bidder.
With a friend, you could really push up the price and make a ton of money.
This story is extra sensationalized here. I am sure Zuck will let go a $100 Million investment to avoid negative publicity. We cam all wait and see how this pans out. If anyone is a culprit here is the middle party aka realtors, as usual.
A lot of these people aren't even living, and some of the cases even have the support of descendents/relatives. It seems most of the owners don't even know they own the land, and this is less "suing to force sale" and more "this is how land sales are done in Hawaii due to legacy property ownership."
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.
>>Now the Facebook CEO is trying to enhance the seclusion of his property by filing several lawsuits aimed at forcing these families to sell their land at a public court auction to the highest bidder.
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?
> Quiet title actions are the standard and prescribed process to identify all potential co-owners, determine ownership, and ensure that, if there are other co-owners, each receives appropriate value for their ownership share.
Basically doing the state's work for them, getting rid of that state's antiquated cop-out law.
Land rights shall need be part of Universal Basic Income. The capital class will buy away all the land from the labor class faster as automation and capitalism keeps kicking ass.
<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
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.