10 ms·

Facebook’s Zuckerberg sues to force land sales

haywardsmyfault 10y ago
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? [1] http://www.oxfam.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2016/01/62-people-own-same-as-half-world-says-oxfam-inequality-report-davos-world-economic-forum http://www.oxfam.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2016/01/... [2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11160588/Mark-Zuckerberg-buys-part-of-Hawaii-for-100-million.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...
- deleted 10y ago
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- snogglethorpe 10y ago
  Why should it matter how they use the land? If they want to use it purely to irritate Zuckerberg, that's their business.
  - rl3 10y ago
    Maybe they'll organize using Facebook. An "irritate Mark Zuckerberg" group.
  - twelvechairs 10y ago
    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
    - xyzzy4 10y ago
      Well that depends if your ideal society is one that optimizes for rights or one that optimizes for good land use.
      - twelvechairs 10y ago
        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.
- derefr 10y ago
  > 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!)
  - belovedeagle 10y ago
    The article makes it clear that this is standard procedure in Hawaii. No new case law is being created.
- curun1r 10y ago
  > 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.
  - disordinary 10y ago
    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.
    - curun1r 10y ago
      Given that some of the owners don't even know that they have an ownership stake in these properties, I'm not sure that's correct.
    - gnopgnip 10y ago
      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.
    - pyre 10y ago
      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.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  > Zuckerberg owns 700 acres of Kauai[2]. Why isn't that enough? "Enough" is not a word in some people's vocabulary.
- thinkingkong 10y ago
  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.
  - jusq2 10y ago
    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.
  - shenanigoat 10y ago
    That's right. There can never be a moral argument in the Randian "meritocratic" universe.
- ci5er 10y ago
  > Why isn't that enough? 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?
  - shenanigoat 10y ago
    Yes, please.
    - ci5er 10y ago
      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.
      - shenanigoat 10y ago
        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.
        ci5er 10y ago
        > Elected == accountable...generally speaking. 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=rStL7niR7gs
      - deleted 10y ago
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  - pyre 10y ago
    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.
- refurb 10y ago
  Oxfam's report [1] on 62 people accumulating more wealth than half the world's population combined Measuring 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.
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    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.
    - matt4077 10y ago
      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. Net income is a much better metric than wealth.
      - deleted 10y ago
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    - refurb 10y ago
      One edge case? Look at the debt levels in the US! There is a huge chunk of the population that has a negative net worth, mostly due to mortgage debt. Is it fair to say all those people are poorer than people in India who have a few dollars to their name?
      - smallnamespace 10y ago
        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.
- refurb 10y ago
  Why isn't that enough? Ted Turner would say that's not enough.[1] [1]https://qz.com/615048/these-are-the-10-biggest-landowners-in-the-united-states/ https://qz.com/615048/these-are-the-10-biggest-landowners-in...
eanzenberg 10y ago
Pretty sad and pathetic.
wavefunction 10y ago
Unlike Gates, Young Zuck couldn't change his spots.
- throwaway2dayok 10y ago
  It might come with age; perhaps Young Zuck needs to mature into an Older Zuck
kem 10y ago
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.
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  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.
noobermin 10y ago
If Zuck truly is planning to run for office as some speculation has supposed, this does not look good for that. 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.
- mjfl 10y ago
  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.
  - noobermin 10y ago
    It doesn't match his public persona, no. Regardless, if it is a hit job, Zuckerberg has more than enough resources and respect to defend himself.
    - mjfl 10y ago
      > 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.
      - noobermin 10y ago
        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.
  - 3131s 10y ago
    > (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. http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/34289685/facebook-ceo-suing-hundreds-over-kauai-land http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/34289685/facebook-ceo-sui...
sb8244 10y ago
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?
- ajdlinux 10y ago
  He owns land that surrounds these land parcels.
  - edblarney 10y ago
    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..
    - noobermin 10y ago
      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.
enraged_camel 10y ago
>>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?
- xyzzy4 10y ago
  >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?
Cozumel 10y ago
$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.
disordinary 10y ago
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?
- TopRamen33 10y ago
  All beaches are public property in Hawaii. http://seagrant.soest.hawaii.edu/public-access-rights http://seagrant.soest.hawaii.edu/public-access-rights But Zuck doesn't spend his time on the beach on his property.
  - disordinary 10y ago
    If he's a typical wealthy person he probably only spends a couple of weeks a year there and has other holiday properties scattered around.
- abtinf 10y ago
  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.
  - NegativeLatency 10y ago
    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.
- lefstathiou 10y ago
  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.
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aresant 10y ago
How do we even judge moves like this? 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-zuckerberg-compound-raises-red-flags-for-city-board/ 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-donation-2013/#anZC_WB.XaqI http://mashable.com/2014/01/02/zuckerberg-charitable-donatio... (2) http://www.pcworld.com/article/3010838/software-social/zuckerberg-to-give-away-99-of-his-fortune-or-about-45-billion-to-new-charity.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/3010838/software-social/zucke...
- samirillian 10y ago
  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.
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amaks 10y ago
Where is his appropriate extensively liked facebook post on that subject?
- jonathankoren 10y ago
  I'm sure his staff is crafting a soft focus photo spread on the issue as we type. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-18/this-team-runs-mark-zuckerberg-s-facebook-page https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-18/this-team...
  - amaks 10y ago
    This explains a lot. Zuck, essentially, is: http://blogs-images.forbes.com/kathleenchaykowski/files/2016/02/oculus-1200x799.jpg http://blogs-images.forbes.com/kathleenchaykowski/files/2016...
narrator 10y ago
At least Larry Ellison had the good taste to work with the local population of the Hawaiian Island he bought to provide jobs for them and such.
general_ai 10y ago
Dude is worth $53B. There's nothing they can do.
AustinBGibbons 10y ago
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.
- nym 10y ago
  The issue is around compelling people to sell land they don't want to, that has a tradition of belonging to that family.
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    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.
    - matt4077 10y ago
      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.
- cromulent 10y ago
  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. [0] http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/34289685/facebook-ceo-suing-hundreds-over-kauai-land http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/34289685/facebook-ceo-sui...
ProAm 10y ago
Seems like Ellison, Trump and Zuckerberg are not so dissimilar after all.
- jonathankoren 10y ago
  You're forgetting Vinod Khosla who is trying to circumvent the California constitution, because he doesn't like public property rights. http://fortune.com/2016/04/29/vinod-khosla-beach-trial/ http://fortune.com/2016/04/29/vinod-khosla-beach-trial/
tabeth 10y ago
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] [1] http://www.nber.org/papers/w17234 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-street-psychology/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/occupy-wall-stree...
- cooper12 10y ago
  I have some quotes that might provide insight: > 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
abtinf 10y ago
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.
- hueving 10y ago
  Why would anyone read the article when they can take the opportunity to bash the rich?
  - meanduck 10y ago
    The GP is good comment lets not init a flame war here.
  - debt 10y ago
    because the top 8 billionaires own more wealth than the bottom 50% of the global population? the rich have really been sucking it up lately. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/18/richest-62-billionaires-wealthy-half-world-population-combined https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/20...
    - tedunangst 10y ago
      Which is itself a rigged stat.
    - laingc 10y ago
      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.
gkoberger 10y ago
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.
ryandrake 10y ago
> 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.
- Hondor 10y ago
  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.
elastic_church 10y ago
> 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.
CodeSheikh 10y ago
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.
thr0waway1239 10y ago
"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. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12588449 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12588449
- 234dd57d2c8db 10y ago
  Zuckerberg is one of the biggest supporters of the whole "open borders, no nations" agenda meant to decrease the cost of labour and drive down wages and protections for workers and increase the influence large corporations have on laws and regulations. Yet Zuckerberg doesn't want any of this for himself, he wants his isolated compounds constructed with large walls. His legal movements obfuscated. His motivations kept in the shadows. "They trust me, dumb fucks" - Zuck These are the kinds of people that are "scared" of the populist uprising at Davos. They just don't get why people don't like them as they eat their $40 dollar hotdogs.
ktRolster 10y ago
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.
dbjacobs 10y ago
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.
- notyourwork 10y ago
  Sounds about right, or perhaps get lucky and settle with some who are desperate for money.
Zanni 10y ago
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).
- lisper 10y ago
  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.
willvarfar 10y ago
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.
jhou2 10y ago
Compared to what oil barons and railroad tycoons did a century and a half ago, this is hardly anything.
bduerst 10y ago
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. Here's the fence, before the coffin: http://i.imgur.com/n1o7S3T.jpg http://i.imgur.com/n1o7S3T.jpg
RichardHeart 10y ago
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
meesterdude 10y ago
he paid for 700 acres already - and it's not enough?
rweba 10y ago
This article makes me respect Bill Gates more. You never hear of him being involved in cringy stuff like this. 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-bodyguards-at-his-home/ 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-zuckerberg-compound-raises-red-flags-for-city-board/ 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-zuckerberg-tape-webcam-microphone-facebook 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-shirt-Mark-Zuckerberg-heads-jog-wearing-trusty-uniform-carrying-phone.html 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.
- trhway 10y ago
  don't forget that one. http://fortune.com/2011/05/26/mark-zuckerbergs-new-challenge-eating-only-what-he-kills-and-yes-we-do-mean-literally/ 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."
- sibartlett 10y ago
  I work for an IT security company. It’s pretty normal for people in this space to tape their laptop camera and microphone.
dmourati 10y ago
My first year law professor taught us that property law is a bundle of rights. Here's an example that shows that he was right.
jhonovich 10y ago
Hawaii has defeated many powerful forces. Recall the Superferry disaster / ouster. 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.
nojvek 10y ago
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.
rb2k_ 10y ago
Zuck's answer: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103427714244971 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103427714244971

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? [1] http://www.oxfam.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2016/01/62-people-own-same-as-half-world-says-oxfam-inequality-report-davos-world-economic-forum http://www.oxfam.org.uk/media-centre/press-releases/2016/01/... [2] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11160588/Mark-Zuckerberg-buys-part-of-Hawaii-for-100-million.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1...

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snogglethorpe 10y ago
Why should it matter how they use the land? If they want to use it purely to irritate Zuckerberg, that's their business.
- rl3 10y ago
  Maybe they'll organize using Facebook. An "irritate Mark Zuckerberg" group.
- twelvechairs 10y ago
  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
  - xyzzy4 10y ago
    Well that depends if your ideal society is one that optimizes for rights or one that optimizes for good land use.
    - twelvechairs 10y ago
      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.
derefr 10y ago
> 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!)
- belovedeagle 10y ago
  The article makes it clear that this is standard procedure in Hawaii. No new case law is being created.
curun1r 10y ago
> 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.
- disordinary 10y ago
  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.
  - curun1r 10y ago
    Given that some of the owners don't even know that they have an ownership stake in these properties, I'm not sure that's correct.
  - gnopgnip 10y ago
    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.
  - pyre 10y ago
    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.
ryandrake 10y ago
> Zuckerberg owns 700 acres of Kauai[2]. Why isn't that enough? "Enough" is not a word in some people's vocabulary.
thinkingkong 10y ago
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.
- jusq2 10y ago
  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.
- shenanigoat 10y ago
  That's right. There can never be a moral argument in the Randian "meritocratic" universe.
ci5er 10y ago
> Why isn't that enough? 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?
- shenanigoat 10y ago
  Yes, please.
  - ci5er 10y ago
    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.
    - shenanigoat 10y ago
      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.
      - ci5er 10y ago
        > Elected == accountable...generally speaking. 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=rStL7niR7gs
    - deleted 10y ago
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- pyre 10y ago
  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.
refurb 10y ago
Oxfam's report [1] on 62 people accumulating more wealth than half the world's population combined Measuring 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.
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  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.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    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. Net income is a much better metric than wealth.
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  - refurb 10y ago
    One edge case? Look at the debt levels in the US! There is a huge chunk of the population that has a negative net worth, mostly due to mortgage debt. Is it fair to say all those people are poorer than people in India who have a few dollars to their name?
    - smallnamespace 10y ago
      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.
refurb 10y ago
Why isn't that enough? Ted Turner would say that's not enough.[1] [1]https://qz.com/615048/these-are-the-10-biggest-landowners-in-the-united-states/ https://qz.com/615048/these-are-the-10-biggest-landowners-in...

eanzenberg 10y ago

Pretty sad and pathetic.

wavefunction 10y ago

Unlike Gates, Young Zuck couldn't change his spots.

throwaway2dayok 10y ago
It might come with age; perhaps Young Zuck needs to mature into an Older Zuck

kem 10y ago

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.

ChuckMcM 10y ago
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.

noobermin 10y ago

If Zuck truly is planning to run for office as some speculation has supposed, this does not look good for that. 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.

mjfl 10y ago
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.
- noobermin 10y ago
  It doesn't match his public persona, no. Regardless, if it is a hit job, Zuckerberg has more than enough resources and respect to defend himself.
  - mjfl 10y ago
    > 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.
    - noobermin 10y ago
      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.
- 3131s 10y ago
  > (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. http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/34289685/facebook-ceo-suing-hundreds-over-kauai-land http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/34289685/facebook-ceo-sui...

sb8244 10y ago

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?

ajdlinux 10y ago
He owns land that surrounds these land parcels.
- edblarney 10y ago
  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..
  - noobermin 10y ago
    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.

enraged_camel 10y ago

>>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?

xyzzy4 10y ago
>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?

Cozumel 10y ago

$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.

disordinary 10y ago

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?

TopRamen33 10y ago
All beaches are public property in Hawaii. http://seagrant.soest.hawaii.edu/public-access-rights http://seagrant.soest.hawaii.edu/public-access-rights But Zuck doesn't spend his time on the beach on his property.
- disordinary 10y ago
  If he's a typical wealthy person he probably only spends a couple of weeks a year there and has other holiday properties scattered around.
abtinf 10y ago
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.
- NegativeLatency 10y ago
  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.
lefstathiou 10y ago
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.

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aresant 10y ago

How do we even judge moves like this? 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-zuckerberg-compound-raises-red-flags-for-city-board/ 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-donation-2013/#anZC_WB.XaqI http://mashable.com/2014/01/02/zuckerberg-charitable-donatio... (2) http://www.pcworld.com/article/3010838/software-social/zuckerberg-to-give-away-99-of-his-fortune-or-about-45-billion-to-new-charity.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/3010838/software-social/zucke...

samirillian 10y ago
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.

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amaks 10y ago

Where is his appropriate extensively liked facebook post on that subject?

jonathankoren 10y ago
I'm sure his staff is crafting a soft focus photo spread on the issue as we type. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-18/this-team-runs-mark-zuckerberg-s-facebook-page https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-18/this-team...
- amaks 10y ago
  This explains a lot. Zuck, essentially, is: http://blogs-images.forbes.com/kathleenchaykowski/files/2016/02/oculus-1200x799.jpg http://blogs-images.forbes.com/kathleenchaykowski/files/2016...

narrator 10y ago

At least Larry Ellison had the good taste to work with the local population of the Hawaiian Island he bought to provide jobs for them and such.

general_ai 10y ago

Dude is worth $53B. There's nothing they can do.

AustinBGibbons 10y ago

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.

nym 10y ago
The issue is around compelling people to sell land they don't want to, that has a tradition of belonging to that family.
- smallnamespace 10y ago
  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.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    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.
cromulent 10y ago
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. [0] http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/34289685/facebook-ceo-suing-hundreds-over-kauai-land http://www.hawaiinewsnow.com/story/34289685/facebook-ceo-sui...

ProAm 10y ago

Seems like Ellison, Trump and Zuckerberg are not so dissimilar after all.

jonathankoren 10y ago
You're forgetting Vinod Khosla who is trying to circumvent the California constitution, because he doesn't like public property rights. http://fortune.com/2016/04/29/vinod-khosla-beach-trial/ http://fortune.com/2016/04/29/vinod-khosla-beach-trial/

tabeth 10y ago

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] [1] http://www.nber.org/papers/w17234 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-street-psychology/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/occupy-wall-stree...

cooper12 10y ago
I have some quotes that might provide insight: > 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

abtinf 10y ago

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.

hueving 10y ago
Why would anyone read the article when they can take the opportunity to bash the rich?
- meanduck 10y ago
  The GP is good comment lets not init a flame war here.
- debt 10y ago
  because the top 8 billionaires own more wealth than the bottom 50% of the global population? the rich have really been sucking it up lately. https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/2016/jan/18/richest-62-billionaires-wealthy-half-world-population-combined https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/business/20...
  - tedunangst 10y ago
    Which is itself a rigged stat.
  - laingc 10y ago
    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.

gkoberger 10y ago

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.

ryandrake 10y ago

> 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.

Hondor 10y ago
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.

elastic_church 10y ago

> 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.

CodeSheikh 10y ago

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.

thr0waway1239 10y ago

"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. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12588449 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12588449

234dd57d2c8db 10y ago
Zuckerberg is one of the biggest supporters of the whole "open borders, no nations" agenda meant to decrease the cost of labour and drive down wages and protections for workers and increase the influence large corporations have on laws and regulations. Yet Zuckerberg doesn't want any of this for himself, he wants his isolated compounds constructed with large walls. His legal movements obfuscated. His motivations kept in the shadows. "They trust me, dumb fucks" - Zuck These are the kinds of people that are "scared" of the populist uprising at Davos. They just don't get why people don't like them as they eat their $40 dollar hotdogs.

ktRolster 10y ago

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.

dbjacobs 10y ago

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.

notyourwork 10y ago
Sounds about right, or perhaps get lucky and settle with some who are desperate for money.

Zanni 10y ago

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).

lisper 10y ago
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.

willvarfar 10y ago

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.

jhou2 10y ago

Compared to what oil barons and railroad tycoons did a century and a half ago, this is hardly anything.

bduerst 10y ago

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. Here's the fence, before the coffin: http://i.imgur.com/n1o7S3T.jpg http://i.imgur.com/n1o7S3T.jpg

RichardHeart 10y ago

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

meesterdude 10y ago

he paid for 700 acres already - and it's not enough?

rweba 10y ago

This article makes me respect Bill Gates more. You never hear of him being involved in cringy stuff like this. 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-bodyguards-at-his-home/ 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-zuckerberg-compound-raises-red-flags-for-city-board/ 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-zuckerberg-tape-webcam-microphone-facebook 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-shirt-Mark-Zuckerberg-heads-jog-wearing-trusty-uniform-carrying-phone.html 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.

trhway 10y ago
don't forget that one. http://fortune.com/2011/05/26/mark-zuckerbergs-new-challenge-eating-only-what-he-kills-and-yes-we-do-mean-literally/ 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."
sibartlett 10y ago
I work for an IT security company. It’s pretty normal for people in this space to tape their laptop camera and microphone.

dmourati 10y ago

My first year law professor taught us that property law is a bundle of rights. Here's an example that shows that he was right.

jhonovich 10y ago

Hawaii has defeated many powerful forces. Recall the Superferry disaster / ouster. 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.

nojvek 10y ago

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.

rb2k_ 10y ago

Zuck's answer: https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103427714244971 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10103427714244971