10 ms·

Mark Zuckerberg Sued Native Hawaiians for Their Own Land [video]

82 points by uladzislau 9y ago

iAMAGuest 9y ago
Look while it might sound horrible of a billionaire to do so, the way the titles work is quite difficult. You buy the land from someone, and then 6 months down the track a relative turns up and claims they own part of the land etc etc. So pre-empting this, it is better to sue first than be tied up in court cases with people turning up over the next 20 years.
- wavefunction 9y ago
  >it is better to sue first than be tied up in court cases with people turning up over the next 20 years. Better for who though?
  - paulddraper 9y ago
    For the person deciding whether to sue.
  - iAMAGuest 9y ago
    > Better for who though? Subjectively him, and that is why I am gathering he is (was) doing it, and I cannot blame him. These are not your "normal" titles, ownership of land is passed down through generations with little record as to the direct ownership of land.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > Better for who though? Settling land ownership disputes early and clearly is in the common interest.
  - thephyber 9y ago
    > Better for who though? Everybody but the lawyers. As much as I would like to protect native islanders and their lineage, I don't think it's in anyone's best interest to allow land to idle half in a strange state of title limbo. There are many countries in the Western Hemisphere (and even cities in the US) that are suffering for having poor property ownership recording or the claiming of ownership through inheritance. Haiti comes to mind, along with abandoned buildings in Detroit and Baltimore.
- peteretep 9y ago
  The amount of targetted Zuck-hate has me wondering if there's anti-astro-turfing going on
  - cisanti 9y ago
    It's easy to hate zuck for ethical reasons. I personally believe what he is doing is wrong and immoral. His body language and his communication skills don't do him any favors. Also, the man builds his own private mansions with walls, avoids taxes and then tell Europeans to take million refugees. This man is sleazy hypocrite.
- mmsimanga 9y ago
  In African villages (in my home country) it works the same. No one has title deeds and you are allocated land by the local headman. Sometimes the process is quick if no one is living on the land. Sometimes it takes a while because some relative has to be traced and consulted so he/she doesn't ask for their land back. Most of the land is handed down. I must say I do prefer this to dealing with property agent, conveyancer and bank. You get to know your neighbors in the process and the history of the land. It is a more social process and you deal with people directly connected to the land.
josephpmay 9y ago
Haven't watched this specific video, but from what I've read previously he's suing so that the courts can determine who owns the land so he can fairly pay them. Many people own tiny slices of land that they don't have any practical use for (because of how Hawaiian land gets passed down through generations), and Mark owns the vast majority of the island, so he's trying to fairly compensate the remaining land owners. Also, he apparently dropped the lawsuit after the uproar. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/01/27/zuckerberg-drops-kauai-land-suits-hawaii-quiet-title/97152332/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/01/27/zuckerbe...
- steve19 9y ago
  I got $5 "for free" from the Apple ebook class action settlement, I would rather not have gotten the money and the lawyers gotten less. Sure it's not rational, but it's how I feel. I am sure the islanders would rather not be forced to part with their land, so a billionaire can live in a private paradise, than receive a fair, or even better than fair forced sale price.
- pooloo1 9y ago
  > so he can fairly pay them You make it sound as if he is doing them a good deed... The idea is they don't want their land to be owned by anyone other than the native people... hence the small portions of land split among the indigenous and handed down through generations. Greed is the primary issue here, and I totally understand their view on it. America has been destroying their island by commercializing a majority of it.
  - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
    > The idea is they don't want their land to be owned by anyone other than the native people... hence the small portions of land split among the indigenous and handed down through generations The legal way to do this is for those many owners to put their land in a private or public trust, either to be held indefinitely for public non-commercial use or held in the name of the trustees and their beneficiaries. Trying to do this informally is inefficient and silly.
ringaroundthetx 9y ago
Yeah its almost like we need a different word than "sue" which universally has negative connotations. He named them in court to force a discovery process because governance structure in Hawaii has no infrastructure to track titles. Hawaii's executive branch has no tool, and Hawaii's legislative branch isn't going to undermine its constituents, so Hawaii's judicial branch is all that there is. He offered them money for the land when they were able to be identified. He did it through an LLC and some people regretted it when they found out it was actually the "rich white man" instead of a fellow farmer like they assumed. Now as for tact? It was calculated and poorly executed. Analogous to when a billionaire landlord tries to evict all the public housing tenants who are all disenfranchised minorities "because they are renters! the law is on my side!". Actions have consequences.
khazhou 9y ago
WHY do we have an economic system that allows an individual to own almost an entire Hawaiian island, by virtue of owning majority share of an advertising platform?? The employees certainly don’t get an island of their own, nor the owners or workers at any vendor data centers, or the power plant workers, or the crew that laid fiber or built the routers and wifi access points that get FB onto your screen? This giant funnel that plows billions of dollara into the pockets of a tiny number of people, because they have the piece of paper that says “I own this” and everyone down the line was just ok with it. We should not allow billionaires.
- leggomylibro 9y ago
  Ideally, we really shouldn't allow any individual to gain too large a share of any kind of power, whether financial or political or whatever. Of course, that's probably also a good way to get systems and things which are...well, designed by committee.
  - colechristensen 9y ago
    The United States was designed to harness competition. It is what was supposed to keep us successful. It has done a very good job. If there are 20 burger restaurants, the best burger isn't designed by committee. Each will try to improve to stay in the market and the people who decide who survives and who dies is determined by the people choosing which burger to eat. It works as long as there is competition. One burger restaurant winning all of the business with a great burger, and then using scale to make competition impossible followed by lowering the quality to find minimum cost with maximum profit... that's another outcome of capitalism, and one we're suffering now. To make it work you need centralized authority that resists corruption and can put it's finger on the scale to encourage the appropriate amount of diversity.
- colechristensen 9y ago
  Remember to compare what you don't like about one system with what you wouldn't like about the other. Socialist societies aren't without centralized extreme power, and how you get and keep that power is arguably much worse. You also don't need to be socialist to fix the inequality problems. And simply, there are too many mathematical power laws in any society to prevent the few from having a lot. The intensity is what you need to change. It's difficult.
NelsonMinar 9y ago
Hawai'i has a different history of land title than most of the United States. This Wikipedia article isn't great, but has the basics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_M%C4%81hele https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_M%C4%81hele
- xupybd 9y ago
  I'm always unsure how to view historic land ownership. It seems a very recent development that humanity has stopped stealing land from one another and it's been great. But now that we're not doing it anymore, many compare historic actions to today's values and say they were wronged. In many sense they were wronged but there is not a person on earths who ancestors didn't have land stolen from them. It's only the land that was most recently stolen that causes issues. Given the amount of time that has past and the complexities around the issue I just don't see any solution that could be considered fair. Someone has since purchased the stolen land and views them selves as the rightful owner but the person that should have inherited the land also has a claim to it.
xupybd 9y ago
Why is it when a Hawain says "stop moving here" it's okay, but when the right say lets reduce the number of people moving here illegally it's nationalism and racism?
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  They aren't saying "stop moving here". They're saying "this is our land, if you want it you must first get us to agree to sell it to you." Also, we deposed the Hawaiian government in a military coup back in the late 19th century.
  - xupybd 9y ago
    Oh totally agree with the sentiment that they need to agree to sell it first. But in one segment of the video a radio host asks foreigners to "stop moving here". I know it's a bit off topic, I was just shocked to hear it. I thought that was just nationalism. I didn't think that would be celebrated in a video like that one.
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Mz 9y ago
I will state upfront that I think Zuckerberg is an asshole for doing this. But the reality is that there are a lot of problems with the way native land gets structured legally. Customary land accounts for 97% of land in Papua New Guinea. This is basically tribal land. There are more than 800 languages spoken there and about 40% of residents still support themselves in a traditional subsistence tribal lifestyle. In some sense, it is a success in terms of protecting native traditions. It also means only 3% of the land can be developed. You cannot get a mortgage if a bank cannot take possession of the land. This barrier to accessing funds is a huge obstacle to real estate development on most tribal lands in any country. Papua New Guinea has terrible intractable poverty and some of the worst domestic violence in the world. The violence there is so bad it is comparable to violence typically only seen in war zones. Violence and poverty tend to fuel one another. People trapped in poverty commit violence because they are frustrated and angry. Violence both destroys resources and makes it unsafe and unwise to try to invest money in development. Historically, agrarian cultures and more modern cultures tend to displace hunter gatherer societies. Hunter gatherer cultures support only very low population levels. It takes a lot of land to feed each individual under this model. In order to return to a hunter gatherer model for the world, billions of people would need to die. Modern agriculture is what makes modern life and population levels at all feasible. Holding the land as a group sounds like a nice ideal, but it has a really poor track record for actually fostering some kind of high quality of (modern) life. I don't know what the answer is. I am some small part Cherokee. I have kind of a romantic attachment to the idea of preserving native culture and practices. But this particular real estate practice seems to do more harm than good. I wish I had a brilliant answer for how to preserve native land and also foster development. But those two things seem to be diametrically opposed and fundamentally incompatible. Someone who knows a good answer, pretty please step forward and tell me otherwise. I would love to learn that I am wrong.
kapauldo 9y ago
He seems like a dick.

82 points by uladzislau 9y ago

Look while it might sound horrible of a billionaire to do so, the way the titles work is quite difficult. You buy the land from someone, and then 6 months down the track a relative turns up and claims they own part of the land etc etc. So pre-empting this, it is better to sue first than be tied up in court cases with people turning up over the next 20 years.

wavefunction 9y ago
>it is better to sue first than be tied up in court cases with people turning up over the next 20 years. Better for who though?
- paulddraper 9y ago
  For the person deciding whether to sue.
- iAMAGuest 9y ago
  > Better for who though? Subjectively him, and that is why I am gathering he is (was) doing it, and I cannot blame him. These are not your "normal" titles, ownership of land is passed down through generations with little record as to the direct ownership of land.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > Better for who though? Settling land ownership disputes early and clearly is in the common interest.
- thephyber 9y ago
  > Better for who though? Everybody but the lawyers. As much as I would like to protect native islanders and their lineage, I don't think it's in anyone's best interest to allow land to idle half in a strange state of title limbo. There are many countries in the Western Hemisphere (and even cities in the US) that are suffering for having poor property ownership recording or the claiming of ownership through inheritance. Haiti comes to mind, along with abandoned buildings in Detroit and Baltimore.
peteretep 9y ago
The amount of targetted Zuck-hate has me wondering if there's anti-astro-turfing going on
- cisanti 9y ago
  It's easy to hate zuck for ethical reasons. I personally believe what he is doing is wrong and immoral. His body language and his communication skills don't do him any favors. Also, the man builds his own private mansions with walls, avoids taxes and then tell Europeans to take million refugees. This man is sleazy hypocrite.
mmsimanga 9y ago
In African villages (in my home country) it works the same. No one has title deeds and you are allocated land by the local headman. Sometimes the process is quick if no one is living on the land. Sometimes it takes a while because some relative has to be traced and consulted so he/she doesn't ask for their land back. Most of the land is handed down. I must say I do prefer this to dealing with property agent, conveyancer and bank. You get to know your neighbors in the process and the history of the land. It is a more social process and you deal with people directly connected to the land.

josephpmay 9y ago

Haven't watched this specific video, but from what I've read previously he's suing so that the courts can determine who owns the land so he can fairly pay them. Many people own tiny slices of land that they don't have any practical use for (because of how Hawaiian land gets passed down through generations), and Mark owns the vast majority of the island, so he's trying to fairly compensate the remaining land owners. Also, he apparently dropped the lawsuit after the uproar. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/01/27/zuckerberg-drops-kauai-land-suits-hawaii-quiet-title/97152332/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/01/27/zuckerbe...

steve19 9y ago
I got $5 "for free" from the Apple ebook class action settlement, I would rather not have gotten the money and the lawyers gotten less. Sure it's not rational, but it's how I feel. I am sure the islanders would rather not be forced to part with their land, so a billionaire can live in a private paradise, than receive a fair, or even better than fair forced sale price.
pooloo1 9y ago
> so he can fairly pay them You make it sound as if he is doing them a good deed... The idea is they don't want their land to be owned by anyone other than the native people... hence the small portions of land split among the indigenous and handed down through generations. Greed is the primary issue here, and I totally understand their view on it. America has been destroying their island by commercializing a majority of it.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > The idea is they don't want their land to be owned by anyone other than the native people... hence the small portions of land split among the indigenous and handed down through generations The legal way to do this is for those many owners to put their land in a private or public trust, either to be held indefinitely for public non-commercial use or held in the name of the trustees and their beneficiaries. Trying to do this informally is inefficient and silly.

ringaroundthetx 9y ago

Yeah its almost like we need a different word than "sue" which universally has negative connotations. He named them in court to force a discovery process because governance structure in Hawaii has no infrastructure to track titles. Hawaii's executive branch has no tool, and Hawaii's legislative branch isn't going to undermine its constituents, so Hawaii's judicial branch is all that there is. He offered them money for the land when they were able to be identified. He did it through an LLC and some people regretted it when they found out it was actually the "rich white man" instead of a fellow farmer like they assumed. Now as for tact? It was calculated and poorly executed. Analogous to when a billionaire landlord tries to evict all the public housing tenants who are all disenfranchised minorities "because they are renters! the law is on my side!". Actions have consequences.

khazhou 9y ago

WHY do we have an economic system that allows an individual to own almost an entire Hawaiian island, by virtue of owning majority share of an advertising platform?? The employees certainly don’t get an island of their own, nor the owners or workers at any vendor data centers, or the power plant workers, or the crew that laid fiber or built the routers and wifi access points that get FB onto your screen? This giant funnel that plows billions of dollara into the pockets of a tiny number of people, because they have the piece of paper that says “I own this” and everyone down the line was just ok with it. We should not allow billionaires.

leggomylibro 9y ago
Ideally, we really shouldn't allow any individual to gain too large a share of any kind of power, whether financial or political or whatever. Of course, that's probably also a good way to get systems and things which are...well, designed by committee.
- colechristensen 9y ago
  The United States was designed to harness competition. It is what was supposed to keep us successful. It has done a very good job. If there are 20 burger restaurants, the best burger isn't designed by committee. Each will try to improve to stay in the market and the people who decide who survives and who dies is determined by the people choosing which burger to eat. It works as long as there is competition. One burger restaurant winning all of the business with a great burger, and then using scale to make competition impossible followed by lowering the quality to find minimum cost with maximum profit... that's another outcome of capitalism, and one we're suffering now. To make it work you need centralized authority that resists corruption and can put it's finger on the scale to encourage the appropriate amount of diversity.
colechristensen 9y ago
Remember to compare what you don't like about one system with what you wouldn't like about the other. Socialist societies aren't without centralized extreme power, and how you get and keep that power is arguably much worse. You also don't need to be socialist to fix the inequality problems. And simply, there are too many mathematical power laws in any society to prevent the few from having a lot. The intensity is what you need to change. It's difficult.

NelsonMinar 9y ago

Hawai'i has a different history of land title than most of the United States. This Wikipedia article isn't great, but has the basics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_M%C4%81hele https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_M%C4%81hele

xupybd 9y ago
I'm always unsure how to view historic land ownership. It seems a very recent development that humanity has stopped stealing land from one another and it's been great. But now that we're not doing it anymore, many compare historic actions to today's values and say they were wronged. In many sense they were wronged but there is not a person on earths who ancestors didn't have land stolen from them. It's only the land that was most recently stolen that causes issues. Given the amount of time that has past and the complexities around the issue I just don't see any solution that could be considered fair. Someone has since purchased the stolen land and views them selves as the rightful owner but the person that should have inherited the land also has a claim to it.

xupybd 9y ago

Why is it when a Hawain says "stop moving here" it's okay, but when the right say lets reduce the number of people moving here illegally it's nationalism and racism?

JumpCrisscross 9y ago
They aren't saying "stop moving here". They're saying "this is our land, if you want it you must first get us to agree to sell it to you." Also, we deposed the Hawaiian government in a military coup back in the late 19th century.
- xupybd 9y ago
  Oh totally agree with the sentiment that they need to agree to sell it first. But in one segment of the video a radio host asks foreigners to "stop moving here". I know it's a bit off topic, I was just shocked to hear it. I thought that was just nationalism. I didn't think that would be celebrated in a video like that one.
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Mz 9y ago

I will state upfront that I think Zuckerberg is an asshole for doing this. But the reality is that there are a lot of problems with the way native land gets structured legally. Customary land accounts for 97% of land in Papua New Guinea. This is basically tribal land. There are more than 800 languages spoken there and about 40% of residents still support themselves in a traditional subsistence tribal lifestyle. In some sense, it is a success in terms of protecting native traditions. It also means only 3% of the land can be developed. You cannot get a mortgage if a bank cannot take possession of the land. This barrier to accessing funds is a huge obstacle to real estate development on most tribal lands in any country. Papua New Guinea has terrible intractable poverty and some of the worst domestic violence in the world. The violence there is so bad it is comparable to violence typically only seen in war zones. Violence and poverty tend to fuel one another. People trapped in poverty commit violence because they are frustrated and angry. Violence both destroys resources and makes it unsafe and unwise to try to invest money in development. Historically, agrarian cultures and more modern cultures tend to displace hunter gatherer societies. Hunter gatherer cultures support only very low population levels. It takes a lot of land to feed each individual under this model. In order to return to a hunter gatherer model for the world, billions of people would need to die. Modern agriculture is what makes modern life and population levels at all feasible. Holding the land as a group sounds like a nice ideal, but it has a really poor track record for actually fostering some kind of high quality of (modern) life. I don't know what the answer is. I am some small part Cherokee. I have kind of a romantic attachment to the idea of preserving native culture and practices. But this particular real estate practice seems to do more harm than good. I wish I had a brilliant answer for how to preserve native land and also foster development. But those two things seem to be diametrically opposed and fundamentally incompatible. Someone who knows a good answer, pretty please step forward and tell me otherwise. I would love to learn that I am wrong.

kapauldo 9y ago

He seems like a dick.