Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/10/01/supreme-court-tells-beach-vi.html
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If he’s so rich he should change the California constitution. Or maybe move to a different state.
(I had beer with Vinod once at a company party. He had friendly conversations with our engineering team)
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Was he buying?
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It was his investment, so technically we bought the beer with his money.
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My understanding is that the real issue is not the access to the road, but the state’s requirement for Mr. Khosla to maintain the road. He is being forced to take positive action to maintain the road up to certain standards, opening him up to being sued if e.g. there is an accident on the road. Please correct me if i’m wrong (i am struggling to find documentation to back up my claim, but also to refute it).
Do you think he should be forced to pay to maintain such a road?
edit: I think this approach (eminent domain for the state to force khosla to sell them the road) makes a lot of sense: https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2018/08/24/california-moves-closer-to-taking-public-pathway-from-billionaire-vinod-khosla/
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Feel like there should be a go fund me to bring tours to that beach all weekend long.
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If I had beach-front property, I’d want it to be private. I’d be upset if beach-goers, as they would inevitably, strayed beyond the public space onto my private property. I’d be upset to have my private road used as public access. These are the reasons why, even if I had the money, I’d never buy beach-front property because, tough shit, beaches are public in California, and property owners don’t get to change access to them.
I have zero sympathy for beach property owners who complain about the problems of having beach property - FFS, it’s always been like this, this is the reality of beaches here; it’s not like things changed. If they didn’t like it, they shouldn’t have bought the damn property. Given that beach property prices have exploded in the last couple decades so that only the super-wealthy can now afford it, it’s like people buying luxury high performance sports cars and then complaining they require a lot of maintenance and accelerate to dangerous speeds too easily…
His every public objection, as per that article, have been to having to provide road access - to not being able to lock the gate to prevent public access. I’ve never heard him frame it as a liability issue, which I’m sure he would have done so loudly if that were remotely an issue. That he demanded the entire price of the property when the state offered to buy just the road rather proves it’s not about any liability issue.
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I was thinking the noble act would be to admit defeat and commit seppuku. Or just commit seppuku I’d be ok with that.
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And they can’t even use the highways for a race track.
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He apparently never even lived there
Yes, but how is he supposed to sleep at night knowing filthy plebs are using his beach?
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If he really wanted a private beach, he should have done what all the other billionaires do, and purchase his own island.
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I don’t really buy the whole “I have no idea why I bought this!” talk. I always felt like the implied plan was to wait for the tenants’ leases to lapse, then knock down the seaside village on the land, and then do something Big with it.
Perhaps there was an original, whimisical business plan: a tourist resort, where continued public access was part and parcel of the vision. But upon purchase it quickly evolved into a more practical business plan: a high-density gated community with an effectively private beach.
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The Entire reason I bought the property was to keep the peasants from occupying a public space in front of my land! If I had known that this wouldn’t work, I wouldn’t have bought the land in the first place! You must compensate me for my lack of legal acumen!
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Hell yes.
And on reflection:
I think the real problem is billionaires. Or, really, anyone whose income exceeds that of the bottom 10% by more than a factor of ten or twelve. [Sheesh! That was an important qualifier to leave off.]
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Just a guess: No one from that team posed any problem with his need to claim a public beach as his own.
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quote: “Or, really, anyone whose income exceeds that of the bottom 10%.”
by which you must mean a large percentage of americans?
Or do you just mean those with more wealth than YOU?
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So, in other words, those kids better stay off your lawn?
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These solid gold pants are entirely too metallic! I am outraged!
This is also why I don’t have a lawn.
“Darn you kids, stay off my… oh, wait nevermind, as you were.”
Although this case is more, “Darn kids, stay off ‘my’ sidewalk!”
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The liability issue isn’t a small one. In Colorado a few years back a friend of mine, who was in the CO Legislature, helped get a bill passed making the liability for property owners who allowed access for hikers (typically across private land to public land) considerably less. That you’d have to prove recklessness or more (not just negligence) of the landowner to get anywhere in a personal injury suit. As I understand it, it’s opened up a lot of access points to various peaks in CO.
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Maybe so, but that’s clearly not his issue - Khosla has been pretty transparent about what his problems were (providing access, period) and has fought efforts to do so. (E.g. when the state offered to buy the road, eliminating any liability on his part, he demanded the full price of the property in recompense.) He’s been trying to wage a public opinion war, and if liability issues were remotely part of the mix, he’d have been using that as his sole talking point, but I’ve never heard it mentioned. Instead he’s been using arguments that make him seem like a villain/ idiot. I’m guessing it’s not really an issue because of state requirements to maintain access to beaches.
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