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Larry Ellison Buys His Own Hawaiian Island

First time accepted submitter nrozema writes "Oracle co-founder and billionaire Larry Ellison is buying the Hawaiian island of Lana'i, the sixth-largest island in the U.S. archipelago. Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie confirmed in a written statement that the current landowner filed a transfer application with the state's Public Utilities commission Wednesday to sell its 98 percent share of the 141-square-mile island to Ellison."

14 of 398 comments (clear)

  1. Never thought.... by Bloody+Bastard · · Score: 5, Funny

    ....tsunamis could be a good thing.

    1. Re:Never thought.... by dintech · · Score: 5, Funny

      98 percent share

      It's a shame the Google Trial didn't pay out. He could have bought the last 2%...

    2. Re:Never thought.... by tnk1 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Bond: Do you expect me to talk, Ellison?

      Ellison: Hahahaha! No Mr. Bond, I expect you to *buy*.

  2. Uh-oh. by RevWaldo · · Score: 5, Funny

    Larry Ellison also owns a MIG fighter jet. This cannot be good.

    .

    1. Re:Uh-oh. by stevencbrown · · Score: 5, Funny

      And he looks like Hank Scorpio!

      All we need is oracle to open up a germ warfare division, though think he'll have to settle for the western seaboard rather than the eastern, if he's based in Hawaii?

    2. Re:Uh-oh. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm not one of those idiots who whines and bitches about how someone makes more money than other people and how they should somehow give it all back to them or something. However, it's strange thinking that I've worked here for fifteen years and the biggest purchase of my life is my $200k house that I'll be paying off until I die . . . while my boss/CEO is buying fighter jets, billion dollar yachts, appearing in Iron Man 2, buying massively expensive houses all over the place, and buying a 141sq mile Hawaiian island. It's kind of demoralizing to realize that Larry probably spent more in this one purchase than every single person *combined* in my entire division will earn (after taxes) in three or four life-times. Or as much as I would earn in take-home if I continued working from today until the year 17,000.

    3. Re:Uh-oh. by tgd · · Score: 5, Interesting

      people in africa have been starving since i was a kid. too bad when you send them food the government takes it

      Right, and beyond that, this implies that the kids our food and money saved in the 80's turned around and had another generation of even more kids... that still couldn't be fed.

      Not sure what the end game of that process is.

    4. Re:Uh-oh. by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Informative

      We send rice directly to Haiti. All that did was destroy their rice farms. Meaning more poor people to go on food aid. We destroyed one of the larger parts of their economy with this aid.

    5. Re:Uh-oh. by fearofcarpet · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I'm not one of those idiots who whines and bitches about how someone makes more money than other people and how they should somehow give it all back to them or something. However, it's strange thinking that I've worked here for fifteen years and the biggest purchase of my life is my $200k house that I'll be paying off until I die . . . while my boss/CEO is buying fighter jets, billion dollar yachts, appearing in Iron Man 2, buying massively expensive houses all over the place, and buying a 141sq mile Hawaiian island. It's kind of demoralizing to realize that Larry probably spent more in this one purchase than every single person *combined* in my entire division will earn (after taxes) in three or four life-times. Or as much as I would earn in take-home if I continued working from today until the year 17,000.

      I am one of those idiots. Not because we shouldn't award innovation and hard work, but because your boss/CEO is getting richer at your expense. I know that the libertarians around here like to say that free markets lead to meritocracy, but it just isn't the case. Your wages, my wages, and 99% of people on Slashdot have stagnated over the past 30 years. Instead, we are supposed to "earn" money by investing in a house. How has that worked out? Gen X, the generation to which I happen to belong, has lost around 40% of its wealth since the housing bubble burst. But Larry Ellison is buying a Hawaiian island. Where did that money come from? Thin air? Where did our lost wealth go? Thin air? No, of course not. It never existed except as debt on a bank balance sheet. And now that the debt has gone bad, we get to pay to de-leverage banks. The economy is zero sum. We can collectively only increase our wealth by the amount that the economy grows each year. Likewise, when the economy shrinks, we must collectively shed wealth. But somehow Larry gets rich when the economy grows and gets richer when it shrinks. That is the policies of the government actively transferring wealth from you and I to Larry Ellison so that he can buy a f***ing Hawaiian island during a prolonged, global economic contraction that has turned home ownership into Russian roulette for the rest of us. And it will continue like this until perception and reality converge.

      Also, WTF does one person need with an entire Hawaiian island? Or a fighter jet? Why do we allow one person to accumulate so much wealth that they have to find new, unnecessary extravagances to blow it on while the rest of us can barely afford to educate our kids? Shouldn't there be some level of comfort that we allow the middle class to achieve before letting people like Larry Ellison skip ludicrous and go straight to plaid? Right now it seems that we have to wait for the benevolent "job creators" to toss some coin our way, but not until there is "more certainty" in the markets. Fortunately for us there are still enough billionaires to buy the White House for someone that understands their plight.

      --
      Actually, I wrote my thesis on life experience.
    6. Re:Uh-oh. by Dcnjoe60 · · Score: 5, Informative

      not trying to be a smart*ss

      Why the fuck did you censor your shit there? Slashdot's a free fucking speech zone, you can fucking say all the shit you fucking want to.

      But doesn't a free speech zone imply that I can censor myself, if I choose to?

  3. he's like Dr. No by circletimessquare · · Score: 5, Funny

    With these billionaires also starting their own private space programs too, all we need is a suave british agent and a hot local chick going to raid the compound threatening megalomaniacal schemes

    "do you expect me to talk?"

    "no mr. bond, I expect no SQL to this movie, I expect you to join that table with this collate, and then drop"

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  4. Next year: Oracle secedes by AbominousSalad · · Score: 5, Funny

    Next year's follow-up story - Oracle secedes, and couches itself as fully as possible in its total reality distortion field.

    Then it sues Greece for having had oracles 2000 years ago.

    --
    Every trollism an AC posts is prefixed, in my mind, with "A. Coward whined, in a weak and cowardly voice:"
  5. Re:so what? by mjr167 · · Score: 5, Funny

    So... shooting trespassers is ok if we eat them afterwards?

  6. He's going to plant coffee by rs79 · · Score: 5, Funny

    So he can finally make money off Java.

    --
    Need Mercedes parts ?