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Larry Ellison Rejuvenating Hawaii's Sixth-Largest Island (Which He Owns)
McGruber writes "In June of 2012, we discussed news that Larry Ellison, co-founder and chief executive of Oracle, purchased the Hawaiian island Lanai for $300 million. Ellison now owns nearly everything on the island, including many of the candy-colored plantation-style homes and apartments, one of the two grocery stores, the two Four Seasons hotels and golf courses, the community center and pool, water company, movie theater, half the roads and some 88,000 acres of land. (2% of the island is owned by the government or by longtime Lanai families.) Now Ellison is attempting to win over the island's small, but wary, local population, one whose economic future is heavily dependent on his decisions. He and his team have met with experts in desalination and solar energy to change the way water and electricity are generated, collected, stored and delivered on the island. They are refurbishing residential housing intended for workers (Mr. Ellison's Lanai Resorts owns and manages 400 of the more than 1,500 housing units on the island). They've tackled infrastructure, such as lengthening airport runways and paving county roads. And to improve access to Lanai, Mr. Ellison bought Island Air earlier this year and is closing a deal to buy another airline."
Well, I tend to think people go overboard with the whole private enterprise / government debate. I tend to lean a little towards private enterprise, if only because if I don't like a company I can boycott them and take my money elsewhere. Government, not so much.
I think the proper balance is to let private enterprise to the work, try to maximize profits, but under heavy government oversight and regulation, because corporations have no ethics or morals other than the profit motive - all other things and people are secondary. And if you notice, a lot of the whining coming from the corporate class is about too much regulation. Not a coincidence.
Seriously? Who is going to pave the roads in your city where the property belongs to thousands to millions of people and companies instead of just one?
It sounds to me like what Ellison is trying to create is a modern fiefdom in Lanai. Maybe the next thing you'll hear of him is referring to himself as the Prince of Lanai.
Don't you know? As part of a collective you can steal from the rest and give yourself a nice subsidy. You can force an obligation upon the rest of the people and give yourself a nice entitlement.
That's what 'civil rights' are there is no such thing, there are only individual rights.
There are no 'women rights', there are no 'gay rights', there are no 'children rights', there are no 'minority rights', there are no 'disabled rights', there are no 'worker rights', etc.etc.
There are only individual rights and when some group (any group) is given what the modern collectivist state likes to call 'civil right' what it actually does it puts an obligation upon some people to provide entitlements to some group. This is the exact opposite of the meaning of the concept of 'right'.
A right is only a meaningful concept in the context of a relationship between an individual and the State, not 2 individuals, not an individual and a business. A right is limitation of authority of the collective to destroy rights of an individual.
'Civil right' is the exact opposite of an actual right, 'civil right' relies on destruction of actual real individual rights, it's Orwellian doublespeak.
roman_mir
>the government restricts or doesn't restrict rights of everyone evenly.
Not just restricts, but protects. Abolishing slavery (insofar as we actually managed to do so) had nothing to do with government restrictions on rights, it was a matter of the government stepping in and eliminating socially supported private restrictions on rights.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.