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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 hope that he manages to keep good relations with the natives or they will turn the tables on him. He had better have a backup strategy for this transaction.
Ezekiel 23:20
You know, for the lair.
With enough money, you are the government. Haven't you been paying attention to U.S. history at all?
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
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.
Ellison hasn't done anything but buy a bunch of stuff yet. And by the way, he bought most of the island of Lanai from another private enterprise.
Further, if the people don't like what Ellison is does with the place, what can they do, vote him off the island?
Anyway, might be worth keeping an eye on this project a little longer before you start your Galtian touchdown dance, roman_mir, the history of private enterprise owning islands really isn't all that pleasant, at least for the people who live in those places.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Ellison is one of the more productive people in the world, he was able to devise a machine that is his company, that makes him one of the most productive people out there. All of his employees, all of his properties, they are all extensions of this machine.
I'd put it a little differently. Ellison is a very clever man who has devised a way of diverting a fraction of the productivity of over 100,000 people into his pocket. That way is the Oracle Corporation. Indirectly, his company diverts a fraction of the productivity of about 390,000 corporate customers comprising the efforts of millions of people into his pocket.
Nobody ever accumulated great wealth any other way. The most you can ever achieve from your own productivity is to be moderately comfortable.
happened under a republican president, the son of Reagan's vice president, whil the treasury secretary was a former Goldman Sachs CEO.
you are hereby banned from ever complaining about 'socialist democrats' ever again. ever.
Sadly, this is too often accomplished by externalizing costs to the environment and to the general long-term physical health of the population... ultimately putting whatever expenses can be externalized onto the government and tax payers.
Ellison is a clever man who helped invent the modern RDBMS, which is the basis for much of today's information technology.
Oh please.
Ellison is a clever man who implemented parts of a modern RDBMS. The invention happened elsewhere, and without Ellison the field would have been advanced at pretty much the same pace. He is noted mainly for his business acumen and inhuman practices to achieve his goals.
That's as stupid as saying Steve Jobs invented the iPod, the Mouse, the Desktop, or Multitasking. He didn't.
The way to solve that was to have 50 states and very little federal law thus creating competition among the states for population, which directly correlates with their tax revenues. Now that the federal government took over everything and made most of the states indentured servants, finding another country is the only real option left if you don't like your government's way of managing things.
Mind the frickin' laser...
Wrong. Ellison did not help invent the modern RDBMS. The concept of a DBMS started with Charles W. Bachman and later Edgar Codd refined the concept into the relational model. Please vacate my lawn.