Slashdot Mirror
New Zealand Crowdfunds $1.7 Million To Buy A Private Beach (fastcoexist.com)
An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes an article from FastCoExist:
When debt-troubled businessman Michael Spackman put his private New Zealand beach on sale, Kiwis started a crowdfunding campaign to buy it back for the public... The crowdfunding campaign raised $1.7 million in donations from around 40,000 people. Even the New Zealand government contributed $254,000.
The BBC reports that the campaign "snubbed a businessman who offered them money in exchange for private access to part of the beach," with the campaign's creator calling this an example of technology's power to unite people for a common cause. "Sometimes you can feel powerless, so for us, it's been a marvelous experience... There's been a real feeling of coming together."
The BBC reports that the campaign "snubbed a businessman who offered them money in exchange for private access to part of the beach," with the campaign's creator calling this an example of technology's power to unite people for a common cause. "Sometimes you can feel powerless, so for us, it's been a marvelous experience... There's been a real feeling of coming together."
We anonymous cowards are fed up with logged-in users unjustly moderating our posts to -1. Even non-trollish posts are suppressed by the moderators with no recourse for anonymous users. We are forced to either have our posts censored by moderators or give up our anonymity. Slashdot users claim to support anonymity and oppose censorship, yet their actions belie their claims. We are fed up with the censorship and will engage in protests to protect our rights. These protests will be done through rampant trolling until we are satisfied that our rights will be respected. The abuse of anonymous cowards must stop. The hypocrisy must cease. Moderators must be curtailed so they can no longer oppress anonymous cowards. Sufficient amounts of downmods by moderators results in the absolute censorship of a particular anonymous coward, effectively silencing the user. Anonymous coward lives matter and cannot just be snuffed out by moderators.
NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE!
ANONYMOUS COWARD LIVES MATTER!
#AnonymousCowardLivesMatter
Kind of sounds like an unwise investment with the expected sea level rise to be between 1 and 3 metres. I hope that beach is deep because they likely have bought something that will become nothing. Investing in underwater front properties at this time is likely not the wisest decision. In fact much of the underwater front market will likely end up in investment funds and sold onto to pension funds (long leased back to current owners at and then abandoned once flooded and the lease broken, bad luck for the pension funds). I wonder how many other buy back the beach crowd funding scams will kick off. There is billions of dollars of property that needs to be dumped on the public purse and I am sure all sorts of scams will be kicked off to do it, the wildest of which will be in Florida https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (Florida the ocean wants it swamps back and it will get them).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Despite living in New Zealand and this being in the loan news for days on end, it was many months ago.
Nice that the NZ government pitched in.
It would be interesting to try something like this on a bigger scale. Suppose 5-10% of your taxes could be designated for public spending according to your choice. 2% - national parks, 2% - drug rehab, 2% - NASA, 2% - local police assistance, 2% - new battleship. Give people a more direct voice in spending. The technology is here. The problem is educating the voters where the problems are. Some things would be really popular, and other things would almost be ignored probably. Could be interesting though. Perhaps if they did it as, budgeted need, stretch goal, special spending. and above that it goes back to general fund.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
Well, on one hand, it's great that the beach is going back to the people... then again, it should never have been owned by the guy in the first place. But I have no clue how New Zealand law works, so there's that. Here in Brazil beaches are public, period. Of course, rich people always find a way to buy property right in front of beaches, built a walled residential area or something, and then make public access difficult... and they'll pay judges and politicians to keep things the way they are. It's still unlawful to do so though. By law, and I've seen cases of very big fines being applied and complete reforms being made, it is forbidden not only to own beaches, but also to constrain public access with nearby private constructions of any sort. Brazilian law is very specific on this, if I'm not mistaken... it's not just some vague open access to the public thing. It's direct access. Like say, if you buy a plot of land right next to the beach and build a walled residential or commercial area there, you are obliged to build streets leading directly to the beach that are open to the public, even if for that you have to make streets going right throught the middle of your walled residential neighborhood, or over/under it. :P
It's like, yeah, you can make a huge walled residential area here, but if people have to go too far around it to make it to the beach, then you are gonna have to provide an alternative way to give them access.
Or maybe I'm just talking bs. Oh well.
"...an example of technology's power to unite people for a common cause."
And that cause is spite. Spite can do great things. Remember, it was spite that got man to the moon.
Probably it's gonna become a polluted shithole with trash strewn all over the place.
And the basis of your prediction is what? Because, that's what the adjacent, publicly owned coastline looks like? It doesn't.
(Silly me. No point in confusing you with facts, you've already made up your mind).
Wonder if we could crowdfund as a lobbyist group or something.
I love it when NZ makes Slashdot.
I miss living there :(
You can tell how powerful someone is by the magnitude of the crime they can commit and be able to get away with.
A part of the Earth that has been used for humans for centuries is then "claimed" by humans only for other humans to "buy" it back off them at a profit so that other humans can use it for free again? What a scam
the government would have just taken the land.. and maybe given something at least close to "market value" for it... maybe.
NZ should pass a law or Constitutional amendment mandating that the public have access rights to all beaches. That's how it's done in Hawaii.
Go Kiwi ! Real proud to call this country my home, and of the people who make it the way it is.
They overpaid for something they already had, and would have continued to have for free: unfettered access to the ENTIRE beach. The rich businessman simply wanted an off-beach building to remain private for 20 year only, when it would then be gifted to the public. What would have been more rational would be to buy an access right for say a couple of hundred thousand dollars, assuming you didn't believe Gareth Morgan was good to his word.
jes -1 that one
:-)
The super-rich overgrown brats should not ever be able to buy something like a beach, or a state park.
Kind of sounds like an unwise investment with the expected sea level rise to be between 1 and 3 metres. I hope that beach is deep because they likely have bought something that will become nothing.
Exactly, the big problem coastline is that it has dimension of 1, while land is an area with two dimensions. This makes coastline much scarcer and in need of more protection of access by anyone. I also agree on state park, but here in Europe, the protection of these areas is quite good (maybe no more in Britain after the Brexit, but it's not my concern, I'll never set foot there again in my life).
We've got quite a good history of protecting our public places from before the EU. I'm sure we'll be fine.
agen judi
agen bola
bursa bola
bursa taruhan
bursa judi
agen bola deposit murah
agen bola deposit 25 rb
agen bola cashback 10%
agen bola terpercaya
I'm a man. So if I'm a homosexual and a motherfucker... that makes your mom a man too.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
We'll ignore the fact that the earth existed for perhaps millions of years before such a thing as government appeared, explaining why a beach could be privately held.
A state park is essentially a legal fiction. It's not a geological fixture like a mountain or lake. Any part of the earth could be made a state park. So saying that "brats" shouldn't "buy" a state park is as nonsensical as saying they shouldn't be able to buy a government building. Meanwhile, there is an Italian restaurant in the old township building near me. It was sold when it was no longer needed and then became private property. Meanwhile, the Independence Mall (which includes Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell pavilion) is an urban national park that includes a little of what used to be privately held. So that doesn't look like a "state park" as most of us picture it, either. Many millions of acres of land are reserved to state and national parks in the USA. It would be reasonable if 0.01% of a 15,000 acre park were sold to a private owner, especially if it was part of some exchange that benefited the public more than that small piece of land.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The super-rich overgrown brats are the ones who protected the ecosystem from the peasants. Don't believe me? Look at history up through the present. In the US, national parks are an interesting "exception" until you realize they were stolen from rich people who were already protecting them from development.
Or an island like Ellison buying Lanai.
Mah daddy paid good money to buy that beachside McMansion, we don't want you proles cluttering up our beach.
David Geffen is still a twat.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Nice to see some positive things on /.
How did this beach become private in the first place ?
Beaches are normally classed as public space in British legal system which NZ and others laws are based
I'm in NZ - This is at least 3-4 months old. "News"