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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."
You missed the point of the community's move to purchase back land previously owned by a private millionaire. In New Zealand, we value the land, sea and the ecosystems therein. We made this decision to preserve a beautiful section of land and enable all New Zealand families (and even yourself, if you choose to visit as a tourist) to be able to visit freely and unrestricted. We live in an age where money can buy our coastline and islands, and prevent people from accessing this "owned" land. As a New Zealander, I applaud the effort we have made, and achieved, and hope others throughout the world may also begin to take back areas of significant natural importance.... Not too sure what pension funds and investments funds have to do with it,I guess American's value the $ over nature.. A pity in my opinion...
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.
You might find this article about the Queen's Chain interesting as well. Note:
Why did you sell a beach in the first place .. In many countries beaches /forts etc cannot be privately owned.
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.
New Zealand is one such country, but there are some historical exceptions.
The joys of new zealands libertarian experiment. A faultering economy, private beaches and half the countries brightest citizens packing bags for australia
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
Quote the opposite, according to the statistics. Most ex-patriot kiwis are returning home (which is pushing house prices up massively) because the rest of the World has gone insane (the so-called 'leadership' virtue signals by helping everyone except the native-born citizens). Australia is quite a bit less safe and less chilled than New Zealand, it just has better weather and a slightly higher economic standard of living.
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 *
Go Kiwi ! Real proud to call this country my home, and of the people who make it the way it is.
I used to like living in NZ too, but theres two things that made me leave;
Geographic isolation. I like living on a large continental landmass rather than a small island at the bottom of the planet. The feeling of connectedness with the world, the ability to, if I so desired, get in a car and drive from Europe to Asia or travel by train from London to Saigon. Just wow. The NZ equivalent would involve blue water sailing. Airline flights and cruise liners are pretty expensive.
Geological instability. NZ regularly gets paved over by volcanic activity and earthquakes. Taupo is a crater lake, the whole North Island is a gigantic volcano; Ruapehu and Taranaki are VENTS from this huge volcano. Very very large vents. The reason NZ has very few native freshwater fish (IIRC there are two native species, both very very small) is because the rivers and streams are regularly purged out.
I think long term. If my descendants are all in NZ then they are quite likely to all die.
I wish I could live in NZ, its a nice enough place with nice enough people (though I often found the NZ friendliness a bit forced, as if Kiwis feel like they MUST appear to be happy and friendly at all times, even if they hate you or are really miserable inside so they walk down the street with fixed grins on their faces. The more friendly a Kiwi is toward you, the more likely it is that they really don't like you at all).
In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
Here's my proposal, specific to the USA for reasons which will be apparent: Any the government wishes to engage in compbat action, that tax year each citizen is taxed the full cost of that deployment. Including combat salaries, VA benefits, hardware, fuel, everything. So if the government wishes to spend a puny $20 billion dropping 'smart' bombs on whoever, that's $100 extra tax on each person, not subject to any loopholes, no income restrictions, no getting out of it. Everyone pays upfront, no passing the cost to grand kids. The Iraq War (#2) would have cost each person $10,000-ish. My guess is that after the first $1000 tax bills came in, that war would have wound down quick. Or better, when the cost estimates of starting the war in the first place came out, no one would support it given the flimsy reasoning. I do think people would support limited military action. Going after al Qaeda after 911....people would come together and pay for that. Sticking our nose in Syria's...less likely. Side benefit is it would make Pentagon more dollar conscious as well. People react strongly to 'pricing'.