
Vinod Khosla is willing to litigate California’s coast for the rest of his life - sytelus
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/technology/vinod-khosla-beach.html
======
privateSFacct
Just so we're clear since I see a lot of comments here about stealing and
"blatant" criminality.

He was ordered to private access at $2 per car, with no adjustment for
inflation, across his property to a beach, by a government entity. This
despite some reasonable case law on the idea that if you charge people to
access something, you can change that price or go out of that business if you
want.

In addition, he WON this case in CALIFORNIA at the beginning, though I thought
on a bit of a ridiculous approach

To catch folks up, he's now been on a super long losing streak, and the US
Supreme Court did not take up the case. It's a bit hard to see the state
getting the road they want for $300K they claim it's worth, and they are
passing law after law to try and get it. My guess is it ends up more in the
1.5M range?

Now if the government REALLY wanted to give the public access to nature -
they'd ban all the STUPID parking restrictions near natural resources. Every
rich area in California has some kind of state park or regional park
maintained by all our government dollars, but the rich people living near it
do this totally wild weekend only parking restriction on these major roads all
around the entrance to the park, so no one but the rich folks living right
there can access the park. It's kind of genius. You literally have a huge wide
road, with parking on the sides NORMALLY during the week, but during weekends
to keep poor folks from parking on the road and using the park, they ban
weekend parking on this main road and all side streets for a few miles from
park entrance.

~~~
AlexTWithBeard
If the government REALLY wanted to give public access to the beach, they could
have negotiated a footpath across this guy's property and build a parking
nearby.

~~~
sidlls
The government doesn't have to negotiate for anything: the law is that access
must be provided. The law doesn't specify anything about amenities, just
access.

~~~
onetimemanytime
Really? And where would be the road, and how wide? No compensation? Access
24/7?

Who builds, maintains the road? If a person dies there or a car is stolen who
is responsible etc etc...

It's not as simple, that is HIS property.

~~~
sidlls
Access doesn't mean a road is required. He simply cannot prevent people from
accessing the beach, whether by foot, bicycle or other means typically
employed.

If Vinod supplies a road he'd be responsible for maintenance. The other
questions are handled already: he'd do the same thing as if someone died in
his house or a car was stolen from his driveway. Any member of the public who
observes crimes like this can also report them

~~~
onetimemanytime
>> _Access doesn 't mean a road is required. He simply cannot prevent people
from accessing the beach, whether by foot, bicycle or other means typically
employed._

So _you_ can use all his property to access the beach, including unnecessarily
zig-zags and passing right by his front door, 100 (or whatever) feet away from
the beach? Why not require him to give people 80% of the rooms in his house
too?

If people have to use his property it has to be done with a delicate balance
between public and PRIVATE property rights. That's what courts are for.
Judging by some of the comments here, I'm kinda glad he sued.

~~~
sidlls
The law is not a dumb computer that executes code. It doesn't have to specify
the means and constraints on access to the level of detail you are arguing
for, nor should it be required to: the law when written could not account for
all possible scenarios and it is not rational to have that expectation.

------
rademacher
This article may have been on here yesterday and seems relevant [1]. For this
guy it's probably not about fighting for what he believes is "right", it's all
about winning. He bought land, a fight ensued, and now he relishes the
opportunity to crush his opponent (average people).

[1] [https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/12/rich-
peop...](https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/12/rich-people-happy-
money/577231/)

~~~
eadmund
> now he relishes the opportunity to crush his opponent (average people).

It seems to me that _he 's_ the underdog here: his opponents not only _also_
have the resources to drag this fight on for a decade, they also have the
state legislature and the governor on their side. At this point, the state is
prepared to use armed force (which is what eminent domain ultimately is) to
take his property, and if he tries to physically resist its agents will use
violence to subdue him. Ignoring the accountable government, it's remarkable
that an unaccountable non-profit has the resources to fight one of the richest
men in the world for years, and it's sobering to think of how little chance
you or I would have if a similar nonprofit attacked us.

I have no idea if he's legally in the right or wrong, although given that the
state has had to change the law, it sounds like he was originally in the
right. And I wonder at what point laws aimed at a single person's situation
become too akin to bills of attainder to pass constitutional muster.

~~~
icebraining
The state doesn't have to change the law. The lawsuits which he lost were
based on the existing law.

As for violence, the only ones who were manhandled by the state have been
surfers, not Khosla.

------
deanCommie
> He frames the struggle in the Silicon Valley patois of contrarianism. “I’d
> rather do the right hard things now that I’m in,” he says, “than the wrong
> easy things.”

Based on his fallacious belief that he knows what is the right thing in a
societal domain outside of his subject matter expertise.

Silicon Valley hubris in a nutshell.

~~~
garmaine
But that hubris is where progress originates from. You can't separate one from
the other, unfortunately. You have to be that stubborn about things you
believe you are right about, in order to prove the world wrong. (Even if it is
him that is wrong in this instance.)

~~~
patcon
Respectfully disagree. Yes, naiveté (which disruptive thinking is
operationalizing in a sometimes-good way) is a positive characteristic to
cultivate in society (ie. systems), to enter domains with a little bit of
incredulity.

But if it exists perpetually in one person on one topic in one set of
observations and conditions, then they are simply a stubborn asshole.

~~~
garmaine
I'm not talking about naiveté. I'm talking about the scientific and
philosophical arrogance of following your own models regardless of societal or
cultural conventions. This is quite difference from naiveté which is a sort of
ignorance from inexperience. People who consistently make revolutionary
progress, rather than just get lucky once, are the sorts that "know better"
but don't care.

------
sidlls
'“A billionaire is a bad word in this country now,” he says, as his tea cools.
“And that pains me.”'

Maybe if fewer of them thought of themselves as being better than everyone
else and, more importantly, stopped acting like they thought that way, their
reputation would improve.

But I don't believe that pains him. This isn't new. We've seen this kind of
attitude in the wealthy time and again here in the US and every other society
where a wealth gap as big as ours has existed. The results tend to not favor
anyone, but the very wealthy tend to lose the most.

~~~
siruncledrew
> "And that pains me."

 _wipes tear with $100_

------
WhitneyLand
>created Java, the programming language that formed the

>foundation for much of today’s internet

How did Java help the enable the Internet?

There’s a discussion to be had about it’s significance to programming
languages, but I don’t see how the Internet would have flourished any less
without it.

Seems it could be argued Java was an obstacle to the Internet w.r.t. it’s role
in the history of various fat tech ideas that tried and failed to become a
defacto browser standard.

With all due respect to his successes, I’m not quite sure which of those is
the source of getting credit for creating the foundation of the Internet.

Sun didn’t invent HTTP and didn’t sell the only computers that could run a web
server.

~~~
gaius
_Sun didn’t invent HTTP and didn’t sell the only computers that could run a
web server._

If the web had been built on NFS they might have a case.

------
pg_bot
If there is anything you should learn from this article, it's that you should
hire a PR team if you're a billionaire.

Why would anyone want to be a business partner with him after reading this?

------
cmsj
> is willing to _use his giant pile of money to pay other people_ to litigate

FTFY.

It's easy to be an asshole for an extended period of time when you can
outsource all of the assholery to professional assholes.

~~~
jondubois
It's a good time to be a lawyer. These days there are lots of highly paid
shareholders and investors with massive egos, unlimited free time and 0
concern for society.

With increased automation, we will all become lawyers.

We will make a living litigating against the minions of other rich people to
seek damages from whoever it was that spilled their drink on the billionaire's
carpet... It will not be about the money; it will be a matter of principle.

------
gonewest
The ridiculous part is that the law existed prior to his acquiring the
property. He could have (and arguably he should have) known his obligations
ahead of time. Even if he didn’t understand the California law, at the very
least he could have questioned the existence of easements for coastal access
and/or the possibility of some kind of “squatter’s rights” on the grounds that
surfers and beachgoers have been using that path for decades.

No, I’m not buying that this is an unfortunate surprise for him. He picked
this fight intentionally.

------
JauntTrooper
Shouldn't the legal system eventually reach a final unappealable verdict? At
some point it just becomes a massive waste of state resources.

~~~
icebraining
It will when the SCOTUS either decides to hear it and rules it themselves, or
if they refuse to take it up.

------
Yizahi
His hypocrisy is beyond baffling. "A billionaire is a bad word in this country
now" \- and you are doing exactly what to mitigate this? Become a professional
Mister Beach Asshole (tm)? Just a lucky billionaire with a giant ego.

“Here’s the thing about Vinod,” Mr. Kaul said. “He just doesn’t care.”

Yes, we see it clearly.

~~~
sytelus
This is what's frightening. A person with billion dollars have enormous
leverage to wield his will, beliefs, principles - whether wrong or right - on
public. They can buy large properties on whims, put up walls, close roads,
setup perma-construction zones and make them disappear from the map for all
intent and purposes. They can buy up political system to put in place laws
that can hurt thousands for generations, hurt environment, empty out valuable
resources. Even if they are mistaken in their beliefs, they can outspend
opponents in litigation driving them to bankruptcy. All the while any losses
in these fights is not even noticeable to their fortunes.

I'm not against capitalism but I think there is a fundamental bug in our
system that gives rise to these symptoms. Perhaps in hundred years this "bug"
will get fixed and our future generations will look back on us marvelling that
billionaires existed in our world just like we marvel Pharaohs existed in the
previous age.

------
oneplusone
Why does California not expropriate one of the houses and tear it down for
easy public access?

~~~
AlexTWithBeard
Because then California will have to pay for the road from its budget?

------
Amygaz
There is obviously a lot government could do to make the majority happy, and a
lot billionaires could do to actually help the community around them.

But lobbying and narcissism only go so far...

------
vertline3
This stuff has been dealt with thousands of times before. Take what he paid
for the access, add for inflation, cut him a check and move on.

------
onetimemanytime
IIRC, people want to use a road on his private property to access the public
beach part. So Khosla is saying, come to the beach all you want, but not by
using the road on my private property. Cute.

Maybe the state should just launch eminent domain like proceedings and let
courts decide on the price. He's not saying (that all) the beach is his, just
don't come through my land to go to the public part. It has the same effect
but it's different.

~~~
mattkrause
People are _legally entitled_ to use the road on his property to access the
beach, which is slightly different.

I can see this being weird if the access rights were addded after you bought
the land, but if the easement long predates your ownership, as it allegedly
does in this case, I don’t really see why “property rights” should be allow
you to wiggle out of it. That easement is part and parcel of the property you
bought—-it may have cost even more if it weren’t included!

~~~
onetimemanytime
>> _People are legally entitled to use the road on his property to access the
beach, which is slightly different._

To be fair, the courts are deciding this as we speak and maybe in the next 20
years :). The person has the right to argue this in courts, until the doors
are slammed in his face.

Before or after they are ways to do this--legally, price is the only issue.

------
AlexTWithBeard
From the article I assume the issue is going around Martins Beach Road in Half
Moon Bay, CA. This road is roughly half a mile long. Paving it would be around
100k. Add the lane marking, gutters, sidewalks, ADA-friendly ramps, brail
plates on each crossing and the bill can easily get up to half a million.

Is it fair to slap someone with a half a million bill just because "he's rich
anyway"?

~~~
mattkrause
Is anyone actually requiring that _he_ do this?

My impression was that the law requires access. Upgraded infrastructure can be
part of a quid-pro-quo for other development in the area, but the coastal
comission can’t, as far as I know, insist on improvements out of the blue.

~~~
AlexTWithBeard
I'm afraid if the article mentioned all these issues, that would be proper
journalism.

But no. This guy's tea getting cold is much more important topic to
concentrate on.

~~~
icebraining
There's no reason to think that issue even exists - Khosla certainly doesn't
mention it, nor do the court fillings - so why do you assume there's anything
for the journalist to investigate?

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anentropic
what an awful person

~~~
seattle_spring
Disappointing this comment was flagged. It's all that really needs to be said,
and sums him and the article's thesis on him quite nicely. The world would be
a terrible place if it were filled only with Vinod Khoslas.

------
hackeronezero
I won't judge if it's wrong or right.

The thing i notice here is that the belief system which got him that money,
now he's using his money to support that belief system.

Don't see anything wrong with this.

His is the public case, many people might be acting like this behind the
public scrutiny.

------
throw2016
Hopefully the newer generation can jettison the decades of systemic
libertarian propaganda and fabricated individualism that justifies self
obsession and sociopathy to instead build a society that is more humane and
connected like most human societies are supposed to be. And we can see very
early signs on it.

No one is threatening your individualism, if you don't like other people and
the concept of cooperative society you can always go and live in the forest
alone. This is possible for every single human being on the planet but no one
takes it.

Because this fake individualism generates its identity not on the rugged
individualism of standing alone but taking advantage of all the resources,
benefits and skills of millions in societal human cooperation and then stand
apart merely to legitimize petty self interest and exploiting others without
remorse. In essence all the benefits of cooperation but none of the
responsibilities.

This is people like Vinod Khosla in a nutshell and if your society is full of
such 'individuals' and legitimizes their ideology you have to consider whether
you have a 'society' worth fighting for. What is the motivation? Because these
kind of individuals do not believe in the larger good, only self interest.

~~~
shados
At the end of the day, everyone's only in it for themselves one way or
another. People at the top want to secure their spot, people at the bottom
want everyone to share, and there's some people who are up but can't sleep at
night if someone think poorly of them.

But in all cases, it's all different sides of the same coin.

