Khosla Rebuffed as Supreme Court Rejects Beach-Access Appeal
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
People are already asserting access by demanding use of the beach access easement.
If my understanding is correct, the legislation also requires allowing public access to the beach across privately held land, and in return beach property is exempt from property tax. Or something along those lines.
There are frequent legal battles when someone buys a large chunk of land that has a stream going through it, only to discover that they can’t legally prevent recreational users from wading, floating, or fishing down it, as long as they don’t go past the high-water mark. Sometimes it’s the only practical way to access otherwise inaccessible public land.
Source: http://www.themeateater.com/listen/meateater/ep-136-locked-o...
In any case there's not any controversy on access through private property -- the city has a lakefront park and public access could be granted that way. The residents don't want swimmers (and presumably boaters) who are not paying shareholders of the lake corporation.
I hope to visit Oregon again next summer, last time I went to Astoria and Canon Beach and hiked around trails everywhere when it didn't rain too much. I hope the PNW never changes :)
But for that right, the general public should be compensated with a hefty annual rent. The concession would be awarded for a limited time to the highest bidder just like for any other eminently public resource, for example the airwaves. The frequency of my mobile phone is private in the sense that no one else can use for the time I'm using it (it's illegal to even tune a receiver at those frequencies), but it's not my private property or the network's, we lease it from the public.
You can almost get away with just defining this as something only single families can do, but then you run afoul of some genuine community ownership things. Want to band together into a mutual HOA so that you and your neighbors can afford to maintain a private pool? Why/why not?
Edit: I suspect I agree with the radical on this. :)
As for parks, the USA has sorted that already with the national and state park system. Sometimes those get huge land donations from private citizens as well.
Buuuut personally, I am of the "abolish private property" mindset anyway, I think that's way out of scope for here though. It's for the same reasons I've listed previously.
Isn't this exactly what private property is? You don't have to be particularly wealthy to own land, and keeping the peasants off of it does not seem controversial.
Is the area near the ocean special? As well as some kinds of wilderness? Well, maybe. I'm from a land-locked place which was almost 100% owned and occupied for hundreds of miles so limits on private ownership anywhere are a bit of a foreign cultural concept.
I have no problem at all with a state restricting ownership near an ocean and enforcing it, I just don't think it's a self-evident inalienable right.
I disagree with this point, it is untrue for a great deal of Americans and especially those without families to band together to get property.
To that point, that is precisely why I am opposed to private property at all, but I recognize that's an unpopular idea. My main objective is, why are there peasants at all? I don't believe its a requirement at this technology level.
>Is the area near the ocean special?
It's special enough for California, Oregon, and many countries, to have laws that specifically make all beaches public property. I feel similarly about any stretch of wilderness, and so too does the United States, enough to cordon off thousands of acres for national parks. They probably need borders because it's easier to draw a line around what a beach is than "stretch of wilderness."
I agree, but couldn't it be argued it could go the opposite way too? If you're forced to be exposed to something, even if you're ambivalent towards it initially, often times that can breed contempt.
I'm guessing the op meant a secondary, even greater and separate tax.
Property taxes can change annually, though there is a 1% maximum rate limit, and so can assessed values, though there is an upper bound to assessed value based on a 2% per year increase over the baseline value set by a qualifying sale or improvement.
This case was an asshole who bought land with a public easement that provided access, and then (illegally) closed the easement.
The hassle of finding somewhere to park would get rid of most visitors, then you can just start calling the cops on suspicious cars parked near your house :)
Except... He's not responsible. I just find it interesting that hundreds of suspicious Twitter accounts are taking this opportunity to try to trend hashtags like "#socialismkills"
Meh, clearly just need to look at the casework, I'm no lawyer.
> In June 2010 Governor Lingle signed into law House Bill 1808, a bill that prevents private property owners from blocking shoreline access by planting or cultivating vegetation.
[1] http://www.beachapedia.org/State_of_the_Beach/State_Reports/...
"[H]e bought the place on what he says was a whim, has never spent a single night there, and regrets it enormously."
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/technology/vinod-khosla-b...
IMO, the most plausible explanation for the whole affair was that this was the whole point of his buying the property, applying what he saw as a legal hack that would allow him to convert the property into a much more valuable one and resell it.
In texas no beaches are private and all waterways are public.
In other words, if the stream you're following begins and ends on property belonging to one owner and no part of that stream is owned or shared with a second party then that stream is entirely private property and access would require permission.
Therefore, short feeder streams in the watersheds may be private property but the majority of waters in Texas are public property between the banks.
People still need to respect the land owner's rights to ask them to tone down parties, control size of any fires, etc. so that their activities don't adversely impact the landowner's property. They also need to remain between the banks unless they have permission to wander around the floodplain, woods, or pastures.
I sure regret missing that spelling error in the first line where it should've read "boating". Oh well.
Navigable waterways are all public waters to their sources. The waterways that could be entirely private that I referred to above (short feeder streams), are intermittent streams that flow downstream into a navigable waterway. Most of these have no stream flow unless there has been rain in the area.
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has a great user-friendly section that outlines public and private uses of waterways in Texas.[0]
[0]https://tpwd.texas.gov/publications/nonpwdpubs/water_issues/...
No use by any person or persons, no matter how long continued, of any land, shall ever ripen into an easement by prescription, if the owner of such property posts at each entrance to the property or at intervals of not more than 200 feet along the boundary a sign reading substantially as follows: “Right to pass by permission, and subject to control, of owner: Section 1008, Civil Code.”
On the access road, Khosla will continue to lose.
On the sandy beach above the high tide line & the parking lot, Khosla will eventually win.
I do not think that is nitpicking.
That's one big way money distorts politics. A rich person's 20th priority will get more attention than a hundred poor person's 1st priority.
He didn't buy the beach, you can't own beach in CA afterall, but the beach truly is inaccessible by any means other than through the private property which he does own. The previous owners of the property allowed people to enter the private property on their way to the public property, and had done so for so long that people have never had to think about it, but the new owner doesn't feel he is obligated to do that, so the loss shocked a lot of people who have been using the private access road. Their supporters feel that because the previous owners allowed it, that the future owner should be obligated in some way to allow it as well. Khosla disagrees.
And Khosla's dispute isn't just about access. He also wants to stop running the for-pay parking lot and restrict access to the sandy beach above the high tide line (which marks the border of his property with public land). His argument seems quite strong on these latter two points imho.
While at first glance that may seem unlawful, it has been thoroughly tested in the Courts. This is not an unusual occurrence; everywhere along the California coast you will find land and businesses who provide coastal access as a routine matter.
I assume Khosla has competent legal counsel who would have told him all this before he bought the property.
And since it is his property, he should be able to close the parking lots, bathrooms, and general store too, especially if he were to be liable for maintenence, upkeep, accident liability, etc?
That's the reason that a) fines should be a percentage of your net worth and b) escalating.
I'm pretty sure if the first 50 million go down the gutter he'll start to notice.
It would be interesting to see how effective it might be...
Not an easy process to determine net worth of anyone let alone someone like Vinod. Most likely he does not even know his net worth.
For one, things that you own can vary greatly in value. Now multiply that by hundreds or even thousands of things that are owned by a wealthy person (I don't mean the furniture in the house either).
And it simply does and should not work that way. Because what that means is that someone who is poor and has nothing does not get dinged much because they are poor and have nothing (hence they have 'nothing to lose'). Sure you could adjust the penalties but just the same simply not the way it works.
Even Elon Musk, so big deal $20m fine for someone worth billions (non liquid of course). So what is the correct 'fine'? And what if he was in bankruptcy? Then what is the correct fine?
$100,000 speeding fine anyone? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/1759791.stm and that was in 2002!
However, the genuine wealthy will receive most of their income as capital gains and dividends, and will hold most assets through companies.
Income wise, they are often paupers in comparison to their (true) net worth.
Either way, it's not perfect. Hundred dollar speeding tickets are brutal for low income families.
No system is perfect, but seems far less flawed than prescribed fines that sees a millionaire barely notice a £100 parking fine, but someone on minimum wage almost getting wiped out by the same. To me it;s crazy not to reference income, ability to pay or worth when assessing penalty.
Not unusual for business people or anyone to have varied income from year to year but also that does not relate to actual assets or (the original point 'net worth' which is ironically a better measure of what you can pay (assumes liquid of course..)) Also what about someone with an inheritance or trust money?
Once again with the speeding fine it seems oppressive for the same 'crime' to charge someone $100k because they have income or assets and have that money to pay.
Also from what I read the Finnish system is legacy and the way it has always been. There is a big difference in that as people grew up with it vs. in the US where it would be something newly done. Forget even the revolt that would happen. It would also (once again here, because not legacy) lead to inflation as people would all the sudden quite possibly think they are underpaid next to someone else.
Now in the US many pay checks are public but people aren't typically keyed into checking the data source because it's a bit obscure and not a regular stop (key point by the way 'out of sight'). So for example if you work in NYC and you find out a trash man makes $90k per year and you make $60k you are going to feel shortchanged possibly. Once again that info is public (and the amount with overtime can be that btw) but not usually something people are accustomed to thinking about.
The tax people already have methods for dealing with all those scenarios for tax purposes, so it's essentially a solved problem.
Once again with the speeding fine it seems oppressive for the same 'crime' to charge someone $100k because they have income or assets and have that money to pay.
At least the way it works in Sweden, many fines are defined essentially in days wages and not in money. So the judge doesn't sentence you to pay $100k, they sentence you to pay 45 days wages[0] and the judge neither knows nor cares what that works out to be in actual money. So as such the fines are exactly the same for everybody.
[0] The actual formula is slightly more complicated that literally your daily wage.
So explain how that makes sense because it doesn't take into account the savings of the individual?
If I have a million in savings and I am retired or how do you determine 'wages' with a self employed person?
I am not saying there aren't ways to answer or address this. But it is not simple and not fair the way stated other than a revenue scheme for the government. If the idea is to create a disincentive that has not been done using daily wages.
(Some people live hand to mouth as well so they are particularly impacted)
Of course it is, and that's by design. The fine is supposed to be punitive, to act as a deterrent. Punishing someone is oppressing them like by definition.
The flat fee system, conversely, is just setting a price sticker on violating the law. It's literally saying, "you can do this if you're rich enough".
The proportional fine system has its issues, but between the two, I think it's a no-brainer.
Maybe it's not easy, but he definitely has the ability to figure out how much he's worth, even if it means he has to pay a team of accountants.
I think such a system would be workable if it mandated the offender provide a good-faith calculation of their net worth. They'd also be required to show their work, and be subject to harsh penalties if they were found to have deliberately cheated. This is basically how the tax system already works for income.
Does he actually own the property? Should he be personally liable for that fine because he lives in the property? Should the fine be assessed on the property value?
Plenty of questions unanswered, that likely require legislation at various levels in government.
I'm not saying it's not a good idea, but this requires more work than some people are assuming. Khosla will be dead before any proper legislation without viable loopholes gets enacted.
Given that this is clearly a pattern of illegal behavior not remedied by civil lawsuits, the state should use eminent domain and seize his property as necessary create the mandatory access and to prevent further illegal activity blocking access to public lands.
There are countless stories on how they do more harm than good. I have so much disdain for them, I cannot express. Fuck HOAs.
I worked for a Khosla company a few years ago and it was pretty depressing to know that if we struck gold, I might get a few million dollars to set my family up, but Vinod would get hundreds of millions to trample on people who werent millionaires. There's no winning in that situation.
Can anyone give a reason for why he claims $30 million for the easement (6 acres, privacy)? I've heard he paid something less than $35 million for the whole property (94 acres). Articles say that the village is part of what he purchased; clearly all those beach homes are worth more than $5 million.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/30/technology/vinod-khosla-b... [1] https://medium.com/@vkhosla/martins-beach-a-matter-of-princi...
Khosla can pay for a PR campaign to say a bunch of nice things about him and how wonderful of a person he actually is while simultaneously having an army of his lawyers go fight his petty battles because how dare a bunch of 'low-income commoners' tell him what he can't do. Just because he owns a VC firm doesn't mean he isn't a douchebag in real life.
In fact, that may be a key indicator that he might be a douchebag. Though to me the more likely indicator is his involvement with real estate, which has been a pretty consistent tell in my experience.
Neither of those articles cast him in a particularly good light, but I cited them because I think it goes to show that he's suffering from his own decisions which he could free himself from by compromising, but his uncompromising trait is getting in the way.
In other words, I think this would be a very complicated PR play for pretty poor PR.
Same probably applies to power of a more political sort. Are dictators dictators because they're dictators or does placing a human in a dictatorial office turn them into one?
In the US it pretty much does.
For the working class it's "fuck you, I won't do what you tell me" money.
For the super rich, it's "fuck you, you'll do what I tell you" money.
Chop it down like anything else that essentially is trash on public property.
And closing the private road and parking lot definitely do this.
* He bought the business with full knowledge of what his obligations were under Californian law.
* There is a huge difference between compelling an individual to run a business, and compelling him to not restrict access to the public.
* This lawsuit was not because he stopped maintaining the road, or the bathrooms, but because he closed a road that allowed people access to the beach.
* Government compels people to do all sorts of things, and not closing off public access to a beach after you paid $32 million for a private beach house seems like one of the least onerous.
I'm sure the state would be fine if he just opened access to the beach to everyone for free. No need to operate any business.
This question about being "compel[led] to run unwanted business" is just a smokescreen to obscure a campaign to deny the public its rights.
It does that literally in most cases!
Perhaps that's not a problem per se. If the fines are equal to or greater than the Pigouvian tax you would put on this naughty behavior, then moving from a fine to a hard ban (however that is done) is a net negative move.
The real problem here is extreme inequality.
He should be in jail for repeatedly violating the law.
He absolutely knew, and figured he could bully, buy, litigate and delay his way out of it. I’m betting the whole strategy was written up before the sale was complete.
Ultimately, he doesn't have the power to physically prevent people from going to the beach, and if enough people ignored his buffoonery the state would probably not consider it a useful expenditure of policing resources to enforce it.
Most other countries have well established laws regarding public access, some things are not for sale. Without the laws or a 'public oriented' justice system a wealthy person can keep on litigating for decades. In the interim the local community do not have access or informal sporadic access and will not have the time or resources to persevere for decades.
Because this is connected to property rights few in the political or justice system will touch an issue that would ideally be fixed in days in a proper democracy. The community now chastened may have a new perspective on absolute property rights come elections but they will find few mainstream candidates support their position. In many ways like the justice system, democracy too will fail them.
IIR the story, the Blue Law fine in NYC for opening on Sunday was $500/day. Woolworths just decided to open anyway and pay it, since they's make more than that. Due to competitive pressure, everyone soon decided to open, and just fight it. The laws soon officially ended.
Here's a NYT archive story https://www.nytimes.com/1986/10/19/nyregion/sunday-shopping-...
Now we have solid precedent. I see that as something of a public good this billionaire financed.