Hacker News Reader

Comment by choppaface | Hacker News Reader

Vinod wants you to think this debate is over property rights, but it's really just a game of expensive cat and mouse between him and the government for his own amusement. The road in question services over a dozen homes, and he has no building or presence on his property, so logistically there's no warrant for the gate. The gate was re-opened (for at least daytime hours) a few years ago. The beach had previously been accessible to the public for nearly 100 years.

The legal fees Vinod is paying are far greater than what he'd have to pay to maintain rightful public access. He likely didn't understand the access issue at the time of purchase (since he's never actually there!) and so this protracted argument was the only way for him to derive value from his purchase.

https://sf.curbed.com/2017/10/5/16431150/martins-beach-san-m...

https://www.surfrider.org/pages/timeline-open-martins-beach

View on HN

The debate is absolutely about property rights--the fact that the State of California doesn't have any basis to prevent him from putting a gate on his own property: https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art....

California courts have already held in this case that there is no "public trust" access to the beach, due to the peculiarities of land titles that originated in Mexico before Californian statehood.

A California court of appeals has now held that the State's other hook, the idea that the property was "dedicated to public use" is also baseless. That's what this article is about: https://www.courts.ca.gov/opinions/nonpub/A154022.PDF

> That said, we have been tasked here with reviewing a trial court’s application of the common law of public dedication, which is the sole legal basis for Friends’ remaining claims in this case.

> We have endeavored faithfully to follow the prior holdings of our Supreme Court and fellow appellate courts in applying common law of public dedication principles here. However, we have not attempted to extend the public dedication doctrine beyond the common law parameters previously recognized by court decisions in this state. As strong as the coastal access policies of our state are, we do not understand them to empower us to do so.

There is no "rightful public access" to this property.

I don't see how Vinod is any different than the Sea Ranch authority in the mid 1970s. Precedent is not in Vinod's favor.

The California Coastal Access law was based on Sea Ranch blocking access to the ocean in the mid 1970s. All building at Sea Ranch was blocked until Sea Ranch put in access trails to the beach. The temporary Coastal Access law was then made permanent.

I don't feel sorry for someone of means buying property without any understanding of California state law. Vinod is claiming property rights he never had.

Khosla won on the key point of California state law: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/ca-court-of-appeal/1733249.html

The appellate court held that his beach was not subject to California’s “public trust” doctrine due to title tracing back to a Mexican land grant before California statehood. That was in 2016.

All the litigation since then had been only a different, much weaker theory that the Martin’s beach owners dedicated the property to public use. Khosla just won that battle too.

Why are you so ardently defending a man who is so clearly in the wrong here? He is so much of an asshole about this that he's proud of it and boasts about it to look tough in VC meetings.

The spirit of the law in California is very obviously to provide public access to all beaches without exception. Good job on his lawyers on finding a weird ancient technicality to lean millions of dollars on but it's bullshit and he and everyone else knows it.

Vinod is literally the evil heartless corporate billionaire in 80's movies who wants to bulldoze the small town rec center. He arrests surfers trying to go to their own public beach and brags that he's never even set foot on the property and couldn't care less about it besides the "principal" of property rights.

Khosla is clearly in the right. First, Khosla won in court on his "weird ancient technicality": https://landuselawblog.lexblogplatform.com/wp-content/upload....

Second, since the time of Justinian (527-565 AD), the public trust doctrine applied to the land up to the high tide line, and covered navigation and fishing. Then in 1971 the California Supreme Court discovered the right to surf and sunbathe in that ancient doctrine. Gee, it was hiding in there the whole time! California 100% deserved to be one-upped by Khosla. The fact that Khosla did so by invoking his rights under a treaty that pre-dated the state of California itself just makes it all more delicious.

Third, the California Coastal Commission proved itself the bad guys. It wasn't happy with even the California Supreme Court's made-up version of the public trust doctrine. It's inconvenient to sunbathe on just the tidal land, so the CCC demanded that Khosla run a public beach on his property. An unelected agency extracting concessions from a private property owner beyond what the law provides for is third-world country levels of government abuse.

The only thing that could make this better would be if Khosla sued the CCC for wasting his time and money.

This is very confusing.

In California I am pretty sure that private property starts at high tide for the ocean and low tide for other bodies of water.

So you are not talking about proposition 20 which starts at high tide and extends 1000 yards inland, you are talking about the land between high tide and low tide which I am pretty sure Vinod does not own.

I am not sure what you think he won in this particular case. Proposition 20 still holds (from everything I can tell). To overthrow prop 20 he would have to overthrow the will of the people. This is (by the way) why most of us oppose Vinod. He might be a great guy in other ways.

Why are you making this about character and personality. Vinod bought a property advertised as having particular rights associated. Does it have these or not? Clearly the courts should decide. Want to visit this beach urgently? Get a kayak.

Is this your first introduction to how the rule of law works? It turns out that law, properly applied, doesn't care if the person it's being applied to is "evil and heartless". And pointing out what the law says isn't anywhere near a defense (ardent or otherwise) of the person whose favor it falls in.

If I understand the case correctly (I am not a lawyer) Vinod still needs approval of the California Coastal Commission to restrict access. I believe the case only struck down the argument that the previous owner formed a precedent since they charged for parking.

I will go back to not worrying about this case. I was worried Vinod was overturning California law which would really irk me.

Rightful public access is what the government of California is unless the federal government steps in and says otherwise. Vinod doesn't have a case really, he just has a stable of lawyers. It's probably just something to keep him from getting bored in his old age.

That was my understanding as well - this goes back (or at least that's Khosla's argument) to before California became a part of the US.

Interestingly, property right dating back to Mexican land grants are respected in the US as a part of the agreement that settled the Mexican American War.

I don't know enough to say whether that's a valid argument in this particular case.

It's not only a valid argument, it's exactly what the California court of appeals held in this case. From the law review article I linked:

> While the public trust doctrine can protect access rights over private land, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to extend that protection to private land certified under the 1851 federal law implementing the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, where the federal or state government had not asserted an interest in title proceeding. Therefore, the court of appeal in Friends I found that, because the Martin’s Beach property had been certified under the 1851 law without any mention of a public interest and never passed into state ownership, there could be no common law public trust easement over the land to the water.

> And while California courts hold that Article X, section 4 of the California Constitution affirms and codifies “at least in part” the public trust doctrine of coastal access, “absent clear legislative intent to the contrary,” the access requirements do not apply retroactively.26 Applying this constitutional principle, the court held that section 4 could not protect public access to Martin’s Beach since it was passed decades after the property became privately owned.

Are you telling me we can't eat the rich in this case?!?

That's seems dumb since they taste so good in a proper bbq sauce and a good Chianti on the side.

This is exactly how Vinod’s lawyers want you to see this: some complicated and interesting legal case. While you might be accurate about the details, it’s not within the public interest to see those details as relevant. The truth is that Vinod bought a property overestimating it’s value and this legal nonsense is how he tries to recoup from his mistake. It is not within the taxpayers interests to entertain him.

So you are saying he failed to do his due diligence?

I think he said that he views it as a moral issue and he doesn't believe he should be compelled by the government to directly provide a public service, or something to that effect. And although I have to take him at face value, my initial impression was that it was a case of the risk-logic that is required to do VC: betting heavy on a high value longshot. If we wins the property is even more valuable due to the privacy element and because he has shown how costly it was to achieve. If he loses he just takes his beating and moves on.

Is this the world you want to live in?

> I think he said that he views it as a moral issue and he doesn't believe he should be compelled by the government to directly provide a public service, or something to that effect.

Yes, absolutely. I’m a high taxation statist. But tax me, spend it in whatever public services you want, and then leave me alone. This sort of case-by-case exercise where state and municipal governments impose random unfunded mandates on individuals is incompatible with the idea of “government of laws, not if men.” The government shouldn’t make anyone keep running a public beach just because there used to be one in the property. Especially where there was no public vote, just an agency making a case by case decision.

This

In terms of morality the government directly controls one third of the economy I want to live in a world where they legislate wisely and enforce laws effectively in a clear and transparent way. In terms of reality I can only observe and describe.

It's also a horrible business practice for his VC fund. As an entrepreneur there's no way I would want to work with Khosla ventures. He just comes across as an asshole and a bully in this fight.

Beaches and rivers belong to all of us.

> It's also a horrible business practice for his VC fund. As an entrepreneur there's no way I would want to work with Khosla ventures.

And therein lies the rub. Many entrepreneurs will not care about stuff like this because his money is still green. The Uber CEO just the other day referred to the Kashoggi killing as a "mistake". Adam Neumann grew up in Israel but is happy to take money from the same pot KSA uses to fund extremist groups, and publicly claims that MBS and Jared Kushner (!) will save the world.

For some people, Greed > everything.

Imagine if everyone who disagrees with you was greedy. People couldnt hold those views for other reasons, and you're definitely not making a caricature instead of discussing reality.

Have a great day!

> Imagine if everyone who disagrees with you was greedy.

Didn't say it was everyone, gave two examples of two well-documented individuals, and said that this would be true of "some" people.

With that stance (which I mostly agree with in theory, by the way), isn't it increasingly hard to do business with most VCs?

Keep looking, you've almost grasped it...

Morals have always been compromising to profits. The VCs will just find someone without moral scruples to make their money for them.

Not mention ethics, but we were probably already assuming they were compromised.

I wish we could measure "asshole-ness" then we could have asshole tax

The way this society is structured, it's basically the inverse. Assholes usually end up doing better, at least if they're smart.

this lawsuit is essentially it.

But I mean like a literal like TurboTax question what was your asshole score last year

Given the effort Intuit puts into fighting off free e-filing, they'd be conflicted adding that question I think.

Would their resistance matter when the government hears the potential dollar amount? I'm in the United States I don't know where you're from but if we had an asshole tax our government would be the most incomprehensibly rich entity in the universe.

So... a social credit score?

Good point. :/

I actually think it could work in principle, but maybe you should only get a tax break if it's unusually low and otherwise nothing happens.

You may think so, but in the end money wins.

A lot of people even take Chinese money, even YC opened China office for a while, which they closed a couple of days ago.

I'd bet literally tens of dollars it has no material impact on his fund.

"Beaches and rivers belong to all of us."

This seems like an arbitrary distinction. What makes you think this and not something like "all geographic features belong to all of us"? What makes beaches and rivers so special that rights suddenly don't apply?

What makes you think this shouldn't extend to all geographic features? Why do we have property rights to land?

Owning land merely means being the last in a line of people who enriched themselves on the backs of others by taking common property and depriving everybody else.

I'm curious to know what alternate, practical solutions there might be. The current system mostly work. Are you proposing no one can own land and hence no one can build exclusive homes/establishments? Anyone is free to build anywhere and pray no one else wants to move in at will? How will such a system work?

The place to start looking is Journal of the Commons. Communal ownership with limited privileges of individual use have been a regular feature of mankind's societies for a long, long time.

The Georgist or geolibertarian positions on this center around a Land Value Tax, sometimes believed to be the only necessary tax. Someone does own the land, but is taxed at a rate that captures the entire value of the (unimproved) land, so in some ways it's more akin to rent, which neutralizes some of the historic advantages certain groups enjoyed.

This tax is essentially paid to the public to compensate them for being excluded from the land. The tax moves up as the value of the land increases, so idle landowners do not capture the value themselves, and may be forced to sell to people who will put it to more productive use.

That's just scratching the surface, though!

The solution is to ban development in large stretches of North America, tear down the fences, and return the land to an open ecological preserve, like it was before colonial settlement in the 19th century. New England underwent something like this after farms started being abandoned in the middle of the 19th century.

Doesn't the California state constitution make this distinction? At least for beaches?

Rivers are more complicated than other geographic features because what you do upstream can affect me downstream so it makes sense to have some more rules around them, or even treat them as public.

Also, waterways and their adjacent lands are historically open to the public as a means of transportation, not for recreation or some other community notion of sharing pretty spaces.

"Historically" doesn't sound like a good argument for future proof solution of this problem. In Ukraine, it is illegal to block access to any coastal line, sea, river or lake, even if it's private property. You can put up a fence 25 to 100m inland from the lake or river (depends on the size of water body) or 2km from the sea coast, but beaches are for everyone.

Historically is a legal argument based on common law precedent, not a philosophical argument.

At some point over a thousand years ago, some judge decided it was in the public's best interest that ships be allowed to beach themselves on the nearest toshore/bank without fear of consequence.

(Which is why the high tide line makes sense, as far as where to draw the line.)

They didn't want captains to hesitate if a boat was in distress.

Similarly, sailors getting off a distressed ship shouldn't fear consequences leaving a beached ship, and walking along the coast to the next port.

It's the same logic as a broken down car's driver being allowed to walk down the shoulder of the interstate highway to get to the next exit for help.

This right of passage came about due to interest of public safety; it had nothing to do with public "ownership" of the shoreline, especially for the purposes of enjoyment or recreation.

Now, you could argue it should be the public's right to enjoy all beaches recreationally, but that would require a separate political (as opposed to judicial) process, and would/should be considered a public taking (expropriation), where the land owner has a right to compensation at Fair Market Value, plus expenses.

But that's not what anyone here is arguing for.

Water access is particularly valuable compared to other natural features. Equating access to a river and a mountain peak is perhaps unintentional, but not useful here. Transport, use of water, even bathing and recreation are all common and valid uses, that belong to the people, and not to any entity who may seek to monopolize it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com