> To what benefit to ones self can you possibly point? I worry that tolerating the entitlement of the many over the rights of the few will result in a degrading of those rights. It's this dude's beach today, what about a website that I suddenly charge for tomorrow? Or hey, lets be realistic here, what about my future beach when that aforementioned website makes me my billions :)
Every bit of this was in place and well understood when Khosla purchased this land. The easement already existed. This isn't as situation where the government is coming in and seizing someone's private land, it's simply enforcing the easement that has existed for the last 100 years.
I apologize if you are aware of all this and are making a narrower point, that property rights shouldn't stop mattering because the person who owns it falls within the category of "rich people". However, there are all kinds of land use laws (another is "freedom to roam"[1]) that predate and preclude certain types of ownership. In other words, you can own property, and you have broad rights to do "what [you] want with it", but if you purchased it under conditions that were reasonably knowable at the time you made the purchase, it doesn't make sense to complain about it later.
Lastly, yeah, there is a problem here with rich. We're talking about a Silicon Valley billionaire showing up and denying access to a beach that the surrounding community had access to - as guaranteed by the California constitution - for the last 100 years. I'd say Khosla created his own popular perception of "rich" people in this case. It's the sort of thing were I can image other "rich" people cringing, like, dude, Americans still don't resent the wealthy, what are you doing here.
When it’s a house or a table or a bicycle shop, this approach makes sense and I agree with it.
When it’s land or natural resources, it is perfectly sensible to place some general restrictions on what people can do. Those pillars of our existence were here a million years before the current owner and will be there for millions of years afterwards. The entire society depends to a lesser or greater extent on land and natural resources. It is irresponsible for society to allow the owner to do anything they want with it.
Now that’s not to say that nothing should be allowed, but for instance the right of travel for people that don’t cause the place harm in doing so, espesially if it is to their homes, should really win over the right of any individual to close of access to a working road for a place they never even go to.
I don’t hold strong views on this case in particular, but I felt compelled to rebut the general idea that land and natural resources are ‘property just like any other’.
I say, forget what the previous owners thought. If the public needs a way to access some public land (the beach), build a public road. If the way is blocked by private land, that's what eminent domain is for. Seize some land and compensate Khosla. That's what would happen to regular people.
The case hinges on the previous landowner performing "public dedication" of the road by letting people use it. The concept of "public dedication" without the previous owners of the land creating any legal documentation, and possibly unaware of the legal consequences, that they are willingly performing public dedication of the road is absurd.
The question of whether this dude's property rights do or ought to trump public access to the beach is a detailed point of law, and, I mean, clearly is not as black and white as some posters are making out (neither side trivially prevailed in a summary judgment through the courts). But this subthread is not whether the case was decided correctly on its merits, but whether people who think that Khosla should be able to fence access to the beach through his property are deluded idiots who wrongly imagine that they will someday own beaches themselves, and are agitating for this particular wholly imaginary self-interest, or whether they might have other reasons to believe as they do.
Is it still public?
That is the issue, not property rights.
I think I benefit if the rules are explicit, well-written and apply to all players, without a 'we want to screw this rich guy' escape clause. I would also like it were it easier for everyone, not just a really magnificently rich guy, to defend his legal rights and privileges against the government.
I'll never have more than a rounding error of his wealth, but I may every well someday be the recipient of the same sort of bile that he's receiving, and I think that in that case I would benefit from a fair government and laws, rather than a howling mob.
The French Revolution is not a good example of good behaviour.
The government is the reification of will of the people, including yourself. It acts out the will of the people, and the will of the people is that the beaches are everyone's property. Sometimes the government is right, sometimes wrong, and having processes to mitigate and remedy is important, however it's not some towering obelisk of Mordor smiting left and right.