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Comment by cratermoon | Hacker News Reader

Why don't they just buy an island like other billionaires?

100 years ago people founded cities all the time. Why is it so unpopular today?

I think people already lived there and collectively decided to found a city where they were. Rich out of towners swooping in and buying local land hasn't worked out well for the locals historically.

Yeah, in the US towns tended to grow up organically, after settlement by colonizers who stole the land from the indigenous residents. The white man staked property claims where none existed, and now the descendants of those white settlers live where the Patwin Indians lived and claim the right to exclude others.

That said, most of the island that they might buy were also home to other peoples before the current owners.

>Rich out of towners swooping in and buying local land

Exactly how the City of Houston was founded.

Guess what in places like Europe founding cities wasnt very common a few 100 years ago.

Can you think of a reason why this was normal in the US and not in Europe? And how this could inform the current situation?

Because all the nice ones that aren't taken already are going to be under water in a few years.

Investment opportunity, get some scientists to figure out where the beachfront is going to end up. Seeing the old cities by boat can also probably be a great tourist attraction, I can already see the memories being made. Grandmother telling the story of how she used to live in that building, and the rent was as cheap as $2000, or the price of a bar of chocolate.

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