05-26-2017, 06:43 AM
quote:
Originally posted by MarkD
Questions from Leilanidude and comments:
1. Does it make any difference what size the house is? A large house signifies an affluent owner, and these folks have a track record of commandeering the shorelines (I discussed details in other threads).
2. Do Hawaiians not ever build big houses on the shoreline and try to block access through their property? Sure Hawaiians sometime do. But if one goes to Alii Drive or North Shore Oahu or North Shore Kauai and surveys the shoreline ownership, Caucasians dominate.
I look for patterns of behavior in most things. We can ignore these patterns, but I see more value in noting them.
Another comment on the race thing. If we dispensed with this we would not have affirmative action in college admissions. If we selected students purely on academic achievement, the ratio of students would be something like: 90% Asian, 7% white and 3% other
Several days ago, another access issue on Portlock, Oahu. The landowners are at it again.
MarkD,
Can't help but challenge your biases a little bit here:
"...an affluent owner, and these folks have a track record of commandeering the shorelines" Really? are they the only ones that commandeer the shoreline? I recall some news stories about "homeless" commandeering beach parks around the state and making other beach-goers distinctly uncomfortable... It's an annual tradition in Keaukaha for Hawaiian families to pitch tents along the shoreline in the summer and spend most of the summer there. How welcome do you think a Caucasian family would be if they decided to set up a tent there during the summer? (I don't, by the way, resent the beach camping - seems like a fun tradition - even though it is clearly illegal.
" Sure Hawaiians sometime do. But if one goes to Alii Drive or North Shore Oahu or North Shore Kauai and surveys the shoreline ownership, Caucasians dominate."
Not sure that that is necessarily true - but regardless, the only real commonality is wealth. And I would again respond: so what? It's a market economy - those with wealth have greater access to scarce and desirable resources. The high-rise condos going up along Oahu shorelines (blocking the ocean views of the commoners living mauka) are being marketed to wealthy Chinese; during the Japan bubble in the '80's, wealthy Japanese investors were buying up shoreline properties (some of whom still own those properties). But somehow we only talk about wealthy Caucasian owners... why is that? What is the narrative that we're trying to promote here???? Would it be any different if all the homes along Ali'i drive were owned by wealthy Chinese - as they may be under other economic conditions?
Wealthy people (of any ethnicity) are acquisitive - mostly, that's how they got wealthy. And unless they were born into wealth, probably had to make significant sacrifices to gain that wealth. It seems many want to envy the wealth without envying the sacrifices that were made to gain it... And in my admittedly limited experience interacting with a few wealthy people, that wealth didn't necessarily do much to improve the intangible qualities of life for them.
"Several days ago, another access issue on Portlock, Oahu...."
Why do you think those access disputes occur? Is it because "those mean old haoles want to keep us from getting to the beach?" Is that the narrative? Reference was made in the linked article about the Papaikou Mill access. Why did that dispute blow up? Because those going down to the beach were creating a nuisance, littering, having drunken night-time parties on the beach and generally intruding on the landowner. Sure, the legal types can pontificate on how the state laws don't guarantee access across private property, but the property owners have a right to quiet enjoyment ("Quiet enjoyment is a right to the undisturbed use and enjoyment of real property by a tenant or landowner.") of the property
they paid for. I suspect that if a bunch of drunken louts decided to build a campfire in your front yard and leave trash behind on a weekly basis, you'd get pretty sick of it plenty fast. This is another instance of dereliction by the state - if they are going to guarantee access, then they need to also protect the rights of the landowner over whose property access is occurring. Another case in point: there was a dispute on Maui some years ago because a resident claimed that the only acceptable access across George Harrison's land was to pass close to Harrison's house (apparently so that said resident could take off-island visitors to see Harrison's house for pay). Why should we expect the wealthy to give up property rights (in this case, privacy) that we all (should) have under the law?