Billionaire Khosla Is Asking the Supreme Court to Keep People Off His Beach

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-23/billionaire-khosla-is-asking-the-supreme-court-to-keep-people-off-his-beach

by rmason • 8 years ago

99 119 8 years ago

bloomberg.com

DrScump6• 8 years ago

"State law says the public owns all coastline on the ocean side of the mean high tide line. Khosla says he shouldn't have to open up his private land without compensation to allow passage to the cove, which is buttressed by cliffs and impossible to reach otherwise except by water. "

Bloomberg misses the whole point, which is that the road was an easement that had long existed before and into Khosla's ownership.

eloff2• 8 years ago

He knew what he was buying into then. It doesn't change the legality of what he's trying to do - and I don't see any legal basis for his claim. But it certainly makes me less sympathetic to his cause. If I lived nearby I might visit the beach just out of equal parts curiosity and protest.

yaur• 8 years ago

If the easement predates his ownership of the property, hasn’t he already been “compensated” in the form of a lower price for the property?

rayiner16• 8 years ago

The previous owners ran a business allowing people to access the beach. Its not at all clear that he knew what he was buying into.” Put differently, your point is at most a standing argument. Either the previous property owners suffered the taking, or Khosla did. But somebody did.

swampthing2• 8 years ago

... and that it's not his beach, unless you are only counting the part above the high tide line (which would be an uncommon definition of the word "beach").

DrScump6• 8 years ago

I haven't heard that he's tried to limit beach access from the water's side (as certain Malibu types have tried); the legal battle is over access to the road.

paloaltokid• 8 years ago

I used to drive that section of the coast all the time. I remember passing the Martin's Beach sign often and thinking it was kind of neat. Then one weekend, I drive by and it's a big black ugly box. I thought "that's strange..." and here we are almost 10 years later. It's really crappy what Khosla's done. That section of the coast is so beautiful, it's a real shame to see it get shut off from public access.

rmason• 8 years ago

Spent some time on Martins beach in the past and it's beautiful. It's like a hidden little nugget compared to its much more popular big brother Half Moon Bay.

I was by there in early February and had planned to try and visit both, even if I had to jump the fence. But I was running late for a meetup later in the evening in SF and didn't make it.

I respect Khosla but if there was ever reason for risking a ticket for civil disobedience by visiting a public beach this is the place.

himom2• 8 years ago

Apropos similar situation https://ourmalibubeaches.com/

amarkov2• 8 years ago

Do you have a source for this? I hadn't seen the claim that there was any previous easement.

sidlls• 8 years ago

The easement is at the very least implied by law. Consider the case where person A owns property that has no access except by crossing person B's property. There is an easement granting person A the right to cross B's property whether B agrees or not and whether or not it's recorded in the public records, etc. This is similar, although I suspect he'll try to argue alternative access exists or some other nonsense.

rayiner16• 8 years ago

That’s not what the cert petition is about. The government didn’t just force Khosla to allow people to use the easement:

To be clear, all agree that petitioner owns the property in fee simple absolute. But the Coastal Commission and the County nonetheless declared the power not only to mandate that the property be kept open to the public unless petitioner obtains a permit to close it, but to dictate essential aspects of how petitioner must invite the public onto its private property—including the hours it must allow access, the absurdly low price ($2) it may charge, and even the extent of advertising alerting the public of its ability to access petitioner’s private property for a pittance.

rtpg• 8 years ago

There's a lot of court cases about how making something absurdly expensive is the same as not allowing something.

The rules exist because otherwise people act in bad faith

emmelaich• 8 years ago

You have just provided more info than that entire Bloomberg article. Thank you.

If this is the case, then my sympathies have switched to Khosla.

If there is no dispute about the existence of the easement then this case could be closed immediately and people would have access to the beach.

kbutler6• 8 years ago

Why should there be any limitation on hours, or any fee for access? It’s a public easement to allow access to public property, and it predates his ownership by decades. And night time visits to the beach are awesome.

He bought an asset, and is now trying to take value from the public to increase his own enjoyment of the asset and the value of that asset. An essentially private beach in California, and enforced by Supreme Court decision would be pretty cool, and insanely valuable.

He should have no control over the access and should be liable for any attempt he makes to hinder or hide access.

I’d totally make regular visits if I lived in the area.

taysic4• 8 years ago

That makes sense though. Imagine it cost $1000 to visit the beach, opened only 4a-5a and had no clear signage. That's pretty useless. The requirements should be clear.

rayiner16• 8 years ago

It’s a pretty decent cert petition: https://d3583ivmhhw2le.cloudfront.net/images/uploads/publica....

He’s hired one of the leading Supreme Court advocates in the country, and there is some compelling “overstep of regulatory authority” optics to the case. Getting cert on any case is a slim chance, but this seems at least interesting enough to grab someone’s attention.

wavefunction• 8 years ago

You've asserted that there are "compelling 'overstep of regulatory authority' [considerations] to the case" but failed to make any points to persuade a reader to that conclusion.

There was an existing regulation upon the property, Khosla purchased it and now is subject to the regulation. Ignorance of the law is no defense, especially when one is as fortunate and well-equipped as Khosla is.

ggm3• 8 years ago

This. Buying your way out of public access easements, is bad law. Really, really bad precedent, to let the commons be bought.

rayiner16• 8 years ago

Either the regulation is legal or it is not. Just because you buy the property with notice that the government thinks it has some right to regulate it has no bearing on whether that regulation is legal.

davidw• 8 years ago

What a NIMBY :-(

everyone• 8 years ago

The article is incredibly pandering to Khosla. Does he own the publishers parent company or something?

harryh5• 8 years ago

Bloomberg.com is owned by Bloomberg L.P., the majority of which is owned by Michael Bloomberg who is one of the 10 richest people in America and the former mayor of NYC.

git_rancher• 8 years ago

I wonder how long until a critical mass of people get fed up with the resource hogging of the ultra rich. Seems likely to happen at some point if current trends in wealth inequality continue.

aphextron• 8 years ago

Highly doubtful while it's still the case that American Capitalism openly encourages and rewards predatory, sociopathic behavior. The existence of these people is inevitable.

ixtli• 8 years ago

Agreed. I just worry it'd be the wrong people.

ajmurmann• 8 years ago

According to "The Great Leveler" by Walter Scheidel inequality throughout human history has always been going up and only been reset by things like war, violent revolutions or major economic throwbacks. So I'm pessimistic that we can solve the issue in a more pleasant manner.

_jal2• 8 years ago

I have that book in my pile. Skipped it last time I picked up the next one, due to not quite being in the right frame of mind for a depressing read.

So I'm pessimistic that we can solve the issue in a more pleasant manner.

Oh, I'm quite sure we can't. The peaceful dissolution of the USSR has been a miracle, although that story isn't really over yet. The U.S., at least, will not have a pitchfork moment so anywhere near so quietly.

The question of 'how bad does it have to get' is quite relevant to those of us who have enough money to be planning for retirement, but not enough for his'n'her's yachts - what are the odds that we should maybe start scoping retirement-nations with the best combinations of freedom, opportunity and tolerance for refugees from a place famously losing tolerance for refugees?

Bucephalus355• 8 years ago

Wow I believe this was exactly Thomas Piketty’s argument back in 2014 with his book.

Also, when a lot of people die, there are a lot of inheritances and open jobs, so makes the task of distribution even easier :/

This is one of the reasons that the Bubonic Plague is cited as a catalyst for the development economically and scientifically of Europe...

Gibbon14• 8 years ago

Perhaps it's time for progressive real estate taxes.

AKA roll back prop 13 but make it progressive. 1% on the first $250,000 worth of land, 2% on the next $250,000 to $1,000,000 worth and then 3% for anything over $1M.

Not by parcel, total.

strictnein• 8 years ago

You're proposing an additional $2500 a year tax on a $250k home? And a $5000 a year increase on a $500k home? I don't foresee this being very successful.

TaylorAlexander• 8 years ago

In the Bay Area everything is $1m, so lots of regular people out here would see a huge tax hike.

traviscj• 8 years ago

Wouldn’t we just end up paying N rents to N partial owners, each of whom owned $249,999-sized parts of a given estate?

flyingcircus32• 8 years ago

I imagine the ultra rich have had lots of time to think about it too. Even Sam Altman has written about disaster prepping, testing his readiness, trying to find the optimal mode of transportation for a chaotic metro area, etc. Not to imbue any connotations of evil or notoriety. Just making the point that disaster prepping is kind of well rounded in that regard, due to the inherent unpredictability of disasters.

stevenwoo• 8 years ago

Both Altman and Thiel purchased estates in New Zealand to prepare for some sort of collapse of society in the United States, like an ordinary person might have a small bottled water supply for a natural disaster.

beefield• 8 years ago

I think we can be quite sure that there exists a trend of increasing unequality in US regardless how you decide to measure it. We can also be quite sure that that trend will stop one day (if not before, when one person holds all wealth).

If I were ultra rich, I would be paranoidly obsessive about when, why and how this trend stops, and put significant resources into seeing that the trend stops peacefully. Why? If the trend takes too long, I would be almost surely dropped from the ultra rich category. And if the trend does stop early, but not peacefully, I run into very high risk of losing a lot (up to losing life).

Now, as most ultra rich do not seem to be obsessed about this, I consider this as quite strong evidence that majority of ultra rich share one thing with the majority of us mere mortals - i.e. being dumb as f#ck...

atomical• 8 years ago

What happens if you cross the no trespassing sign?

tomcam• 8 years ago

Nothing. It has no legal basis.

maxxxxx3• 8 years ago

In Malibu there is a similar situation and I have seen private security guards harass people who walked to the beach. You have to have good nerves and be 100% sure of the legality to ignore them.

Steeeve• 8 years ago

The story from the other side:

https://www.surfrider.org/coastal-blog/entry/martins-beach-t...

jcoffland• 8 years ago

Here's a highly relevant quotation from the above linked article.

There has been no permit or other final decision requiring Petitioners to charge visitors $2 or any amount for vehicle access, or to advertise any message on its property

So Khosla's claims that he is being forced to charge $2 and operate a business are lies. Obviously he looked in to restricting access by charging an exorbitant fee but found that he could charge no more than $2 and only if he applied for a permit that would likely be denied.

webkike• 8 years ago

Here are two quotes from Khosla on the notion of "fairness":

“This is about unfairness, and I don't tolerate unfairness.”
“I decide what's fair,” he says. “They can do it or not. I don't go back and forth six times.”

Amygaz• 8 years ago

Yep. Another babyllionaire who wants it all, just for himself.

roflchoppa• 8 years ago

We should have a BBQ there.

walrus01• 8 years ago

I know this is in poor taste, but it's the best thing I could think of: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2ZBVk6gpFA

johnrob• 8 years ago

Given how the state of California has ruled, is there any practical obligation for local authorities to prevent people from using the road? Would a federal ruling change that? This reminds me of the marijuana situation where states are making their own decisions without federal support.

raz32dust4• 8 years ago

Well, if Khosla paid for the land the road is built on, I agree that the state should pay the fair price for the road. Seems straightforward and fair to me. Can someone help me understand why this is not that simple? And then we should have a law that prohibits private ownership of any land that is the sole connector between two public pieces of land. i.e, there should always be a pathway at least enough for 2 cars to pass through that connects 2 pieces of land. This should be verified every time a new land deal is registered. That should prevent such mishaps in future.

metei• 8 years ago

Public access laws like what California and Washington State have require the property owner to allow access to the beach. This means a property owner has to provide a reasonable right of way to access shoreline on their property. Anything less is illegal, up here in Seattle people get hauled to court (or worse if they refuse to allow access repeatedly).

Stealing a beach from the public domain is illegal, and Cali seems to have serious enforcement problems. No property owner has a right to steal public beaches

raz32dust4• 8 years ago

But then, the state should not have allowed the sale, right? What is the meaning of ownership if the land is not really yours?

taysic4• 8 years ago

I like the law that you proposed. I think likely the laws on how beaches are public need to be clarified. Why are they public only up to the high tide line? That seems difficult to enforce. Not very informed on this topic - but why isn't the whole natural sandy part public by default?

Seems like he doesn't want anyone on the beach and it's as simple as that.

raz32dust4• 8 years ago

I guess "high-tide line" is assumed to be somewhat constant, and therefore a good demarcator. We need a better way to enforce land boundaries in this day and age (especially in the bay area, which is prone to earthquakes and faults). But that's a longer story. Yeah, he clearly doesn't want anyone on the beach. But he does offer to sell it for fair price. Just taking it away from him doesn't seem fair to me either if it wasn't enforced when the purchase happened.

ende4• 8 years ago

And then we should have a law that prohibits private ownership of any land that is the sole connector between two public pieces of land. i.e, there should always be a pathway at least enough for 2 cars to pass through that connects 2 pieces of land.

What a great idea. Maybe we could call it an https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easement

francisofascii• 8 years ago

Even if there was no preexisting easement, people should be allowed to get from point A to point B. This type of property ownership entitlement happens all the time with hikers and such. It is flat out evil behavior.

maxxxxx3• 8 years ago

Here in the West it's really hard to hike cross country. Big areas are fenced in without any way to get through. In Britain and Germany they usually have a path through but here it's just closed off. Really annoying and doesn't feel like the "land of the free".

himom2• 8 years ago

This jackass, again? I refuse to do business, recommend or patronize any such individual whom wastes their life and resources on such petty self-indulgences at the expense of commonwealth capital when they could be doing real good saving lives, species or making a positive dent on the universe, instead of walling themselves off from “the plebs” and making them have absolutely no legacy worth discussing further. Their friends should also distance themselves from such people or that obvious malevolence will rub off on their reputations as well.

Billionaire Khosla Is Asking the Supreme Court to Keep People Off His Beach

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