r/interestingasfuck • u/eliseereclusvivre • 1d ago
From 2014 to 2025, Mark Zuckerberg bought over 1,400 acres on Kauai Island and stole any land the natives wouldn't sell him, earning the moniker 'the face of neocolonialism.' r/all
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u/SidQuestions 1d ago edited 1d ago
I saw a documentary about him stealing the land. They interviewed some locals including this woman whose original Hawaii native family owned land on the island but he put a fence up in a way that there was no way for them to access their own land that has been in the family for generations.
Edit: the documentary is the John Oliver episode someone has posted a link to below
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u/Koobetto 1d ago
What was the name of the documentary? I'm very interested in it
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u/foresight310 1d ago
I think John Oliver did a segment on it recently
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u/jim_johns 1d ago
If anyone can link this... pliz
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u/HoutaroOreki 1d ago
I think he means this one John Oliver Hawaii
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u/scurvy1984 1d ago
As a haole from Hawaii that clip hurts so much. We had Hawaiian Studies from elementary to high school but the hell that Kanaka went through wasn't discussed til high school.
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u/redpandaeater 1d ago
Yeah I only had some elementary school there but still remember Queen Lili'uokalani and some of the Kamehamehas from more than DBZ.
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u/BODYBUTCHER 1d ago
Couldn’t they just get a land surveyor to properly demarcate the property lines, I don’t understand how Zuckerberg could just steal their land. You don’t even need to go to court for this
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u/deadletter 1d ago
Hawaii has an important law that says that if your family has traditionally resided there, it doesn’t matter who buys it, you still have to be given access and can reside on the property.
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u/perldawg 1d ago
so…are you saying the stolen land is land he legally owns but doesn’t allow natives their rightful access to?
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u/MartyBarrett 1d ago
If he doesn't follow the laws of owning the property is it legally owned? He legally bought it, but he apparently doesn't adhere to the rules of ownership set forth by the Hawaiian govt.
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u/Chotibobs 1d ago
I think he still owns it legally yes. But in theory the government could punish him with fines or even some sort of eminent domain and seize the land, but they apparently haven’t done so. So yes right now he currently legally owns the land
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u/Ok_Supermarket_729 1d ago
governments never enforce these things. Some guy in my city keeps blocking a public right of way to a beach, they've told him to stop but they won't fine him or expropriate his property which is what should happen in cases like these when they refuse to acquiesce
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u/KSF_WHSPhysics 1d ago
Yes its still legally owned. If i do some unpermitted maintenance on my property they make me bring it up to code, they dont seize it
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u/02bluesuperroo 1d ago
So what you’re saying is they didn’t/dont own the land. He cut off their legal access to it?
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u/-AC- 1d ago
Claim to land ownership can be made in multiple ways in Hawaii. Some people owned the land he purchased without even knowing they did.
Zuck even tried blocking people from the beach touching his land, which is also illegal in Hawaii as "the public" owns the beaches except for military bases.
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u/StarintheShadows 1d ago
Sounds like the next time Zuck’s in Hawaii the locals need to organize a giant beach party!
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u/CruelJustice66 1d ago
As someone local to Hawaii AND worked as a military civilian: NO. Not even the military can block access to the beach as it is public property.
The best they can do is ask the public walk around or hurry through the property (like at Pililaau Army Recreational Center out in Waianae) to reach the beach.
Under no circumstances is even the military allowed to block access to the beaches.
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u/--peterjordansen-- 1d ago
That's not correct. My boat was in Pearl for 14 months and going around the barrier would immediately be met with an MA coming to get your ass. Military beaches are restricted to civilians. That base can have any amount of nukes on it at any time based on what submarine is ported there.
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u/Crafty_Enthusiasm_99 1d ago
Incorrect. Just look at entire beach sides in Kauai near Nepali coast kallai is military encampments
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u/redthrowaway1976 1d ago
When you “own” land in a western legal sense, you really own a bundle of rights to that land.
These other people also had rights to the land, as granted by law. No different than Zuck.
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u/02bluesuperroo 1d ago
But it sounds like the land has a different owner who also has legal right to access the land, likely not as a result of native rights, but as a result of having purchased that right.
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u/AlarmingAerie 1d ago
More like back then nobody had papers of who owns what land, because Hawains didn't treat land ownership like the colonialists did. So when colonialists came they just applied their own rules and took advantage of it. Pretending like giving access to hawains was a good compromise to feel better about stealing the land. And now they don't honor that deal anymore, cause these billionaires have zero morals.
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u/rick_regger 1d ago
We got the "Wegerecht" Here in Austria where you are partially allowed to use private "Wege"(path?) even when you not own them or have alternatives after you used them for several decades (as example when the prior owner allowed it)
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u/I_voted-for_Kodos 1d ago
This is a law literally everywhere. Otherwise any rando could buy a square meter of land on either side of a road and set up a toll booth.
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u/rick_regger 1d ago
not sure if you could buy a single squaremetre of land from a residentland, technically possible but cause the land is categorized into units from the local gov practically impossible, corruption aside.
that wegerecht applies for "neighbors" (afaik) and not every random guy that thinks he wants to walk there.
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u/DrMooseSlippahs 1d ago
That's not likely true. We do have a law that requires access to sites of cultural significance. But that's not a family claim to the land forever.
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u/fury420 1d ago edited 1d ago
Part of the problem with these large purchases in Hawaii is historical partial ownership of small parcels within larger estates via family lines, which gets super complicated generations later when the ownership stakes are unclear.
As I understand it, there's lots of situations where majority ownership & control of the property is known, but there's small portions where partial ownership stakes were not formally documented in real estate records, so the buyers have to hire investigators and try and track down all the descendants of someone a century ago and determine who has what fraction of ownership.
It's like a puzzle, they may have assembled 7/8ths of ownership but the remaining 1/8th might be split between dozens of people with 1/64th or less ownership, some of which have been unaware of their stake for generations.
Edit:
On Lanai the buyers even went so far as lawsuits against a bunch of unidentified potential John & Jane Doe descendants, so that they could use the courts and discovery process to assist in determining if additional partial owners actually exist.
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u/JAK3CAL 1d ago
If you aren’t aware of your stake for generations… do you actually have a stake?
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u/fury420 1d ago
If actual lawyers reached out tomorrow to tell you that your great grandfather was Hawaiian royalty and that your grandfather inherited a 25% ownership stake to hundreds of acres of his lands in Hawaii, I bet your family would be thrilled... no?
In some cases the stake may be spread among many descendants today, but depending on the family tree there also might only be a handful surviving descendants.
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u/why_gaj 1d ago
Shit like that happens every day. Don't even need to be that rich to do it, your target just has to be so poor that they can't afford litigation.
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u/BODYBUTCHER 1d ago
Yeah but this is something a little more plain and clear, the government should have everything already parceled in their records and the land surveyor is just reaffirming those records
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u/Meisteronious 1d ago
Soooo, there was a bunch of small parcels gifted from royalty (as is the origin of ALL Hawaiian land), and some of those gifts were lost through time - people dying, passed and poorly documented, etc. Zuck and his millions of dollars in lawyers fees consolidated these and hunted down the lost deeds and fenced off access - see the documentary for those details.
I remember when it happened out there, and it was just another thing no one could do anything about.
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u/Every_Addition8638 1d ago
In Italy there is a law that say that if a territory completly encompases another territory the owner of the first has to grant easy access and passage to the owner of the second"
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u/ragingduck 1d ago
I’ve been visiting Kauai since I was a kid. My most recent trip I noticed a huge wall blocking the view of the ocean from the road. It was this bitch’s wall.
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u/LawyerOfBirds 1d ago
I live landlocked in the U.S. My wife and I went to Kauai for our honeymoon in 2014. We’ve been to a few tropical areas. Kauai is the closest thing to paradise I’ve seen.
This Zuck fuck better not screw it up.
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u/Dude_I_got_a_DWAVE 1d ago
The NaPali Cliffs is one of the coolest places on the planet.
The fact that native vegetation was able to form on Hawaii despite being so isolated geographically is mind boggling
And then, those huge sheer cliffs have a handful of plant species that exist only there. Some of them are naturally confined to small places on the cliffs.
All evolving there in the middle of the ocean facing away from the island chain and towards the vast empty ocean…
…for millions of years until perhaps the best and/or luckiest navigators in human history stepped ashore
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u/oh-kee-pah 1d ago
What a fkn asshole man! Is it too much to just get ONE SINGLE billionaire that doesn't do the worst shit you've ever seen every other day?!
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u/Grab-Born 1d ago
The people who become billionaires are psychopaths who aren't afraid to hurt others to get their desires.
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u/willyallthewei 1d ago
Zuckerberg stealing to benefit himself?? I’m shocked 😮 when has he ever done anything like that before!???????
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u/charlessupra25 1d ago
Cuckberg, bozzo, musk all stole someone else’s business
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u/FirmSpeed6 1d ago
I firmly believe it’s not possible to get to such a high level in business and have morals. Millionaire, sure, billionaires, hell no. Just remember how SBF was the face of “good person billionaire…”
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u/Frictional_account 1d ago
the plumbing sure could use some work before it gets clogged. Seems like some turds are still left unflushed.
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u/Evening_Jury_5524 1d ago
I'm really shocked we haven't seen more. Sure, going out and doing something like that could drastically change your life for the worse if you are currently in a stable position- but so many people have nothing to lose. Like.. if your house burned down without insurance. You could be homeless and in poverty and deal with the horrors associated with that, or spend your last savings on changing history for the better. Even if it did nothing, killing a capitalist mass murderer would get you prison food and shelter (and popularity within the system like Luigi) rather than being looked down on by pretty much everyone as a homeless person.
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u/therealhairykrishna 1d ago
I'm kind of astonished it doesn't happen more often. The US is full of people who grab a convenient firearm then kill someone who they decide has wronged them. Often with no thought of escaping justice. It's weird that more people on the recieving end aren't the heads of big corporations. At the moment at least most of those people are really no harder to shoot than some random landlord, or classmates or co-workers.
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u/RoutineMetal5017 1d ago
What the fuck is that ?! I knew he wasn't human !
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u/Maximum_Rat 1d ago edited 15h ago
It’s zinc sunscreen, which doesn’t rub in. You’re not supposed to wear normal sunscreen around reefs, even the “reef safe” stuff, because it hurts the reefs. So this admittedly horrifying picture is him actually being responsible in that singularly small way.
Edit: Also could be a few other mineral sunscreens that have similar properties.
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u/fury420 1d ago edited 1d ago
Many areas of Hawaii have even banned the sale of all non-mineral sunscreens.
Not all mineral based sunscreens are this thick or obvious, but he's surfing so it's probably a nice thick layer of "waterproof" sunscreen
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u/JungleBoyJeremy 1d ago
It’s actually all of Hawaii that banned non mineral sunscreen.
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u/Cute-Bodybuilder-749 1d ago
I didn't expect to find the reason I struggled to find sunscreen in Hawaii last April in this thread, but thank you!
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u/tatotron 1d ago
but he's surfing
Or rather, he is eFoiling, because he's holding a controller in his hand. Those things cost more than my car.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_REPORT 1d ago
It looks terrible in flash photography. I’ve got one that’s titanium dioxide that does rub in but I wore it once before getting an ID photo taken. The flash made it look like I’d been huffing white paint for years.
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u/cartrman 1d ago
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u/ShahinGalandar 1d ago
just some normal sunscreen like normal humans put on their normal human faces
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u/fury420 1d ago
Many areas of Hawaii don't allow the sale of "normal" sunscreen because some of the chemicals are damaging to reefs, you have to buy mineral sunscreen which doesn't rub in nearly as well.
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u/RabidWeaselFreddy 1d ago
The Social Network is a supervillain origin story, but a REAL LIFE supervillain.
Interestingly, Jesse Eisenberg also played, a fictional supervillain, Lex Luthor.
I recommend a rewatch through the eyes of our current reality.
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u/MRintheKEYS 1d ago edited 1d ago
I mean I thought it was obvious from the very get go in the movie that he was presented as a not good guy. He literally created that website to publicly shame a girl who broke up with him.
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u/yooosports29 1d ago
Bro is and will always be an incel that couldn’t take rejection from a girl lol
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u/sosthaboss 1d ago
To be clear, that part of the movie was completely made up lol, he was dating his now-wife at the time of Facebook’s inception
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u/Genocode 1d ago
How can I be sure you're telling the truth without facebook factchecking it for me? I'll proceed to believe the movie is true and that he had a rat penis transplant until fact checked otherwise.
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u/eliseereclusvivre 1d ago
his interview on jre had the same energy, plus everyone hates him now because he's a CEO with a rat penis transplant who just announced he's firing his woke serfs and replacing them with AI
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u/eliseereclusvivre 1d ago
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u/Gramage 1d ago
Man, Alien Romulus was actually amazing.
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u/Aster_E 1d ago
I wouldn’t cry for Zuck if he fell into a volcano. If anything I might cry for the volcano. We may need a Bowser for this one.
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u/KenUsimi 1d ago
And the oracle dude owns Lanai.
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u/eliseereclusvivre 1d ago
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u/KenUsimi 1d ago
Straight facts. By a bunch of fruit farmers. Which would sound insane except it’s not even the only time that’s happened.
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u/lightstaver 1d ago
Fruit farmers have fucked so much of the Americas. Banana republics were brutal.
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u/GeiPingGanus 1d ago
Yeah, he’s evil. No billionaire got their money, power and property through just means. They fucked thousands of people over and threaten them with lawsuits to stay quiet.
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u/Trimson-Grondag 1d ago
And the temperature keeps rising. Pretty soon it’s gonna be meatsuit BBQ baby!
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u/bigwig500 1d ago
How did he steal the land???
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u/Lucky_Ad_3520 1d ago edited 1d ago
https://www.staradvertiser.com/2017/01/18/business/facebooks-zuckerberg-sues-to-force-land-sales
Through a complicated legal process. He didn't steal it, he paid for it. More akin to a forced sale.
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u/Reasonable-Plate3361 1d ago
I would also like to know this.
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u/Ok_Engineer_8514 1d ago
He put up a wall that cut off access to parts he did not own. As such those who own the land can't access their land and can't do anything legally as he just drowns them in legal fees and pays all the fines handed to him.
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u/sonicsludge 1d ago
You don't say? Just like he stole the idea for Facebook from his college buddies
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u/ShinyDreamed 1d ago
The more information of you he collects the more he understands what it means to be human.
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u/Electrical-Rabbit157 1d ago
Literally nobody calls mark zuckerberg the face of neocolonialism. This story is true but you 100% made that shit up on the spot lmao
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u/akarichard 1d ago
Very misleading title. No land was stolen. And even this article is very disingenuous, lots of this can happen and that can happen. The lawsuits allow them to properly identity owners of land where the ownership is in question or largely unknown. This isnt a lawsuit like I'm suing you for money.
Just like in any other ownership of land, if many parties own the land in question and some want to sell but others don't, they need to be bought out by the remaining owners or can be forced the sell the land. Then each owner gets their share from the selling of the property.
Nobody can sue you to force you to sell (eminent domain is a thing and yeah that does suck). But in this case the land would only be sold if partial owners wanted to sell but the others didn't and couldn't buy them out. And largely a lot of people had no idea they even had claim to some land. And the lawyers are the ones doing the work to identify and contact all the descendents to inform them.
You can hate a billionaire buying up all that land, that's a whole different issue. And one that does need to get figured out with the income inequality going on in the US. More and more money is moving to the top, the gap is widening. Our current system isn't going to work forever, to be frank if not addressed eventually it'll lead to revolution when the majority of people can't survive.
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u/lemaymayguy 1d ago
Curious, what happens if nobody could be contacted or an heir not found?
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u/ConstantGeographer 1d ago
Hawai'i is completely stolen territory, anyway, and shouldn't even be a U.S. state, but probably it's own country, or perhaps something like Puerto Rico.
That being said, Zuckerberg is an in insufferable hag.
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u/AnalogFeelGood 1d ago
Billionaires are hoarders, plain and simple. Their thirst for possessions will never be quenched. They don't care about you, they don't care about the future of your kids, and they don't about laying waste society as long as they get to own more.
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u/-AMARYANA- 1d ago edited 1d ago
I live in Kauai and I had the opportunity to work at this property for $25/hr. I got the hiring packet and it was 80 pages! Mostly an NDA to not discuss what I saw anywhere, with anyone. I didn't fill it out and I already knew what was going through the grapevine.
He is building a bunker to survive whatever is coming. Does he not realize that if food runs low, his workers would probably turn on him. He would have to take care of all of them and arm them to prevent the locals from raiding his property if things get really bad one day.
He is currently trying to redeem his image by doing things like serving food on Christmas, going on JRE with his jewfro and gold chain.
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u/Jimmbones 1d ago
I feel like Hawaii isn't where I would want to be in case of a world order disaster, could be wrong though. Never been, .
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u/bombayblue 1d ago
The islands are heavily dependent on a complex global supply chain which doesn't even require a world order disaster in order to be heavily disrupted. The vast majority of the Hawaiian islands (including Hawaii) have far more people than they could ever support with subsistence farming. Hell half of Kauai arguably isnt habitable.
You really don't want to be on these islands if an actual world order disaster occurs.
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u/Heavy-Nectarine-4252 1d ago
If the apocalypse happens, Hawaiians will force him to share, he won't have a choice.
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u/RoboticGreg 1d ago
Soooo....one thing to note here. Steve Case is PROTECTING the land he owns and empowering the natives. Securing it for access and even hosts a number of local businesses at no cost