Larry Ellison Buys His Own Hawaiian Island 398
First time accepted submitter nrozema writes "Oracle co-founder and billionaire Larry Ellison is buying the Hawaiian island of Lana'i, the sixth-largest island in the U.S. archipelago. Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie confirmed in a written statement that the current landowner filed a transfer application with the state's Public Utilities commission Wednesday to sell its 98 percent share of the 141-square-mile island to Ellison."
Never thought.... (Score:5, Funny)
....tsunamis could be a good thing.
Re:Never thought.... (Score:5, Funny)
It's a shame the Google Trial [slashdot.org] didn't pay out. He could have bought the last 2%...
Re:Never thought.... (Score:5, Interesting)
No, about 2% of the island is owned by (if I recall correctly) descendents of Hawaiian natives.
The rest was owned by Dole for a long time, I was unaware it was no longer a pineapple plantation.
Interesting story: While the island was a pineapple plantation, it was nearly impossible to find fresh pineapple on the island in any restaurant or store. This was apparently because the natives were all sick of eating pineapple, and when they did want pineapple they would just sneak onto the plantation and steal one...
(My family went to Lanai when I was in middle school or high school, back when Dole owned most of it.)
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Probably not. I imagine that like most states the state owns all natural bodies of water and x feet around them and such by law. It's supposed to justify fishing and pollution control policies or some such.
What a flake Ellison is (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What a flake Ellison is (Score:5, Funny)
I think Ellison is used to investing with rats, just his kind of folks.
That was mean, rats are actually no where near as bad as this asshole.
Re:What a flake Ellison is (Score:5, Insightful)
I know, I kept them as pets for years. I had to stop since they don't live long enough for as attached as I got. I trained some to fetch, they liked to be petted, very much like little dogs.
Far smarter and kinder than Mr.Ellison.
Re:What a flake Ellison is (Score:4, Insightful)
I pity him (Score:4, Insightful)
My own Lanai is in the back of my house, and it has a built in pool and fire pit. I don't have to travel all the way to Hawaii when I want to use. Just pop out there after work. Ellison got suckered.
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The 3100+ people living on the island might disagree.
Re:Never thought.... (Score:5, Funny)
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The Island of Dr. Ellison : Pig men for all!
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Re:Never thought.... (Score:5, Funny)
Bond: Do you expect me to talk, Ellison?
Ellison: Hahahaha! No Mr. Bond, I expect you to *buy*.
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no he thinks he is iron man hell he and oracle sponsored the movies. in avengers in the first couple minutes of the film you can see the oracle logo on the servers in the secret sheild base and there is a iron man and avengers section on the oracle site
http://www.oracle.com/us/ironman2/index.html [oracle.com]
https://blogs.oracle.com/stevewilson/entry/what_does_iron_man_use [oracle.com]
http://www.oracle.com/us/theavengers/index.html [oracle.com]
Re:Never thought.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonsense, this guy is a job creator. Let's all vote Romney and give him a big tax cut!
Re:Taxes (Score:5, Insightful)
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Frank Partnoy gives a pretty good explanation in F.I.A.S.C.O Blood in the Water on Wall Street of how the wealthy can use a Total Return Swap [wikipedia.org] to avoid taxes.
Uh-oh. (Score:5, Funny)
.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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And he looks like Hank Scorpio!
Agreed! I never noticed it before, thanks for pointing it out!
Re:Real plan (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Real plan (Score:5, Insightful)
If all of the landowners in an area vote to secede, they can secede.
Then again there was that whole Civil War thing, which suggests that not everyone agrees about that principle.
Re:Real plan (Score:5, Funny)
If all of the landowners in an area vote to secede, they can secede.
Then again there was that whole Civil War thing, which suggests that not everyone agrees about that principle.
Now wait. Everybody knows the US Civil War had to do with vampires. There's even a new documentary coming out in theaters about it.
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Now wait. Everybody knows the US Civil War had to do with vampires.
Right, and we were talking about Larry Ellison, so ...
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Does he own a fluffy white cat and a Nehru jacket?
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Re:Uh-oh. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not one of those idiots who whines and bitches about how someone makes more money than other people and how they should somehow give it all back to them or something. However, it's strange thinking that I've worked here for fifteen years and the biggest purchase of my life is my $200k house that I'll be paying off until I die . . . while my boss/CEO is buying fighter jets, billion dollar yachts, appearing in Iron Man 2, buying massively expensive houses all over the place, and buying a 141sq mile Hawaiian island. It's kind of demoralizing to realize that Larry probably spent more in this one purchase than every single person *combined* in my entire division will earn (after taxes) in three or four life-times. Or as much as I would earn in take-home if I continued working from today until the year 17,000.
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The free market treats people the same way it treats commodities. Gold isn't just little bit more expensive than iron, it's *hugely* more expensive. Supply and demand apply just the same to people's salaries as they do to precious metals.
People can choose to accept that as a fundamental truth which we must accept (aka, libertarianism) or as something which it's fair to remedy (or must be remedied) by government action (aka, varying degrees of socialism blended with a market economy). It depends on wheth
He did not choose to follow (Score:3)
the majority of us do.
The real difference between us and "them" is many of them are never satisfied with where they are in life and forever seek to improve upon it. Let alone except in very amazing cases the majority of these people spend the end of their life with the wealth. The internet revolution did spawn a lot of people with enough youth to enjoy their wealth longer.
See my tag, compare your achievements to your goals, never compare yourself to another. You can set a goal to have/do what they are doing
Re:Uh-oh. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not one of those idiots who whines and bitches about how someone makes more money than other people and how they should somehow give it all back to them or something. However, it's strange thinking that I've worked here for fifteen years and the biggest purchase of my life is my $200k house that I'll be paying off until I die . . . while my boss/CEO is buying fighter jets, billion dollar yachts, appearing in Iron Man 2, buying massively expensive houses all over the place, and buying a 141sq mile Hawaiian island. It's kind of demoralizing to realize that Larry probably spent more in this one purchase than every single person *combined* in my entire division will earn (after taxes) in three or four life-times. Or as much as I would earn in take-home if I continued working from today until the year 17,000.
I am one of those idiots. Not because we shouldn't award innovation and hard work, but because your boss/CEO is getting richer at your expense. I know that the libertarians around here like to say that free markets lead to meritocracy, but it just isn't the case. Your wages, my wages, and 99% of people on Slashdot have stagnated over the past 30 years. Instead, we are supposed to "earn" money by investing in a house. How has that worked out? Gen X, the generation to which I happen to belong, has lost around 40% of its wealth since the housing bubble burst. But Larry Ellison is buying a Hawaiian island. Where did that money come from? Thin air? Where did our lost wealth go? Thin air? No, of course not. It never existed except as debt on a bank balance sheet. And now that the debt has gone bad, we get to pay to de-leverage banks. The economy is zero sum. We can collectively only increase our wealth by the amount that the economy grows each year. Likewise, when the economy shrinks, we must collectively shed wealth. But somehow Larry gets rich when the economy grows and gets richer when it shrinks. That is the policies of the government actively transferring wealth from you and I to Larry Ellison so that he can buy a f***ing Hawaiian island during a prolonged, global economic contraction that has turned home ownership into Russian roulette for the rest of us. And it will continue like this until perception and reality [motherjones.com] converge.
Also, WTF does one person need with an entire Hawaiian island? Or a fighter jet? Why do we allow one person to accumulate so much wealth that they have to find new, unnecessary extravagances to blow it on while the rest of us can barely afford to educate our kids? Shouldn't there be some level of comfort that we allow the middle class to achieve before letting people like Larry Ellison skip ludicrous and go straight to plaid? Right now it seems that we have to wait for the benevolent "job creators" to toss some coin our way, but not until there is "more certainty" in the markets. Fortunately for us there are still enough billionaires to buy the White House for someone that understands their plight.
Re:Uh-oh. (Score:5, Interesting)
I see the Libertarian and Republican view of money as being analagous to Newtonian physics and relativity.
From the right PoV, money is a measure of hard work, perhaps talent; but no more. In every day life that makes sense. Money looks like a fair measure. Now, how much talent and hard work can you have? How much money can you have? By definition, nobody can have more than 100% of the money. That's like the speed of light. Just as in physics, non-Newtonian things start happening as you approach the speed of light.
The first sign that you have "relativistic money" is that you have un-earned income. For most of us this is a very small thing (interest, maybe some dividends). Faster, faster... you are going fast enough to live on your un-earned income. Faster still... you seek to protect your sources of income by currying favor with local politicians. Faster, FASTER. You seek national laws that work in your favor. FASTER, FASTER, RUN--for high office, or else enter the space-time continuum of those who hold high office. Attend $30k/plate dinners as a matter of routine. Effectively make policy, which feeds back into the hyperdrive of your ever accelerating fortunes.
Close to the monetary speed of light, the Newtonian world of talent and hard work are of minimal impact, whereas for most of us the relativistic impact of unearned income and influence are negligible, or just a dream.
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Excellent. I can't wait for all those new Hawaiian islands to be spread around, thanks to the hard work of risk-taking CEOs.
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He's already more powerful than the Mexican Air Force!
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people in africa have been starving since i was a kid. too bad when you send them food the government takes it
Re:Uh-oh. (Score:5, Interesting)
people in africa have been starving since i was a kid. too bad when you send them food the government takes it
Right, and beyond that, this implies that the kids our food and money saved in the 80's turned around and had another generation of even more kids... that still couldn't be fed.
Not sure what the end game of that process is.
Re:Uh-oh. (Score:4, Informative)
Educate their women, which can only happen when they have enough to eat. Educated women on average have less children. They also wait until they have achieved other life goals to have children.
The food by itself only makes the situation worse. It bankrupts farmers and only serves to make more poor people. If the food was sourced as locally as possible and education was available and useful then the problem could be addressed.
Of course this is all based on the naive notion that the main purpose of food aid is to benefit those receiving the aid. That is merely a side effect, its real purpose is to consume market surpluses and enrich the producers of these commodities at the expense of future competition, the farmers that the aid puts out of work.
Humans unlike other animals stop breeding like rabbits once they have a comfortable living. For evidence look at the birth rates in first world nations.
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Educate their women, which can only happen when they have enough to eat..
If it were only so simple. This has less to do with food and more to do with culture. For example, in Afganistan today, people have enough to eat, yet girls are being poisoned in the schools to prevent them from being educated.
In several places in africa today (darfur, kifu, central africa, niger, chad, sudan, yemen, etc) political power struggles are basically forcing massive numbers of people to migrate like refugees. In this situation, there's no farming, no education, no stability at all. Sometimes i
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people in africa have been starving since i was a kid. too bad when you send them food the government takes it
No. When you send them food they eat it, turn around and fuck to have some more children, after all food will just appear out of thin air.
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people in africa have been starving since i was a kid. too bad when you send them food the government takes it
We don't send food to Africa. We send them credits to buy food from America. The government there, sells the credits and uses the proceeds to fund their military and line their own pockets. If we actually gave them food, it would do more good as most of the underworld people who buy the credits are quite well fed.
Re:Uh-oh. (Score:5, Informative)
We send rice directly to Haiti. All that did was destroy their rice farms. Meaning more poor people to go on food aid. We destroyed one of the larger parts of their economy with this aid.
Re:Uh-oh. (Score:4, Interesting)
We send rice directly to Haiti. All that did was destroy their rice farms. Meaning more poor people to go on food aid. We destroyed one of the larger parts of their economy with this aid.
Was that before or after all the natural disasters that hit Haiti? If it was post disasters, then it would be hard to claim that it was our aid and not the disasters that destroyed their agricultural economy. I'm seriously asking, not trying to be a smart*ss.
Re:Uh-oh. (Score:5, Informative)
Why the fuck did you censor your shit there? Slashdot's a free fucking speech zone, you can fucking say all the shit you fucking want to.
But doesn't a free speech zone imply that I can censor myself, if I choose to?
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It is doubtful that either food or foreign aid helps these people. What they need is a functioning economy and a functioning society, and handouts create neither of them.
The way we could help them is remove subsidies from our agricultural products and remove trade barriers. But hell will freeze over before US and European farmers let that happen. It is politically much easier to first waste many billions on farm subsidies, then waste many more billions on "foreign aid".
I would agree with that. It's also important to keep in mind that the "family farm" is no more. Most of the billions in farm subsidies goes to large corporations. Today's farm subsidy program is just one more form of corporate welfare.
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it still wouldn't be all that appropriate response to the criticism of utterly ridiculous wealth disparity in the world.
No criticism about the ridiculous wealth disparity in the world is appropriate if it comes from someone who spends significantly more than his share.
Re:What's the point of your post (Score:4, Insightful)
No criticism about the ridiculous wealth disparity in the world is appropriate if it comes from someone who spends significantly more than his share.
I wish I could mod this whole thread about share of wealth irrelevant. Whether Larry Ellison buys a huge chunk of real estate in Hawaii has nothing to do with whether a starving kid in Africa gets a meal today. And if Larry never got to the point where he could afford such a thing doesn't matter one iota to solve the plight of impoverished people around the world.
There are many fair criticisms about his management tactics and business decisions, but I fail to see how someone who has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to charity can be criticized for what appears to be yet another business deal.
The laws of the U.S. and Hawaii should ensure that he doesn't do anything harmful to the people or environment of this island. And if his involvement means the people that live there have a better life and he comes out ahead financially, then that's a net win we should all agree on.
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Starving Africans are the first worlds responsibility how? They have nobody to blame but there own people. Local warlord take the food they grow "make" them grow other crops etc. They have a choice to stand up and possibly die. Nobody else can be responsible for them they are not children the sooner we stop treating them as such the better. As to starvation in particular that's a population control, there fertility rates are insane with most of Africa at 4 children per family and some nations close to
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do it like the USA did with China. give them MFN status along with tax breaks for US companies to set up manufacturing and other low level operations there. its already happening in parts of africa
China was like africa not to long ago. except that i think a lot more people starved in china than in africa. tens of millions in the last century. you can thank clinton, foxconn and apple for giving them jobs outside a farm
Re:What's the point of your post (Score:4, Informative)
Apple Foxconn and Clinton are actually late to the party on this one. They didn't move in until more boring infrastructure companies (power, water) set up shop.
Even before Nixon went to china the US was selling the chinese power generators through US companies that had non US subsidiaries. There was I think, a reasonable belief that the wedge between Russia/Soviet Union and China could be taken advantage of by friendly sales of non military things even before full on recognition of (Communist) Peoples Republic of China as the government rather than the Republic of China.
But yes, you're right. The solution to poverty in africa comes from trade. What's happened is that pure aid, in the form of food or money, has devastated economies, since someone from france will give away food why would you pay a local guy to grow any? Since the government gets half of its revenue from aid why would you pay taxes etc. Those two have combined to wreck chaos on economies (they aren't complete 100% effects). Trade isn't really possible until those countries can have credible education and legal systems (so investors won't lose all their money), and there will probably need to be some infrastructure investment.
There's still a need for aid for the moment, locusts, droughts that sort of thing, aren't going to be solved overnight. But in the long run Africa needs development from trade.
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We have no idea what he plans to do with this island but it may not be as we all expect. It might be part of some charity scheme. We'll just have to wait and see.
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This is why I think the true answer is a blended system, where the basic necessities are available to everyone, but there is still incentive to go out and work for more than "the bare minimum". Pure capitalism has no mechanism within it to combat wealth inequality, whereas pure socialism has no mechanism to combat laziness and a lack of motivation, but mix the two, and you can eliminate the squalor that fosters crime and recidivism while still allowing people to move forward.
Although it's a common meme the
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go fuck yourself, ya greedy infidel!
Learn to read.
I never said I agreed with capitalism. I'm just tired of people crying about its obvious and direct consequences, and then say it's the bestest system of them all because it promotes competition and excellence.
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it's the bestest system of them all because it promotes competition and excellence
Most compititions generally have a loser... Capitilism may not be perfect, but it's the best socioeconomic system we've got. Anyone complaining about it can go ahead and invent a new one. Socialism (under any name) isn't it.
Re:Uh-oh. (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree. What exactly is wrong with the German form of capitalism and socialism blended? What about the Nordic nations?
Pure anything is garbage, no single system is without flaws.
That's REALLY a considerable ... (Score:2, Insightful)
NON-EVENT ... at all !!!
Thank you, whoever posted this thing. ... that I wonder what my day could have been if I hadn't received it.
Really.
It was so important to rellay this non-information
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You're free to leave at any time.
Same island Bill Gates chose for wedding (Score:3, Informative)
Old story here [nwsource.com]
Units (Score:5, Insightful)
the 141-square-mile island
I can't comprehend that size. Could we have the area in asteroid passing distances? Earth radiuses works too.
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the 141-square-mile island
I can't comprehend that size. Could we have the area in asteroid passing distances? Earth radiuses works too.
I beleive that the scientific unit for area is football field.
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I beleive that the scientific unit for area is football field.
American or European?
American. ...
NO! EUROPEAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
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This is not a small island. It's roughly the size of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens put together, or the Isle of Wight.
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A little bigger than a single Canadian corporate farm (larger ones hit 100 square miles).
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Lanai *was* a corporate farm for most of the 20th century.
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A handful of Bugatti Veyron EB 16.4s.
he's like Dr. No (Score:5, Funny)
With these billionaires also starting their own private space programs too, all we need is a suave british agent and a hot local chick going to raid the compound threatening megalomaniacal schemes
"do you expect me to talk?"
"no mr. bond, I expect no SQL to this movie, I expect you to join that table with this collate, and then drop"
Misleading title? (Score:2)
Surely: "Larry Ellison buys Hawaiian Island" would have sufficed?
While I might not have studied journalism, I did have a job as a journalist for about a year (as well as being made editor of some smaller
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It's bad grammar to be sure, but is a common speech construct (in the US). Some people might say "I bought my own car" or "I bought my own house". The meaning is that they bought it for themselves, as opposed to "I bought my mom a house". So the title is basically saying he bought the island for his own use, as opposed to buying it for someone else, for the company, etc.
Hawaiian Land Ownership (Score:2)
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At least one other major island, Ni'ihua, is privately owned after being purchased from the Kingdom of Hawai'i in 1864.
Next year: Oracle secedes (Score:5, Funny)
Next year's follow-up story - Oracle secedes, and couches itself as fully as possible in its total reality distortion field.
Then it sues Greece for having had oracles 2000 years ago.
My fellow Hawaiians! (Score:4, Funny)
He's not the first one to do it...but still (Score:2)
Larry and the Volcano (Score:2)
I hope there is a fucking Volcano on the island and it erupts.
Then I hope someone throws Larry into it.
Consequence? (Score:2)
What does 'owning' an Island actual mean? Is it part of the state of Hawaii and thus the USA?
Can Larry declare independence, make the island an international tax haven, issue its own currency and move Oracle's head office outside US jurisdiction?
Or is it more just he's now the owner of a pineapple plantation with 3000 worker slaves?
The Hawaiian Homestead act should be modified to.. (Score:4, Insightful)
...prevent stuff like this.
It should be decided by Hawaiians what happens to Hawaii - and I assure you they wouldn't want some megalomaniacal (sp?) asshat with all that power over their lives.
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...prevent stuff like this.
It should be decided by Hawaiians what happens to Hawaii - and I assure you they wouldn't want some megalomaniacal (sp?) asshat with all that power over their lives.
The island just passed from one megalomaniac billionaire to another. It was previously owned by David Murdock [wikipedia.org] (via his real estate holdings company, Castle & Cooke [wikipedia.org]).
The particular island in question [wikipedia.org] seems to have been almost-wholly owned by super-rich landholders for ~150 years.
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the idea of a single person owning the island of Lana'i is crass in the extreme.
Why? Its just an extreme instance of private property rights. So at what point do you say that this much property is enough but any more is not right? 141 square miles is big, but its not the largest private land parcel by a long shot.
Now, if you want to raise the issue of how the original land owner, Castle and Cooke, came to possess this island, that's another (interesting) issue.
He's going to plant coffee (Score:5, Funny)
So he can finally make money off Java.
Personally ... (Score:3)
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animals "own" land as well. predators have their own personal hunting territories they will fight for. vegetarians will fight for the best spots. the biggest deer, moose, elk or whatever will push/beat a weaker member of the tribe from any spot he wants to eat at
people just use paper and computer databases
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and that's why we sent your ancestors packing back to the UK in the 1700's. to protect private ownership of land
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Re:so what? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have to disagree. A lion eating you because you infringed on his territory is remarkably similar to me shooting you for trespassing. We both mark our territorial boundaries and we both defend them. We can also both lose our territory if we fail to defend it.
Not true. A lion will eat what it kills, so the purpose is to provide food. The territory protection is secondary. So, unless you are going to eat the trespasser you shot they are not the same at all. Besides, human beings supposedly have the ability to use reason, where as animals rely on instinct. In other words, we have a choice for what we do or how we act. The lion can only act like a lion.
Re:so what? (Score:5, Funny)
So... shooting trespassers is ok if we eat them afterwards?
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Not true. A lion will eat what it kills.
I'm not sure about lions, but wolves will kill coyotes that infringe on their territory, but they will not eat them. Coyotes will kill foxes that also compete for the same food source, and generally the coyotes will not eat the foxes. Killing your prey and killing your non-prey competitors are both common in the animal world. Animals, even predators, do not always eat everything they kill.
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A new lion can come and kill the old owner. If I shoot you while you sleep in your bed can I have your land?
Clearly not, property ownership is very different for humans than territory for animals.
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Yeah, but can you imagine having to commute in from Hawaii? I mean, if you think Fredrick is too far away...
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I don't really know Austin Powers, but isn't the white cat from James Bond?
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So is the volcano... which is why the James Bond parody, Austin Powers, also used it.
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I think you hit the nail on the head. Most of us who have posted negatively is because of what seems to be a very self-focused decision. I think there are many of us who want to help feed the hungry, house the homeless, and cure the ill, but we also have challenges of our own, children to raise, and even have fears for providing for our own retirement. You cannot help others if you cannot even help yourself. That said, many of us give to charities, tip waitstaff generously, lend tools to neighbors we ba