Last Week Tonight looks into how billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, wealthy tourists and the US military have altered the state at the expense of locals
John Oliver on billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Ellison in Hawaii: ‘It’s the larger dynamic at work here, where wealthy outsiders can out-purchase and out-maneuver a local population, that can be so dispiriting.’John Oliver on billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Larry Ellison in Hawaii: ‘It’s the larger dynamic at work here, where wealthy outsiders can out-purchase and out-maneuver a local population, that can be so dispiriting.
At least, when run by the US; prior to its annexation, the islands, long ago settled by seafaring Polynesians, was ruled by a constitutional monarchy that abolished slavery in 1852 – before the US. In 1983, a very small group of wealthy white landowners forced the final ruler of Hawaii, Queen Lili’uokalani, to cede power of the kingdom of Hawaii to the US. The islands became the 50th state in 1959.
On the tourism front, though it contributes over 18% to the state’s GDP, “Hawaii does seem set up to benefit wealthy outsiders”. There are currently 32,000 short term rentals in the state, meaning one out of 18 houses is a vacation rental, and nearly a quarter of Hawaiian homes were purchased by buyers outside the state.
Zuckerberg did eventually withdraw from those lawsuits, and penned an op-ed promising to “work together with the community on a new approach”. But he continued to buy up parcels of ancestral rights land and support his co-claimant in the lawsuits, an owner who wanted to buy out the rights of all the others. That co-claimant did successfully get the land to be put up for auction, then bought them for $2m. “Who can say where he got the that money?” Oliver mused. “Apparently, not me, legally.
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