New Zealand Crowdfunds $1.7 Million To Buy A Private Beach (fastcoexist.com) 124
An anonymous Slashdot reader quotes an article from FastCoExist:
When debt-troubled businessman Michael Spackman put his private New Zealand beach on sale, Kiwis started a crowdfunding campaign to buy it back for the public... The crowdfunding campaign raised $1.7 million in donations from around 40,000 people. Even the New Zealand government contributed $254,000.
The BBC reports that the campaign "snubbed a businessman who offered them money in exchange for private access to part of the beach," with the campaign's creator calling this an example of technology's power to unite people for a common cause. "Sometimes you can feel powerless, so for us, it's been a marvelous experience... There's been a real feeling of coming together."
The BBC reports that the campaign "snubbed a businessman who offered them money in exchange for private access to part of the beach," with the campaign's creator calling this an example of technology's power to unite people for a common cause. "Sometimes you can feel powerless, so for us, it's been a marvelous experience... There's been a real feeling of coming together."
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There's no need to reinvent the wheel here - fully anonymous boards have figured this out a long time ago. Instead of the "AC" name the site can show a salted hash of the poster's IP address - that goes a long way to show if it's the same person posting or not. A regular browser session with a cookie can also help identify the same poster across multiple posts. Yes, if you want to be obtuse you can point out it's easy to circumvent these and appear as a different person on each of your posts (but you can do
Foolish Investment? (Score:1)
Kind of sounds like an unwise investment with the expected sea level rise to be between 1 and 3 metres. I hope that beach is deep because they likely have bought something that will become nothing. Investing in underwater front properties at this time is likely not the wisest decision. In fact much of the underwater front market will likely end up in investment funds and sold onto to pension funds (long leased back to current owners at and then abandoned once flooded and the lease broken, bad luck for the
Re:Foolish Investment? (Score:5, Interesting)
You missed the point of the community's move to purchase back land previously owned by a private millionaire. In New Zealand, we value the land, sea and the ecosystems therein. We made this decision to preserve a beautiful section of land and enable all New Zealand families (and even yourself, if you choose to visit as a tourist) to be able to visit freely and unrestricted. We live in an age where money can buy our coastline and islands, and prevent people from accessing this "owned" land. As a New Zealander, I applaud the effort we have made, and achieved, and hope others throughout the world may also begin to take back areas of significant natural importance.... Not too sure what pension funds and investments funds have to do with it,I guess American's value the $ over nature.. A pity in my opinion...
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New Zealand is one such country, but there are some historical exceptions.
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The joys of new zealands libertarian experiment. A faultering economy, private beaches and half the countries brightest citizens packing bags for australia
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The joys of new zealands libertarian experiment. A faultering economy, private beaches and half the countries brightest citizens packing bags for australia
If you are moving from NZ to Australia, it's tough to argue your among the brightest.
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Probably true. However even the Australians know the difference between "you're" and "your"...
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No they don't. That's why they spell "Beer" as "XXXX"
Mexicans spell it XX [dosequis.com].
Does that mean that Australian beer is twice as good as Mexican beer?
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Not in this case. Dos equis is drinkable.
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That's a Queensland beer.
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Yes, even the locals pay for the tag, but you need to know when the locals buy the tag, it's steeply discounted.
I lived in Manasquan for a while, it was early February or mid march when it went on sale. Point Pleasent was different, I forgot when it went on sale. Mantoloking, I don't recall ever buying a beach pass and I don't think that there was any easy public access to the beach, now that I think about it, I don't recall ever seeing a lifeguard or anyone except my neighbor or fishermen... this was the 8
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...and half the countries brightest citizens packing bags for australia
They're the brightest ones you're sending? Boy, you have problems...
Having said that, we visited NZ last year. Love it. Love to retire there as soon as I win the lotto and can afford a million dollar unit in Wanaka.
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The beach may be "free" but access is another question. It's improving in Florida, but there were many beaches in the 1980s that had no public access for miles, even tens of miles, from the land side - no place to park, no place to legally walk-on if somebody stopped and dropped you by the side of the road.
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Yeah, Golden Beach, FL has this problem. Over a mile of beach with absolutely no public access, except for a small park in the middle where you can't park unless you're a town resident and the police will harass you if you use the facilities there.
Beaches should be public. Period. They are a very limited resource and it shouldn't be possible for the 1% to own them and deny access.
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Next time remind them that they have a body camera, it's a public resource ( the facilities) & harassment is still an offense. I walk that beach a lot, and those police are not nice or polite, unless it's the fat guy, he's cool as shit, he just tells you what you're doing wrong and let's you go with a warning, so don't repeat it otherwise his memory is steal trap, and your ticket it much worst. and he will catch you again!
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It's under intense pressure by the wealthy and it only takes one moment of weakness or corruption by legislators or judges and it's lost forever. Public beaches are written into our constitution and yet wealthy people are chipping away at that right.
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that's right, high tide down, but never was access to the beach,
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Interesting question: here in the USA, the issue of beach ownership is a weird one. the problems are ( ocean beach only Florida ) A) how to access the beach B) where does the property line end and the ocean start? so with question A) in most places, homes were places and property lines drawn and the beach was cut off, people were nicer back then so you let a person walk the alleyway between the 2 house to get on. Trip and fall lawsuit ( sorry don't have the source for that ) in the 60's changed people's m
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You might find this article [nzherald.co.nz] about the Queen's Chain interesting as well. Note:
Re: Foolish Investment? (Score:2)
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" Investing in underwater front properties at this time is likely not the wisest decision."
Shit, I'd invest because I could mine the crap out of that area for all the resources.
You've not been paying attention to all those minerals lying on the ocean floor and beaches just waiting to be extracted.
Re: Foolish Investment? (Score:2)
You're insane if you think wealthy nations will do nothing to protect their beaches. In places like Florida, levees might not work due to limestone permeability, but that barely matters because Florida doesn't depend on levees ANYWAY, and never HAS. We just dredge out deep backyard lakes & canals, and use the fill dirt to raise the adjacent land high enough to be above the water table at all times. And when that's not enough to protect a building from storm surge, we build it on concrete pilings so occu
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slashdot
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Long term vs short term thinking.
$1.7M for a 30 year lease on a beach is still cheap. If 10,000 people use it per year, that works out to 1.5 cents per person's access - I'd pay $0.015 per year in additional taxes to open up an additional public beach within 10 miles of my home. Still a good deal if it costs another $0.985 per year for the infrastructure required for public access, maintenance, police, etc. People pay $3/day to park at beaches around here.
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Kind of sounds like an unwise investment with the expected sea level rise to be between 1 and 3 metres. I hope that beach is deep because they likely have bought something that will become nothing. Investing in underwater front properties at this time is likely not the wisest decision. In fact much of the underwater front market will likely end up in investment funds and sold onto to pension funds (long leased back to current owners at and then abandoned once flooded and the lease broken, bad luck for the pension funds). I wonder how many other buy back the beach crowd funding scams will kick off. There is billions of dollars of property that needs to be dumped on the public purse and I am sure all sorts of scams will be kicked off to do it, the wildest of which will be in Florida https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] (Florida the ocean wants it swamps back and it will get them).
Yeah indeed.
What you do is invest in properties a bit back from the beach and, simultaneously, invest in stuff that makes global warming worse!
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Except for the above post. Every single Anonymous Coward who has posted a comment on this story is the same person.
Interesting public-private partnership (Score:1)
Nice that the NZ government pitched in.
It would be interesting to try something like this on a bigger scale. Suppose 5-10% of your taxes could be designated for public spending according to your choice. 2% - national parks, 2% - drug rehab, 2% - NASA, 2% - local police assistance, 2% - new battleship. Give people a more direct voice in spending. The technology is here. The problem is educating the voters where the problems are. Some things would be really popular, and other things would almost be ignor
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Nice that the NZ government pitched in.
It would be interesting to try something like this on a bigger scale.
I disagree. If I wanted my money to be used for this then I would have donated to the cause. I don't want an organisation making that choice for me. let me choose where my money is spent. I am a New Zealander.
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Ok but... (Score:2)
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The law in NZ has always allowed private ownership of beaches, and other foreshore property, and still does assuming you can convince the current owner to sell it to you.
Most (but not all) of what would be considered beaches is currently owned by the Government, however that doesn't necessarily guarantee access unless you have a boat or can swim. There's no law requiring any private landowners in front of the public space to provide access. For example, in the case of the beach under discussion here (which
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The law in NZ has always allowed private ownership of beaches, and other foreshore property, and still does assuming you can convince the current owner to sell it to you.
The law in New Zealand used to recognise the "Queen's chain" as belonging to the people. Private ownership of beaches is a recent thing that came along with the sale of all the profit making government departments to foreign companies.
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The Queen's Chain is largely a myth [nzherald.co.nz].
This is the propaganda put out there by the politicians who got us into this mess. Prior to the mid-late 1980's, there was a defacto Queens Chain on all beaches, lakes and major rivers, even if a historic land title existed on a tiny fraction of that land. After these land titles started being sold to overseas interests, that is when access started being restricted, and the government failed to act then and hid behind this "Queens Chain is a myth" propaganda.
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Not all countries ban private ownership of beaches, and honestly this looks like the fairest way to obtain a beach for the public in countries where beaches are privately owned--just gather up the money and buy it, instead of change the laws. (Plus, it actually imposes a direct cost on any politician who wants to win over voters/distract people from internal corruption by giving them a new park: The land cannot be just claimed by fiat, and preferably the protections against sending out thugs to intimidate
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Of course, rich people always find a way to buy property right in front of beaches, built a walled residential area or something, and then make public access difficult.
That's been done in Malibu, California, too. The beaches are technically public, but many are dominated by rows of private homes built closely with fences. There are public access paths, but private property owners have been known to fence them off or hang illegal/fake signs prohibiting public access to discourage people from using the paths.
I don't know what the cheap solution to this is in situations where you have many individual private property owners and narrow/hidden beach access. I'm guessing you
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Or make their "fence" out of gigantic boulders that make foot traffic difficult and motorized traffic impossible.
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In Florida, we kind of take the middle ground... with very few exceptions, all private property ends at the high tide line and the beach itself is public. In most cases, public ACCESS to the beach (via pedestrian trail through a 10-foot wide easement from the nearest public road to the beach) is required by law, but there might not be anything like parking, restrooms, etc. within a half mile or more. So the easements mainly serve to guarantee access to the beach for other people who live NEAR the beach (but
Crowdfund a Politician? (Score:2)
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It's been tried. Before his presidential run in this election Lessig tried it in the last one. He created a crowdfunded superpac with the idea of having that superpac donate only to politicians who would commit to campaign finance reform. It didn't manage to make enough to actually buy any politicians though.
Bernie did much better with crowdfunding though (he outperformed Hillary financing wise) - so it could just be that Lessig had a great idea without great execution ?
New Zealand (Score:3)
I love it when NZ makes Slashdot.
I miss living there :(
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Me too. Especially when it's not for something like trying to trademark yellow...
Scam (Score:2)
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A part of the Earth that has been used for humans for centuries is then "claimed" by humans only for other humans to "buy" it back off them at a profit so that other humans can use it for free again? What a scam
Welcome to our world. This is how it works everywhere, all the time. It's called private property, and it is a cornerstone of common law. Fucking over your neighbors is enshrined and ingrained at the highest levels.
That's how we roll ! (Score:2)
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Go Kiwi ! Real proud to call this country my home, and of the people who make it the way it is.
I used to like living in NZ too, but theres two things that made me leave;
Geographic isolation. I like living on a large continental landmass rather than a small island at the bottom of the planet. The feeling of connectedness with the world, the ability to, if I so desired, get in a car and drive from Europe to Asia or travel by train from London to Saigon. Just wow. The NZ equivalent would involve blue water sailing. Airline flights and cruise liners are pretty expensive.
Geological instability. NZ regular
Bad Deal! (Score:1)
They overpaid for something they already had, and would have continued to have for free: unfettered access to the ENTIRE beach. The rich businessman simply wanted an off-beach building to remain private for 20 year only, when it would then be gifted to the public. What would have been more rational would be to buy an access right for say a couple of hundred thousand dollars, assuming you didn't believe Gareth Morgan was good to his word.
Certain land/land types should be off limits to ri (Score:1)
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We'll ignore the fact that the earth existed for perhaps millions of years before such a thing as government appeared, explaining why a beach could be privately held.
A state park is essentially a legal fiction. It's not a geological fixture like a mountain or lake. Any part of the earth could be made a state park. So saying that "brats" shouldn't "buy" a state park is as nonsensical as saying they shouldn't be able to buy a government building. Meanwhile, there is an Italian restaurant in the old towns
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Or an island like Ellison buying Lanai.
Kind of sounds (Score:1)
Good for them (Score:1)
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I'm a man. So if I'm a homosexual and a motherfucker... that makes your mom a man too.
LOCALS ONLY! (Score:2)
David Geffen is still a twat. [cnn.com]