VINOD KHOSLA

Obama And Biden’s Billionaire Butthole Guy Demands $30M For Access To Public Beach

BILLIONAIRE SAYS “PAY ME” MILLIONS OF DOLLARS IF PUBLIC WANTS TO SEE THEIR OCEAN

Associated Press 

HALF MOON BAY, Calif. (AP) – A San Francisco Bay-area billionaire who closed an access road to a beloved beach is asking the state of California for $30 million in exchange for public access to Martins Beach at Half Moon Bay.

The San Jose Mercury News reports Vinod Khosla’s attorney Dori Yob quoted that number in a Feb. 3 letter to Jennifer Lucchesi, executive director of the State Lands Commission, which has been negotiating with Khosla to purchase a public right of way.

Lucchesi says her staff does not agree with Khosla’s price.

Yob did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

Rich Asshole Of The Week: Vinod Khosla

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Who me? Steal from the public? Never! Well, maybe just this once.

Who me? Steal from the public? Never! Well, maybe just this once.

So, Vinod Khosla is one of the founders of the venerable Sun Microsystems. He was a brilliant innovator and entrepreneur back in the day. Lately, “he has been experimenting with education and global housing. Vinod is also passionate about alternative energy, petroleum independence, and the environment.”

So, he sounds like an otherwise great guy, right? Rich, successful, and to paraphrase Carl Sagan: “giving something back; a gesture of good will to the people of this little planet who have given—from whom he has taken—so much.”

As long as you filthy mendicants don’t get anywhere near his property, that is.

See, Mr. Charitable here doesn’t want revolting members of the lower-class public like you and I anywhere near his personal multi-million dollar chunk of California coastline, even though the beach he’s restricting access to is a public beach and those access rights are protected by the California State Constitution.

He just ignored that shit, unilaterally blocked off the road, painted over the signs and said “nevermind the laws, everyone out of the water” and he did it because he’s rich and can afford to hire lawyers to gin up the ridiculous (but accepted by the local judge who’d like to be invited over sometime) legal hair-split that long standing public property and resulting access rights for his relatively recently acquired tract of land are in fact invalid because ‘Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo so ha ha the beach is mine and fuck the people who grew up and lived around here before I moved in a few years ago’.

See, the guy is just another mega-rich NIMBY – he’s quite willing (and able) to steal from the public in this case because it suits his desires, which as a guy with a metric fuck-ton of money apparently know no limits. Given his billions, he could likely have re-routed access to the beach or re-landscaped so it doesn’t disturb his 45 cabanas, or his view or whatever – but that’s not what he’s interested in. He wants a private beach. He wants to make OUR public beach into HIS private beach.

I live 3,000 miles away – but public lands are OURS, all of us, everyone in this nation. We’d flip a collective wig if some complete asshat like Jamie Dimon bought up everything surrounding Yellowstone and said “nobody can cross my land to get to the park anymore, too bad” but that’s exactly what Khosla’s doing, and getting away with, so far.

So congratulations, asshole! You found a legal loophole to allow you to steal from your neighbors, none of whom have as much as you are as fortunate to have – pat yourself on the back, for the rest of us, good going, buddy. Morals and ethics have nothing to do with it – you wanted it, found a nebulous way to legally justify it, you did so, and be damned to everyone else.

For shame, sir. I bestow upon thee the title of Rich Asshole Of The Week. Don’t worry too much, sir – I’m confident some of the the big fuckos on Wall Street and Capitol Hill are working overtime to dethrone you.

Author’s note: man, I’m going to start using that one as my excuse for everything from now on: “Your honor, I got high and robbed the bank, the liquor store and then detonated a nuclear weapon in the Chesapeake Bay because I have a waiver under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that I bought for $5 dollars from a flea market in Tijuana. It’s completely legal and trumps all local laws including the Constitution!”

[initial rage-trigger here]

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6 Responses

  1. bozo ozone

    bozo ozone June 17, 2014 at 4:18 pm · Reply →

    I googled “Vinod Khosla is an Asshole” and got this page. Thanks for posting it! A guy that rich doesn’t have many vulnerable spots, but I contend that somewhere underneath his hardened ego shell is a human being who can be affected painfully by public opinion. So, folks, say it loud and long — Vinod Khosla is an asshole!! Damage that jackass’s legacy. Give him a gift that will keep on giving after he dies. Have people give him dirty looks in public. Have people laugh at him. Have him be the punchline to jokes. Vinod called the shots — we’re just playing the game that he wants to play. Not our fault! Ball’s in your court, Vinod. What a sorry piece of shit you are.

  2. bozo ozone

    bozo ozone June 17, 2014 at 4:23 pm · Reply →

    If I had the money, i’d rent a plane with a trailing banner to fly by his compound. The trailing banner would say “Vinod Khosla is a Greedy Asshole” It would get in the papers. A bright light would be shined on his sick idiocy.

  3. Sammy

    Sammy September 26, 2014 at 3:28 am · Reply →

    yeah, I googled Vinod Khosla is an asshole and arrived here – dude is a mega douche sack

  4. Cosmic payback

    Cosmic payback October 7, 2014 at 7:27 pm · Reply →

    I also googled “Vinod Khosla asshole” and got this page. I was prompted by the recent Colbert Report story here that further enshrined his ass-holicness: http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2014/10/03/stephen-colbert-takes-on-vinod-khosla-and-martins-beach. Glad this jerk got overruled!

  5. scuba diver

    scuba diver October 12, 2014 at 4:59 pm · Reply →

    His narcissistic behavior is a sickness that he is not likely to be aware of. Have pity for him.

  6. Johnny Bocchetti

    Johnny Bocchetti December 17, 2014 at 1:11 am · Reply →

    If i went to India and got filthy rich and then disrespected the local culture, they would hang me..

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Khosla bought a $32.5 million beachfront property there in 2008 and two years later closed access to the beach.A state law passed in 2014 directs officials to consider taking the right of way by eminent domain if negotiations fail.

Vinod Khosla Wants Californians To Keep Out of Martins Beach (npr.org)
208 points by the_arun 755 days ago | past | web | 161 comments

I think Vinod’s kinda being a douche here. All of the positive street cred he is getting for his promotion of green energy is being lost to this fight. I mean, is it worth having the private beach? Why not keep it open to the public, upgrade the access, and actually reap some positive PR from this?

This is the kind of stuff protesters hate about rich techies. Apparently, this beach was historically used for a long time to teach surfing by local surf schools. A guy swoops in, who probably will rarely use this beach/vacation home, buys up the land, and closes off access. Attempts to “hack” the legal system through a loophole to achieve an exception to the state wide public beach system.

If he had been appreciative of the history of the beach and local surfers, he could have actually got some benefit out of it, maybe built some local facilities people would pay to use, add some exhibits on Khosla investments, etc. It would have generated positive press and positive externalities instead of negative press and negative externalities.

I like Vinod, but this just comes off as being a rich jerk.

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I like Vinod, but this just comes off as being a rich jerk.

Someone who is that rich doesn’t do it by being a nice guy, and that drive which makes him so rich bleeds over into non-business parts of his life because it’s impossible to be nice for some things and ruthless in others.

When I was young and naive, I thought serial entrepreneurs were just like other people, just really smart and driven. After meeting a bunch, I realized they are very different than me and most other people I’d met. They are driven beyond imagination, and that warps their sense of almost everything. Things we shrug off (losing some negotiation) becomes a really big deal to them.

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That isn’t my experience. I know several serial entrepreneurs who are much nicer than most people (probably the majority of >2 successful company people I know are “nice”). Most of the genuine assholes I know are unsuccessful, outside of a few horrible industries.

Being an asshole isn’t required to be successful. It’s a nice think to think the world is “fair” like that, that anyone who is successful has to be an asshole (or that smart people are ugly, or that successful people are unhappy, or whatever), but it isn’t true from experience.

There are certain industries which are win/lose, corrupt, and generally horrible, but I don’t think tech, especially startup venture-funded tech, is one of them. Would you want to join a startup for below-market-rate pay with high risk of failure and spend 100h/wk for a few months around people who are horrible?

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I know both types of people, nice rich guys and what you would call “assholes”.

However, I’m qualifying “assholes” because the few I know are actually very, very charming… but are in fact sociopaths/exibit some sociopathic traits, like being extremely artful manipulators, using half truths and lies, etc.

Examples: the CEO of a multinational company. As an example of his behaviour, much like Scott Thompson, he lies about his degree. He also skims off the company profits.

I also know of a few enterpreneurs that are really nice if you meet them , but work their employees to death and then cheat them out of profits (I think it has been discussed to death here on HN)

Just a few examples:

http://news.yahoo.com/yahoo-ceo-not-alone-7-execs-busted-res…

http://news.yahoo.com/zynga-greedy-game-industry-scum-steals…

BTW I agree with rdl, I believe sociopaths will be more common in large, established companies, than in startups.

If you work in such dysfunctional environments (for example certain financial industry companies, or governments), yes, you’ll end up believing that to be succesful it’s required to be an “asshole”.

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Being an asshole isn’t required to be successful. It’s a nice think to think the world is “fair” like that, that anyone who is successful has to be an asshole (or that smart people are ugly, or that successful people are unhappy, or whatever), but it isn’t true from experience.

I think the conversation has changed. I never used the word “asshole” and didn’t for a reason. I don’t think Kkosla is an asshole, and I don’t think anyone (at least, when I read the comments) was calling him one. Quite the opposite. It was a douchey move, but he’s not an asshole. He is driven to win more than most people can imagine, and that plus his intelligence are two huge factors in his serial success.

I’m glad you’ve had a better experience than I. I really am. I know my sample is small, but I’d done a lot of reading over the years. Steve Jobs, for example, fits my profile to a t, along with the people I’ve had direct contact with. (The group I’m talking about can be assholes, and I think Steve Jobs was one. It’s not required, though.)

Let me add an angle. I started a company almost 30 years ago. It’s still going. We’ve been profitable almost every year, but not wildly so. If I were to give the name, most here would say it is not a successful company. I’m by no means rich. We have never missed a payroll in that 30 years. Not once. Yes, I’ve fired people. I’ve done layoffs. I’ve never done one thing that I can’t live with at night when I go to sleep. None of my decisions keep me awake.

However, I was presented with many, many forks in the road. One road (the one I took) was a “good” one. The other would have allowed me to profit, sometimes much more than the other decision. I’ve watched very successful people over the years and I came to realize that they often take that more profitable road.

Because of the types of decisions we make, outsiders call us a “family” business. That is CEO-speak for we can’t make the hard decisions needed to increase profits, often at the expense of the people that work for us. I’ve had long discussions with serially successful people, and their primary advice, stop being a family business, don’t be friends with your employees and start squeezing everyone for productivity and profit. It’s what potential investors and buyers want to see, they say.

So, my sample is relatively small, but I’ve talked with lots of potential investors, VCs and just plain successful people, and I’ve definitely seen a real pattern.

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> One road (the one I took) was a “good” one. The other would have allowed me to profit, sometimes much more than the other decision.

Wouldn’t it have been more beneficial to society, in the long run, if you’d maximized profits by making those hard decisions?

In the end, that is, right now, you would be a powerhouse instead of a “family business,” which would allow you greater positive influence on humanity

BILLIONAIRE SAYS “PAY ME” MILIONS OF DOLLARS IF PUBLIC WANTS TO SEE THEIR OCEAN, HALF MOON BAY, Calif, Vinod Khosla

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