Sean Parker Builds Beach-Access App To Atone For His Rule-Violating Wedding (wral.com) 73
An anonymous reader quotes the Associated Press:
A tech billionaire whose elaborate wedding in a redwood grove violated California rules has helped create a smartphone app that shows users a map of more than 1,500 spots where people can get to the coastline. The California Coastal Commission unveiled the YourCoast app at its meeting Thursday in Newport Beach. "This is an only in California story," Commission Chair Dayna Bochco said in a statement. "Where else could you find a tech mogul partnering with a regulator to help the public get to the beach?"
Sean Parker, co-founder of file-sharing service Napster, agreed to help make the educational tool after he built a large site resembling a movie set for his wedding in an ecologically sensitive area of Big Sur without proper permits. However, the commission determined the construction in a campground area wouldn't harm the environment and the wedding was allowed to proceed. Parker, a former president of Facebook, also paid $2.5 million in penalties, which helped fund hiking trails, field trips and other efforts to increase public access to the popular tourist area. It was a rare high-profile coastal violation case resolved with cooperation rather than a legal fight.
Sean Parker, co-founder of file-sharing service Napster, agreed to help make the educational tool after he built a large site resembling a movie set for his wedding in an ecologically sensitive area of Big Sur without proper permits. However, the commission determined the construction in a campground area wouldn't harm the environment and the wedding was allowed to proceed. Parker, a former president of Facebook, also paid $2.5 million in penalties, which helped fund hiking trails, field trips and other efforts to increase public access to the popular tourist area. It was a rare high-profile coastal violation case resolved with cooperation rather than a legal fight.
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Former President of Facebook, he famously pointed out that:
a social-validation feedback loop is "exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology. The inventors, creators -- it's me, it's Mark [Zuckerberg], it's Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it's all of these people -- understood this consciously. And we did it anyway."
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and why is he so important
He was a co-founder of Napster. He helped get Facebook off the ground, and was the president of the company until he was arrested for cocaine possession. He was played by Justin Timberlake in the movie.
I should care about his wedding?
Well, for one thing, his wife is hot [google.com].
Another way to read the situation (Score:5, Insightful)
If you ain't rich and you you can't fund the devlopment of an oops-sorry app, you don't get to have a nice wedding in a protected nature reserve. If you are, you do.
Somehow that story doesn't make me feel all warm and fuzzy...
Guilded Age (Score:1)
It's the new Guilded Age; except that we don't have the wage and economic growth of that time.
While people are struggling to pay for healthcare and student loans, we have this dot.com lottery winner cutting off access to public parks because he's got the money.
People want to make America Great Again? Like the 1950s? OK!
Let's bring back Eisenhower era tax rates again - adjusted for inflation, obviously. There were plenty of opportunities for average people back then.
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I couldn't figure out whether you wrote "Gilded" as "Guilded" as a deliberate pun, or whether it was just a misspelling...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Helping people get to the beach? (Score:2)
Think again. It's about keeping the poor away from his little section of beach that he wants to keep all to himself.
Eat the rich!
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Nevermind. I had him confused with the idiot who was suing to keep people off his "private" beach. Wrong guy, but eat the rich anyway!
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Hey, we can just make stuff up here? Cool. "Anonymous Cowards are cool" see, I did it too.
That's why we need rich people (Score:4, Interesting)
It may be an unpopular opinion but I think that allowing the rich to break some rules in exchange for making things better for others is a good thing.
The whole point of being rich is to be able to do things you and I can't do. And reserving a spot of nature that is not available to the commoner in a way that doesn't damage it won't hurt anyone, so let them do it. In exchange they give us something good. Win/win: they have their little eccentricity, I have my beach access app.
Pure equality is not a good thing, some resources are limited. Letting no one access them would be a waste, and letting everyone access them would be a catastrophe. So let the rich have them, and in exchange, make the more common resources more accessible for everyone else.
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False dichotomy (Score:5, Informative)
Pure equality does have it's place: in the law. If they law doesn't apply equally then it's not the law. You're confusing equality of opportunity with equality of outcome.
Oh, one more thing (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a bit like having a fracking magnate list of all the places where it's safe to drink the water provided. Sure, it's nice to have and it's nice the fracker feels guilty for making your water flammable, but it'd be even nicer if the water wasn't made flammable in the first place....
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You're confusing equality of opportunity with equality of outcome.
Careful. A lot of people who make accusations like this ignore unequal opportunity that is caused by heritability of socioeconomic status. In other words, poor parents are more likely to have poor children.
UBI to help poor children escape parents' poverty (Score:2)
I never suggested eugenics was necessary. A universal baseline income should be enough to help poor children escape their parents' deep poverty, attend trade school, and relocate for a respectable career. Job creators would benefit by having a larger skilled labor pool.
It's basically another false dichotomy (Score:2)
There's a third option between equal opportunity and equal outcome the right wing doesn't want anyone talking about: everybody gets a decent life. Maybe not an
Post-hoc justification - it's called corruption. (Score:1)
Post-hoc justification - it's called corruption.
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The whole point of being rich is to be able to do things you and I can't do. And reserving a spot of nature that is not available to the commoner in a way that doesn't damage it won't hurt anyone, so let them do it.
It represents a theft from The People, so no, don't let them do it. The land is available to the commoner; where access exists, it is illegal to close it off, and there's really no beach worthy of the name which you can't get to on foot.
Pure equality is not a good thing, some resources are limited. Letting no one access them would be a waste, and letting everyone access them would be a catastrophe.
All the beaches which everyone can easily get to in the USA are open to access by all, but they are not typically the locations of catastrophic events.
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It may be an unpopular opinion but I think that allowing the rich to break some rules in exchange for making things better for others is a good thing.
This is not simply an unpopular opinion, it's an attack on democracy itself. You're harkening back to a day when some people were above the law. We tried this before, more than 200 years ago when the world was run by monarchy, and the rich WERE above the law. the rule of law [wikipedia.org] says nobody is above the law.
I certainly don't want to go back to a monarchy, and a
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Hard to tell if you're trolling, but I'll bite.
The only thing that having a lot of money should get you is, well, a lot of money, ya know, to buy stuff with. It shouldn't give you more political power, or "get out of jail free" cards, or the ability to write your own laws, or break them with impunity. The fact that it more-or-less already *does* give you those things, is pretty much the primary problem our civilization currently faces; e.g. money == speech.
We have quite a few laws that don't make any sens
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Do as he says, not as he does (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Do as he says, not as he does (Score:1)
Are? You're decades behind, it's always been that way.
And what kind of state is California? (Score:1)
How is it that California allows people who own a patch of land adjacent to the ocean to restrict access to the Pacific Ocean? And to prohibit access to the beach between their property and the ocean? The ocean does not belong to these rich people, and the rest of us should not be blocked from accessing it just because they want to lock strangers out of their little world.
This was a rental, not a fine (Score:3)
This went just as planned, he rented a Redwood forest for 2.5 Million dollar. The politicians who let him get away with it are corrupt pieces of shit, the media which pretends this isn't a giant corrupt mess are also pieces of shit. This whole thing stinks to high heaven.
If I had a small marriage in nature park do I get away with paying a couple thousands dollar to the cop and just continue the wedding? Of course fucking not. Blow off the marriage location, clean it up on his dime and throw the book at him. Letting him get away with this is fucking insane.
Billionaire justice ...
Naturally they made an iPhone app first (Score:2)
More people use Android, but iPhone is the choice of the entitled pricks of the world.
Rich have access to the water (Score:1)
Of course only our more well to do iPhone sisters and brothers can utilize the info and get to the shore. Let us Android One people eat cake.
We already have a word... (Score:2)