[jhayward]

There are several comments here about Khosla and his efforts to convert public right of way to private property on the California Coast. It's fair to ask, "why is this relevant to a video of his views on the future (tech)?"

It's relevant because the beach controversy shows that the future that Kohsla wants to create is inimicable to the future that I want to see. He sees a big-L libertarian future, where the strong eat the weak, wealth is the sole source of power, and the wealthy act with a large degree of impunity.

So at best, I would watch with that in mind and have to critique everything he says to pick apart when he is trying to advance that view, vs observations and ideas that are not tied to it. In this case, I haven't bothered. There are others I can listen to for insight.

[iaabtpbtpnn]

Strongly agreed. I don't even think I could work for a startup funded by Khosla Ventures.

[heyjudy]

When capitalists push humanity to the brink of collapse out of primarily short-term self-interest to expand their largess beyond material success in their domains that it cannibalizes public commonwealth and corrupts governments to add to ill-gotten gains, while people are so poor that they camp on highway on-ramps in San Jose, they're plotting their own course to the next Reign of Terror by unfairly gaming government and rigging the system to their own ends, instead of the advancement of humanity. After all: what rational and sane person wants to live in a poor or dystopian country? Why not build up a country with a carbon sequestration moonshot than seek to deregulate in regulatory capture and destroy the commonwealth?

To sum up: a person whose goals are solely money by any and all means is therefore a criminal: antisocial and unconcerned with others.

[mud_dauber]

Also strongly agreed.

[q845712]

I logged into my HN account for the first time in months just to upvote and add my agreement

[hoaw]

Yes, allocation of resources is pretty much _the_ issue right know in terms of the future. There is certainly a lot of opportunity to capture wealth for yourself, to mistreat the environment and in other ways "win". But in the end it is those who can afford to leave things on the table that are going to really win. The companies that can deliver more value to their employees, the cities can provide more affordable housing and the countries that are doing better in terms of e.g. emissions. It is by distributing rather than capturing wealth that people and societies are going to be able to do more than the ordinary. This is when you will afford to innovate and do so from a position of strength.

[drak0n1c]

You can make the argument against private ownership of certain types of land for the purposes of public benefit, but I don't see the environmental point in this case. Privately owned areas, particularly beaches, usually fare better environmentally than high-traffic public access beaches.

In the Philippines and Hawaii, beaches that are restricted due to indigenous sovereignty or private ownership don't have the litter and degraded reefs of their public beaches. Unfortunately there has been a tragedy of the commons with public access.

[hoaw]

I'm not arguing specifically about his actions, but about his actions in relation to the future. Like in any societal shift there are opportunities for the people who come out on top to leverage their position for themselves. Whether that is blocking public beaches or cheating the environment (like e.g. Volkswagen did).

But in the end you are cheating not only everyone else but also yourself. Volkswagen by falling behind in the shift to electric and Khosla in making his own community less viable. At the same time there are companies and communities out there, like Tesla (at lest for their customers), trying to do their best to provide as much value as possible.

While I get your point about tragedy of the commons I would still put that in the same category. I isn't like billionaires are the sole source of dysfunction in the world. It is a larger issue about giving up your own position for the benefit of more people so you all have something to build on. Certainly dysfunctional government, whether corrupt or democratically so, is part of that as well.

This is especially important with increasing complexity, and increased leverage in complexity. You can't really predict what specifically is going to make the difference.

[evancharles]

I'm weary of getting into this, but I don't think that's the right conclusion from the beach issue. I'm not intimately familiar but if you care about it, I'd recommend reading what he wrote about it. https://medium.com/@vkhosla/martins-beach-a-matter-of-princi...

(I work at Khosla Ventures and have raised money from Khosla in the past)

[iaabtpbtpnn]

I've read his post, and I think it's "not even wrong", in the sense that his conception of his rights is so fundamentally out of touch with reality, his premises so faulty, that attempting to engage with the arguments he bases on them is not worthwhile for either side.

[beatpanda]

Here's a more recent status update from the other side of this dispute: https://www.surfrider.org/coastal-blog/entry/whats-next-for-...

The Supreme Court refused to take up Khosla's most recent appeal, leaving in place the requirement that he leave the gate open to the access road to Martin's Beach.

It will be interesting to see what Khosla does now, given that he has exhausted his appeals in the court system.

[iaabtpbtpnn]

He claims he'll litigate for the rest of his life. I suspect he'll keep finding new ways to refuse to comply, each time getting a type of citation that is different from the others based on the letter of the law (though not its spirit), and appeal each one as far as it'll go.

[jlarocco]

Disgusting. It's too bad he'll get away with it. Normal people would go to jail after a while.

[joejerryronnie]

And my reply to Khosla, in the immortal words of Jeff Spicoli, “You Dick!”

[writepub]

X's viewpoint on Y needn't have any logical correlation/causation on X's viewpoint on Z, assuming Y & Z are orthogonal and independent.

It is fair to criticize Khosla on beach access, but his investment record is self explanatory for his opinions on tech to be worthy of an audience.

If you believe otherwise, you may also believe boycotting [YC, HN] to be valid and fair, for giving Khosla a platform, and accepting funding for post-seed rounds. This would be wrong. What we need in the valley echo-chamber is a way to disagree without carrying grudges. Diversity of thought is just as valuable as diversity of the labor force.

Most importantly, Khosla's funding, though self-serving, creates jobs and helps companies - that's something we can all get behind unequivocally

[chasing]

It reveals character.

And we all have the freedom and luxury to decide how we want to react to that revelation.

[TACIXAT]

What is particularly impressive about his portfolio? The whole idea of venture capital is placing many bets. In fact elsewhere in this thread people used that same logic to excuse his bad bets. So if you put money into just about every company that gains traction in the SV, why would that indicate brilliance when some of them hit big valuations?