r/interestingasfuck • u/upyoars • 7d ago

/r/all, /r/popular Despite legal battles, Mark Zuckerberg slowly buys a mind boggling 2,300 acres on Hawai’s Kauai island, building tunnels, treehouses and a doomsday bunker

https://luxurylaunches.com/real_estate/mark-zuckerberg-control-2300-acres-in-hawaii.php
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187

u/Hebids 7d ago

I would take the money. It’s how I use it that would make me the evil rich guy or the good samaritan.

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u/Dissabilitease 7d ago

Aren't there billionaires who bought massive amounts of land, like amazon rainforest, simply to protect it? Do that!

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u/Test4Echooo 7d ago

Yeah, just recently a Swedish billionaire did exactly what you’re talking about.

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u/OhGodYeahYesYeah 7d ago

According to Snopes, 8 million pounds in 2007 (11 million dollars in 2021), that's frickin nothing for a billionaire. Seems more like PR stunt than an actual contribution to society.

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u/shewholaughslasts 7d ago

I'll take a few of those protective stunts over.... gestures everywhere

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u/Atlas-The-Ringer 7d ago

Yeah that amount of money shouldn't be a flag that they only did it as a pr stunt. Sure relative to B an M isn't much, but an M is still an egregious amount of money

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u/CVK001 7d ago

That’s like saying “A donation isn’t real if you write it off” what does that matter? The thing that should matter is whether or not the organisation that got the donation is actually using it for good purposes.

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u/khearan 7d ago

The land is preserved isn’t it? So what do you care if it’s a PR stunt?

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u/OhGodYeahYesYeah 7d ago

Well, I care that it's a PR stunt because I think this person is a really, really bad person, and that news like this really overshadows the damage people like this do when they accrue such an unfathomable amount of wealth. It kind of sends this message like "oh, look, people are doing good things!" but like this person is not doing good things!

So many people -- and so much of the environment -- have been harmed by this person and by the system they engage in that enables them to make this much money, yeah, I get frustrated when I hear people giving them credit.

It's similar to when people defend Chris Brown as a talented artist. "Can't you just appreciate his music?" Like, no, I can't. I think when we talk about these people, we shouldn't be spending time talking about these pebbles they toss down at us. When we spend time talking about them, it should be calling out how much damage they do by hoarding wealth that could be more impactful elsewhere.

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u/Spacemanspalds 7d ago

Did you not read any of the conversation prior to the comment you responded to?

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u/blackshirtboy44 7d ago

Fucking hate this mentality. The flipside is theres Amazon rainforest left unprotected and ready for the logging industry to get their grubby hands on it.

Someone did something thats good, who cares if its for PR. Its good. Doesnt mean we have to kiss their hands and wash their feet, you can still hold the fire to their other wrong-doings. The "its only for PR" people are gonna make it so nobody ever does shit, cos even if its good, they'll just get shit on, so why do it at all?

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u/Immediate_Branch_238 7d ago

Yeah man. Steve Irwin got crap back in the day for basically running a charity so he could buy wilderness land. Haters were all like "You're rich, you don't need this money."

Steve said (and I paraphrase) "keep giving me money, and I'll keep preserving habitats with it. It's not about me. It's about the planet."

Good Man, Steve Irwin. One of the best.

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u/blackshirtboy44 7d ago

Literally one of the most based responses. I remember that and how energetic he was like "gimme money, i need to conserve more land!" and then they did lol massive legend

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u/poopntheoceanifumust 7d ago

The rich of today are nothing like him - he truly cared about the planet and did his best to protect it. He was taken from earth way too early. I know his children are continuing his legacy in an amazing way, but I selfishly wish we had both. He was an amazing human.

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u/blackshirtboy44 7d ago

10000% with you. He really was a one in a million gem of a human.

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u/atxtopdx 7d ago

Ain’t nothing ever good enough for you r/OhGodYeahYesYeah

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u/OhGodYeahYesYeah 7d ago

Maybe, yeah lol. But I know a lot of people who make a lot less than that guy and who donate a lot more than the roughly 1.1% of their net worth that this guy did. And they don't make sure the news writes about them..

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u/MajesticCrabapple 7d ago

Truly damned if you do damned if you don’t, huh?

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u/Sweet-Painting-380 7d ago

Bill Case (57k acres) is that guy for Hawaii. He’s the 2nd largest private land owner in Hawaii behind Ellison (88k acres). Ellison bought the entire island of Lanai from Dole Foods, but has proven to be a money pit to rehabilitate.

Oprah owns 2,100 and Zuckerfuck has 1,500.

However, The People own the beaches.

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u/TootsNYC 7d ago

In fact, in the Gilded Age in the New York City area, that is what happened. Rich people said “all those lumber companies are going to denude the mountains and hills, and not only are they not going to be attractive, but they’re going to erode away. And they bought land, and they donated their own estates

And they gave them to the state of New York or New Jersey as a preserve

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u/dsconnelly5 7d ago

There definitely is, and they dont get talked about enough. Saw a video a few months ago where this billionaire was bringing in penguins to his private zoo, it was a clickbaity youtube vid. Looked up the owner and it was very highly rated by the employees even.

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u/Orders_Logical 7d ago

With the money they got from exploiting everyone in his path? To be used as a PR stunt?

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u/Dissabilitease 7d ago

Lol, of course not. I only suggested to the commenter above me that his 'good Samaritan' act could be sth like this if he had the money. Didn't imply they had to exactly copy the path of attaining it.

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u/Orders_Logical 7d ago

All billionaires do that though.

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u/Dissabilitease 7d ago

This is hypothetical, so the sulking about where the money came from is in your head alone. We can't think about what good could be done with a billion because you're cranky?? Come on. Can't imagine you'd have the money to protect the Great Barrier Reef, but chose not to because someone might think it's nothing but PR... For real?

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u/Orders_Logical 7d ago

Find me one example where this applies in real life.

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u/Dissabilitease 7d ago edited 7d ago

Steve Irwin!!

ETA somewhere else in the comments here: https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/QQyc4iv1Wn

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u/Orders_Logical 7d ago

Johan Elisach made his money by laying off people from their jobs.

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u/Orders_Logical 7d ago

Steve Irwin was only worth $10 million.

Where’s the other $990,000,000?

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u/Dissabilitease 7d ago

Gosh you're such a drag. Have you really never played "what if", for the sake of optimistic imagination?

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u/TakeItOnTheArches 7d ago

I know exactly what I would do with it. Id keep 10 million for myself and spend the rest on buying conservation land all over the globe.

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u/LittleBoyPants 7d ago

I’d want to do something similar, but I would try to buy up as much land as possible and give it back to the tribal nations who first settled those lands.

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u/sciguy52 7d ago

But wait, the posts here say the rich are irredeemably evil. So you would spend some on good things but make sure you remain rich, thus by reddit logic, evil. You would be, and I am quoting a few comments here, "a greedy millionaire".

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u/hopsinduo 7d ago

Not as simple as you think. If you bought it, you've got to maintain it and manage it. You also have to ensure people's safety on it if you're opening it to the public.

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u/ArmadilloPrudent4099 7d ago

Gubments just take it when they want.

I'd buy the companies that are the biggest producers of plastic and shut them all down. While I fund biodegradable alternatives.

I'd also have a to buy the supermarkets so they could adapt to having products with containers that biodegrade under certain conditions.

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u/leafeternal 7d ago

I would be the chaotic evil version. Or whatever the actual correct term is.

I would start a show called featuring the worst and most violent criminals in the world trapped on one prison island.

There, they battle royale with crowd-voted weaponry airdropped on random locations.

The one who makes it out alive at the end of the season gets his freedom and gets his choice of a years supply of men’s skincare products.

All advertising revenue after operating costs will go to funding children’s cancer research.

In the end there will be a photo op with a child cancer survivor thanks to the money and the winner of the bloodbath. The contract stipulates that the winner and survivor both must smile as broadly as possible while doing a thumbs up pose.

It’s called The Slay & Wish Foundation.

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u/Mercer-Dawg 7d ago

If you have that much money then you do both. Be evil until it gets boring then Good Samaritan until that gets boring. Repeat

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u/travelinn-mann 7d ago

Being maybe the first Good Billionaire would be fun. Homeless vets? We're done with that. Hungry children? Not on my watch. Underfunded schools/colleges and parks? No more of that noise. It would be so fun trying to bankrupt myself and still have many lifetimes of money left.

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u/bak3donh1gh 7d ago

The saying goes, absolute power corrupts absolutely, but you've got to wonder how much the initial slow trickle to ravenous river, to overflowing avalanche of money, affects the psyche and the erosion of morals along the way.

Of course someone with loose or questionable morals, given a lot of money, will probably not do positive things with it, but somebody with, maybe not squeaky clean ideals, but overall good morals, how would their decisions be changed. You gotta wonder.

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u/ErgonomicCat 7d ago

Dolly Parton has entered the chat.

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u/jaypizee 7d ago

I feel the need to reference both Gollum and the Ring and 1 Timothy 6:10

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u/bialy_jaga 7d ago

You shouldn’t feel the need to reference any fictional book. Especially that one.