The New York Times has an intriguing article about Larry Ellison's purchase of the Hawaiian island of Lanai. The article demonstrates, very poignantly, the relationship between property ownership and power:
Lanai’s new owner is Larry Ellison, a co-founder of Oracle. He bought 98 percent of the island — the remainder is government property and privately owned homes . . . . Mr. Ellison now owns the [only] gas station, the car rental agency and the supermarket. He owns . . . the two Four Seasons resorts, two championship golf courses, about 500 cottages and luxury homes, a solar farm, and nearly every single one of the small shops and cafes that line Lanai City. He owns 88,000 acres of overgrown pineapple fields and arid, boulder-strewn hills, thick with red dust, as well as 50 miles of beaches.
Sally Kaye, a former prosecutor . . . wrote in an open letter to the new owner that was published by Honolulu Civil Beat, a news site. She described Lanai as an island that had “been owned and exploited by one really rich guy or another” for 150 years and whose residents live in a “medieval lord-of-the-manor system of control.”
Steve Clowney