Federally listed steelhead use the lower parts of Post Creek to spawn. This is something the wedding planners would have learned if they had sought the necessary permits. Increasing sedimentation in the creek reduces steelhead reproductive success, and is considered a take without a permit under the Endangered Species Act. The ESA has both civil and criminal penalties for taking without a permit, but NOAA's ability to enforce these kinds of violations is pretty limited, they don't have the money or the manpower. Thankfully, the California Coastal Commission has both.
I disagree. To me, this is the story of a single a-hole. I don't see a larger story. I live in Silicon Valley, and with some exceptions, nearly every person I've dealt with over the years, rich or poor, have been super cool.
Many journalists present outliers as representative of the normal situation, then put up link-bait titles to generate controversy and clicks. It is a dishonest practice.
I do not disagree with the article. I've been living in Silicon Valley for 15+ years now. When I first came, my office mate told me "You know you're in Silicon Valley, when you stop asking "How much will it cost" and start asking "How long will it take". I've seen lots of examples of things like this behavior, from people taking the car pools lanes to save time, to Steve Jobs parking in handicap spots. Whether or not it's smarter to beg for forgiveness vs ask for permission is another issue, but I've seen this behavior often around here.
Steve Jobs is the ultimate outlier. Yeah some folks here are obnoxious, anxious, ride in carpool lanes etc. Is it so different from other urban areas - Seattle/Boulder/DC/LA? Not in my experience.
> The event's venue, a luxury hotel in Big Sur, California, will include a custom-made fairyland-like setting with fake ruins, bridges, ponds, and a gated cottage
Sad to see that SV billionaires suffer from the same kitsch-mania as do the Russian oil oligarchs.
Jealously and ideological discord. The Zuckerbergs and Parkers are undermining the traditional American narrative of "hard work" and entrepreneurship.
It seems wrong based on that world view that a baby-faced geek in a hoodie can look down on all the traditional businessmen from his mountain of money.
These new rich they did not get rich through "hard work", they just got the right idea at the right time.
They did not prove themselves in a decade(s) long process of "building a business", facing countless challenges along the way, but practically got rich over night - often while having a lot of juvenile fun.
And of course nobody can construct a charming "rags to riches" nonsense story here, the one Americans love so much. The current generation of silicon billionaires come from privilege, and can be billionaires shortly after completing their studies at some elite university .. or even before that.
None of that is surprising. That's how modern, globalized, digital capitalism works. But it makes people uncomfortable, and yes jealous. These 20-something billionaires are simply way more offensive to the common man than the traditional industrial tycoons.
Very, very few people will have the right idea at the right time. It is not something you can plan or work (hard) towards to. Also the software business is elitist by nature. In contrast, it is much easier for most to relate to the traditional American entrepreneur story, which for example begins with his first job making pizza, then his first small restaurant and ends with him being a billionaire chain restaurant tycoon decades later.
It is obvious that among the capitalists there are subgroups which are seen as less deserving and sympathetic by the general public. Traditionally bankers and - it seems - for quite a few people Sean Parker-types too.
Of course it is unjustified to hate people because they found a legal way to easily and quickly make a hell lot of money. But well.. humans being humans.
This doesn't jive with history. The world had the same disgust for the robber barons of the late 19th century - and those people fit your stereotype to a T. They spent decades building traditional businesses that everyone could understand, they didn't get rich overnight, and they weren't fresh-faced children.
There is, perhaps (though IMO not really) a larger issue with how Americans perceive the Silicon Valley elite (or, more accurately, the self-anointed "elite") and how it ties into perceptions of success and the American Dream.
But that's not what's happening here. This article is about how someone rich shit all over public property, illegally, and in a flamboyant manner. Invoking "they be jelly" is a giant cop-out. The narrative would be largely the same regardless of if they were European royalty, or a 50 year-old billionaire.
This sort of behavior is unacceptable no matter which way you slice it, so let's not make excuses just because they are "one of our own" (which, let's be honest, they're actually not).
Exactly - robber barons are the analogy here. The Big Sur area already have has one gigantic monument to the bad taste of the newly rich: Hearst castle. Just continuing a tradition...
>This doesn't jive with history. The world had the same disgust for the robber barons of the late 19th century
Actually it didn't but I really don't feel like starting a long historic discussion here..
>This article is about how someone rich shit all over public property, illegally, and in a flamboyant manner.
See my other comment. If Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had done the same nobody would give a damn. Bill Gates could probably easily get away with stuff like this too.
>This sort of behavior is unacceptable no matter which way you slice it
You misunderstood me. I wasn't trying to defend Parker. I have no sympathy for such decadence in general. My point was that his decadence wasn't his actual "crime" and neither was any violation of the environment.
> "If Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had done the same nobody would give a damn. Bill Gates could probably easily get away with stuff like this too."
This is where we disagree. The core of the story is someone wealthy doing something against the public good in a particularly flamboyant way.
The backlash would be the same regardless of who they are. It's the sheer flamboyance that's the core of the story. Larry Ellison had similar coverage when it came to being incredibly loud and obnoxious - and he's as close to a traditional industrialist as the software industry gets.
> "but I really don't feel like starting a long historic discussion here.."
Pardon me for saying so, but you've made some big claims and controversial statements, and your response to any refutation has been "well, I don't want to start a discussion here..." - so what do you want to do, besides drop a big, bombastic claim and walk out?
[edit] I'd also like to point out that whenever stories about the shenanigans of Silicon Valley appear, there is frequently the argument made that everyone else is just jealous, or that they are sore losers. This argument has a bad smell to it (in the code smell sense of the word).
I've also felt, recently at least, that this community has a nascent persecution complex, like everyone else is out to get us - usually because they're jealous, or they're luddites, or they're just evil in a laughably generic way. This particular trend I find highly annoying.
>> Bill Gates could probably easily get away with stuff like this too.
The difference is that Gates doesn't do stupid things like this because Gates knows that he is a public figure. He hires people who know what they're doing and invests his time and energy in PR. Parker, Zuckerberg, and others seem to think that they can enjoy the benefits of being public figures when they want to and then turn it off when they don't. It doesn't work that way.
Also, why doesn't Parker have anybody around him to tell him that building a fake ruined castle in Big Sur is not going to look good in the press? If I was him and I read this article, I'd be figuring out who had my best interests at heart and who was just hanging on for the money.
Other than legally undermining traditional American narratives, the Parkers illegally undermined ancient redwood trees. That was the point of the article.
What, the whole national park? No. He didn't destroy an entire national park. That would be ridiculous.
He developed, without permission or permit, in an ecologically sensitive area, without any thought given to erosion control (amongst other things). Some of the other issues include that this land was supposed to be used for the general public. While Sean Parker unfortunately is a member of the general public, the general public should not do whatever the fuck they want with land designated for public use.
"The unpermitted development has thus impacted the existing redwood forest habitat and has likely caused sedimentation of Post Creek."
I'd love to learn more about your background -- trail maintenance planner? Ecological impact study coordinator? Surely it's something that would allow you to make an authoritative statement about what does or does not damage a piece of protected parkland, otherwise you'd simply be making unsupported assertions on a topic you know nothing about.
I haven't read the article or much of the discussion here, I would just like to point out that you are applying (maybe unintentionally) a fallacy called "excluded middle", frequently used in propaganda of all sorts.
Between being an absolute expert of a topic and knowing nothing about it there is a whole continuum of possibilities.
Fair point -- I was being hyperbolic. Rather than "a topic you know nothing about", it would be more accurate to say "a topic which people (namely the parties which assessed the fine) who are demonstrably qualified have already passed judgement on, and which you therefore must show specific reasons that your assessment is more accurate in order to be taken seriously".
>It seems wrong based on that world view that a baby-faced geek in a hoodie can look down on all the traditional businessmen from his mountain of money.
I don't know what you mean by 'traditional businessmen', but Zuckerberg's flaunting of Wall Street conventions by wearing a hoodie was great. Seriously, fuck those guys. There's good people there, but talk about guys making insane amounts of money for work of dubious (and dubious ethical) value.
And yes, Zuckerberg's billions came rather quickly, but he did create a product that is used by a billion people, and his company employs thousands of engineers. He broke no laws, didn't destroy the economy and didn't need a trillion dollars of tax payer money to be bailed out.
I am not interested in arguing about whether Zuckerberg, Parker etc. deserve their wealth or not. That was not my point here.
I just wanted to point out what I think are the dynamics behind attack pieces like this.
I dare to claim that if some popular rich people, say Hollywood stars, had done exactly the same thing there would be no coverage outside of the gossip section where the writers would only fawn over the romantic scenery.
I think this is not about the actual event itself. It is about the things I mentioned earlier.
Or, maybe, the 2.5 million in fines actually had something to do with the actual event itself, which is shameful and disgusting.
Nobody is surprised when people from Hollywood do shameful and disgusting things, because they are openly and honestly shameful and disgusting.
But Silicon Valley and the SF area like to paint and market themselves as somehow better than that. So it's a "surprise" when they go and do something shameful and disgusting.
They've made so much money, couldn't they have found a better way to spend it? If you want to create a magical experience, why does it have to involve destroying the environment?
I disagree, sure there was some bias in the article. The fact that Parker made his money in Silicon Valley is completely besides the point. My take away is that a rich asshole* thinks the rules and laws don't apply to him. He developed an sensitive ecological area without little to no regard as to it's effects. People should be called out for these type of things. I could have done without the bias also but this was and is something worth calling people out on.
*I don't personally know Parker of course so asshole may be a bit of an unfair judgement but stories like this aren't likely to make me think favorably of him.
You had the idea at the right time, but did you have the idea at the right place?
Zuckerberg had it at Harvard. There was prestige and an aura of exclusivity associated with Facebook in the early days, which was integral to its viral growth.
Don't get me wrong, I think Zuckerburg is a pretty competent player, but he clearly had a lot of things going for him and working in his favour.
The existing upper classes were always uncomfortable with the newly rich. Royalty/aristocracy to merchants, the landed classes to the city-dwelling commercial professionals - and now, the intellectual elite to high-growth Internet startups.
It's a travesty what Parker did in that park, but that's not what the article is about. The article is about how all the the Internet startup world are douchebags who don't know their place because they have gotten their hands on a lot of money but none of the cool reflective sense and taste that (presumably) The Atlantic and its intellectual readers possess.
> douchebags who don't know their place because they have gotten their hands on a lot of money but none of the cool reflective sense and taste that (presumably) The Atlantic and its intellectual readers possess.
Yes, thats how rich and poor intellectual Atlantic readers feel about rich dbags, be they dbags nouveau riche or paleo riche.
Smart people get into princeton on scholarship. Really smart people tend to find success in life. Or, more precisely, people who find a lot of success tend to be really smart. It's not a conspiracy.
Nothing too see here. This is totally acceptable behaviour globally - if you have money, do whatever you want, then pay. The most popular TV show on the globe is Top Gear where 3 middle aged assholes with pockets full of greasy money do exactly that all the time - buy, demolish, destroy, whatever, then pay. And as this is the most popular TV show - we all like such assholic behaviour.
Don't worry, because this didn't come remotely close to "destroying a national park". I realize that Northern California is the natural habitat of the insane tree hugger, and that many joints have been smoked while pondering Sean Parker's evil deforestation plot. But that report found no evidence of actual, permanent damage to anything. It asserted that activities of this general nature, carried to extremes, carry the possibility of some amount of damage. His temporary, aesthetic changes did nothing and no fine should have been levied - certainly not $2.5 million that will be used to perpetuate this particular brand of insanity.
I understand your point but no fine should be levied? This kind of behaviour should be discouraged and a fine is entirely appropriate to discourage it.
> This kind of behaviour should be discouraged and a fine is entirely appropriate to discourage it.
I would actually go so far as to say that the fine should have been much bigger. This is something that annoys me about tickets being a fixed amount: is it really a true deterrent to bad behavior when the fine is so negligibly small that you basically don't give a damn? The purpose of punishment is to reform bad behavior, bad behavior that is dangerous to others. When you're going 80+ kph above speed limit you're not just putting your own life at danger, you're putting other innocent people in the vicinity at danger too. A ticket should not be $400 at that point when you're a billionaire, it should be $4 million. $400 is likely not enough forceful enough as a corrective measure. In this instance I'd have been happier if the fine Parker incurred was above $25 million.
They do that with traffic tickets in Finland and Switzerland. You've probably heard of the $290,000 speeding ticket levied against a wealthy Swiss guy.
History and celebrities have shown that when the courts think that, these people -still- don't think the rules will apply to them and will either lie about it, do self-serving "community" service, make excuses about how they can't because they are too high profile or busy, or out and out bribe people, either to do the work for them, or to fraudulently attest to their service.
From the findings: "The unpermitted development has thus impacted the existing redwood forest habitat and has likely caused sedimentation of Post Creek."
The fact that he brazenly (and illegally) modified land designated for public use is pretty bad as well. Imagine if I decided to shoot a porno right in the lap of the Lincoln Memorial, setting up lights and cheap sets and basically making the whole monument look like a joke, ruining what would have been a solemn and sacred space for the general public.
Of course, I would also be shot by the guards there. There's no similar guardian for that particular part of the Redwood forest.
The difference between Top Gear and this situation though is that the cars they smash up aren't a shared resource. Top Gear smashing up a sweet car doesn't really affect me in any way (in fact, it can be pretty funny).
One might argue that by making changes to the natural landscape as Parker did, he affects the shared resource that is the environment, which some find to be less than totally acceptable.
In a very famous episode of Top Gear Jeremy Clarkson drives a Land Rover to the top of a mountain in Scotland all while chewing up the peat bogs (he then just leaves it there over night).
They caught a lot of flack for that segment, but it stands that they do the exact same thing.
Let's be clear, they are well-off because of the success of the show, but the money that funds the show is not theirs. It is well-funded by the BBC, i.e. the taxpayers, precisely because it is so popular.
To the best of my knowledge, when it comes to their personal funds, they mostly buy cars. Which is fitting- whether or not they are jerks, they are definitely all car enthusiasts.
Except that they did not receive approval for development as required by the California Coastal Act. Presumably the guys on Top Gear aren't breaking any laws.
A $2.5 million fine is nothing to a guy with an estimated $2.1 billion fortune [1]. If we don't want the rich to flaunt the law with impunity, the find should be a hundred times larger - that way it might actually act as a deterrent.
Of course, you could argue that we don't care if the rich can commit certain offences with impunity. Perhaps we've signalled that by legislating a fine rather than imprisonment for this offence.
Firstly, quantifying actual damage to the environment is actually really hard. All the money in the world can't revive an extinct specie for instance.
Secondly, I don't like the stance you defend : fines aren't a price to pay to do whatever we want, there are to dissuade people to act in a way society don't want you to act. People are fined when they violently rob or physically attack others, this doesn't mean money buys you the right to randomly punch people in the teeth.
(and to follow through: that's why I believe fines should be proportional, which could be the case here)
edit: I just looked at your profile and saw you certainly must know a thing or two about laws and justice so I am pretty sure you have a more subtle point of view than what is reflected in your post and my counter-argument in my second point. Looking forward to it.
In theory, you could take the fine and use it for park restoration or expansion of the park. If thats true, than why not just take the fine and be happy? That would leave the environment in better shape and give someone a temporary job fixing it. I don't know enough about ecology to know if its possible
I am not sure whether it was in France or England before the industrial revolution when a nobility could get away with running over a peasant with a carriage only with a fine. It did not end well.
The only way the rich can live with the others in stable society if there are a lot of things money can't buy.
Why would consent be required? I don't recall any consent being granted for the wedding.
If you didn't consent, should I only be responsible for paying for your medical bills and missed work?
Should billionaires be allowed to walk down the street kicking children as long as they throw a few bucks on their prone, sobbing bodies afterwards - like a cartoonish Dickensian nightmare?
Ah yes, because having requirements for a permit before modifying certain locations that are a shared public resource totally makes California the Soviet Union.
I was surprized that he created a LLC to run his wedding. Is this normal for high budget weddings ? What might be advantages of doing so? Just curious.
Anything you or your wife buy for you wedding is not tax deductable.
Anything a corporation, LLC, or company buys can be treated as an expense as a consumable. I'm not sure what revenue the LLC would have, so it would probably take a loss, which then can be written off on personal taxes as "income/loss from a business."
Would the LLC structure also protect him in case they decided to fine him $100 million?
It'd probably protect him in case a wild animal bit one of his guests.
It's relatively cheap protection when so many things can go wrong.
The courts can and often do pierce the veil of sham LLCs like this. The LLCs main use (still bad), is that if LLC1 runs up a debt of a billion dollars, LLC2 might be protected from it.
Not suprising for the nouveau riche. My buddies and I have witness acts like this so often, we nick-named it the "tude", as in attitude.
From the asshole that parks his Hummer sideways in 2 handicap spots to stupid brats that trash resturants and laugh at the staff, it's really stupid behavior. The "old money" knows better than this and mostly stays off the radar of the rest of the public.
An interesting book that jives with this is Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else. One of the interesting things the author finds about the nouveau rich is that they are typically more dismissive of the poor and less charitable than the "old money." Probably in large part because they think "I made it because of my own merits - if you don't have the things I have, it's because you are lazy or incompetent."
As for trashing a redwood forest, not sure what makes that seem OK. :)
Total business psychopath. I am not all surprised of Parker's lack of consciousness for what really actually matters; that place in which we all live - Earth.
If there's any story here it's impossible to tell with such a badly written and misleading article.
>Nothing says, "I love the Earth!" quite like bringing bulldozers into an old-growth forest to create a fake ruined castle.
So he brought multiple bulldozers in hey? Somehow I doubt that, do people actually buy into this sort of stuff? At best from pictures it looks like they used small earth moving vehicles as you'd expect.
> So he brought multiple bulldozers in hey?
[...]
>At best from pictures it looks like they used small earth moving vehicles as you'd expect.
That seems like an odd thing to quibble about.
Are you saying he didn't illegally destroy environmentally sensitive wildlife by moving a bunch of earth and installing a fake fucking castle, but that it's all okay because he used "small earth moving vehicles"?
"unlike most bulldozers" seems to heavily imply it's still a bulldozer:
"Unlike most bulldozers, most loaders are wheeled and not tracked, although track loaders are common. They are successful where sharp edged materials in construction debris would damage rubber wheels, or where the ground is soft and muddy. Wheels provide better mobility and speed and do not damage paved roads as much as tracks, but provide less traction."
So what is the best deterrent for such behavior? Obviously, fines aren't going to work - for someone who is worth billions of dollars, a couple of millions is pocket change. Also, if trees/forests are destroyed, it takes decades to restore them back. It is difficult to quantify the time and effort required, plus the negative effect of losing that ecosystem in the mean time.
Penalties that require the offender to restore the area to its previous condition. Screw up a redwood or endangered species? Fix it. Unspeakably expensive? Tough. Get some bids and hire a firm to do it and if it costs half your net worth then oh well.
There was a great Planet Money episode about how BP was required to replace pelicans (not pay a per-dead-bird fine) after their gulf coast spill and how market prices eventually emerged for that service. http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/07/30/128880374/the-frid...
In Finland (or maybe Sweden), fines for crimes scale to match the offender's ability to pay. I recall reading that some rich guy had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a speeding ticket.
That's Finland. Sweden have fixed fines for traffic violations. For minor crimes, there is "dagsböter" that is scaled by the income of the perpetrator (notionally by 30-150 days' salary, but in actual use the fine is set much lower).
This story is more about bad taste than Silicon Valley excess. Tens of thousands of individuals in this world have the means to pull off what Parker did.
I feel bad, even though I am not from that country.
Feels like he had already calculated the fines and the outrage.
On a sadist note I couldn't resist wondering how long they are going to hold onto each other. Hope that ends without drama at least, after all this waste and damage. Well, this follows pretty soon these days, isn't it? Especially if it's two celebrities.
Apparently I am not acquainted with the plight of unused campgrounds, because this makes me want to go find some redwood trees and throw up on them. Could someone explain to me in what alternate reality these temporary changes were worth $2.5 million in fines? I like California, or should say I liked California until reading this. But it now appears that the inmates are running the asylum.
People like you, who can't understand why a massive forest full of redwood trees is worth protecting with heavy-handedness, who California would love to keep outside of its borders. So I think they're doing something right.
And you are claiming that you, or anyone else for that matter, can prove that installing a few temporary platforms and fake ruins caused actual damage to a waterway?
There was a bridge built over a waterway, yes, with a hard concrete channel underneath. Unless done absolutely correctly (and this is a very complicated subject of environmental science) the hard bottom channel can create erosion that destroys local riparian habitat within the erosion zone, as well as sedimentation that destroys (yes, destroys) downstream habitat. The increased sedimentation also changes the water chemistry and particulate content, so species of fish, insects (which fish, birds, and other animals eat, being an important base of the food chain), and other species are greatly affected, if not entirely killed off downstream. Of particular interest with this stream is salmon spawning, which is extremely sensitive and a huge focus of environmental groups in California and the northwest, for good reason.
No one is simply claiming it—it is absolutely proven.
It was my understanding from the article that they actually built the pond over which the bridge was built. Would this still be considered a waterway in your understanding?
Not to seem like I am defending this terrible act. Digging a pond in an old redwood grove seems like it would cause quite a bit of damage.
Can you, or anyone else for that matter, prove that installing a few temporary platforms and fake ruins WILL NOT cause actual damage to a waterway?
If you can't see that these regulations are there specifically to protect precious natural reserves from unanticipated damage, you are a moron.
The penalty for such barefaced contempt of the law should be death. As a billionaire with an army of lawyers, Sean Parker has no excuse for flaunting the general will of the public in this way. This isn't an innocent mistake made in a drunken moment of passion. This is calculated, premeditated contempt for the laws of our society. If Sean Parker has so little respect for our laws he should have his wealth stripped and be excommunicated from the state. He should feel lucky to escape this kind of crime with his life.
Obviously American society is degenerate and borderline non-existent when this kind of conspicuous contempt for society receives apologies by supposedly well-educated people.
I don't know if I'd advocate death, but he certainly "knew better." It's bad enough he spent more on one day than most Americans can earn in a lifetime, but for what? Some ephemeral bullshit in exchange for lasting damage to the commons?
You've really lost the plot - you have nothing more to argue than "prove it", "don't believe it", etc., in a manner that amounts to little more than "nah nah I can't hear you".
I have friends who are geologic and hydrologic engineers. Their conclusion on reading the 132 page report published was that it was written by persons who similar qualifications, and not laymen.
You're the one arguing against reason, that somehow the California state governments ecology agency just employs random yahoos to conduct geologic assessments on natural parks and issue seven digit fines if they don't like what they see, all because we shouldn't be hating on one of the Facebook guys...
The problem seems to be that some platforms were build on the bank of the creek with no erosion control, meaning that a good rain storm or two might cause it to collapse into the creek which presumably would block it.
There's certainly, let's call it "journalistic excess" in the story (OMG! Google busses!) but I think real damage was done. Weird that neither Parker or the owner had the sense to think that they should clean up afterwards. The specifically sought out the place because of its ecological beauty.
Federally listed steelhead use the lower reaches of the creek to spawn. Construction without taking measure to keep sediment from reaching the creek will affect steelhead reproductive success downstream and would be considered a take under the endangered species act.
The fine has both to be punitive and to serve as a deterrent to others — so to be punitive, it has to be relative to the income of the person/company being fined, and to be a deterrent it also needs to be severe. I don't see any reason it has to be similar to the direct cost of the damage caused.
If he was illegally bulldozing redwoods on land he paid cash money for, you might be able to make an argument about environmentalism. But he didn't own it. That's straight up property rights.
