Larry Ellison has announced this Wednesday that he is buying Island Air airline, Hawaii’s regional carrier which offers flights between Honolulu and the islands of Molokaʻi, Lanaʻi, Maui, Kauaʻi and Kona. On June 20, 2012 it was reported that the American business magnate and chief executive of the multinational computer technology company Oracle Corporation had agreed to buy 98% of Lana’i, the smallest publicly accessible inhabited island in Hawaii. The other 2% remains under estate control.
There is something slightly disturbing in having multi-millionaires owning entire islands where people live and raise their families, and this feeling is aroused further when that same person buys the major means of transport to access the place. However, if one investigates further, the buying of entire islands is not as much of an isolated case as one might think.
Photo credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lanai_city_houses.jpg
The Simple Process of Buying an Island
When buying an island, those few privileged ones which can afford to pay for it should keep in mind that, although the situation gives the owner meaningful control over the territory, the land is still within the jurisdiction of the national government.
There are thousands of uninhabited islands in the world that are ruled by different laws according to the country they are part of. In China, for example, islands cannot be bought, only leased from the government for a maximum of fifty years. However, for the rest of them which are actually on sale, there is even a webpage publishing islands in the same way a real estate agent would show a house.
For those of us who do not have the $500 million that Ellison needed to buy Lanaʻi, a feeling of dispossession creeps into our minds at the bear thought of being forever isolated from these beautiful places. Luckily, unlike those islands which are entirely on sale, Lanaʻi is still publicly accessible for anyone to visit and will remain so in the future.
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