John Oliver: ‘Hawaii is being reshaped by wealthy outsiders’

On Last Week Tonight, John Oliver looked into Hawaii’s evolution into a haven for billionaires at the expense of the local population, as part of a long history of the state prioritizing wealthy outsiders. “For native Hawaiians, it must be difficult to shake the feeling that you’re an afterthought,” he said. “It’s like be introduced by your parents saying ‘these are our sons Tommy and Tommy’s brother,’ or having a TV show announced as ‘stick around after House of the Dragon’.”

It is “no wonder” that nearly two-thirds of residents believe that their state is being run for tourists at locals’ expense. “The more you look at Hawaii, the clearer it becomes that they’re not wrong about that, but it’s not just tourists,” he said. “Hawaii has long been run for the benefit of everyone but Hawaiians.”

At least, when run by the US; prior to its annexation, the islands, long ago settled by seafaring Polynesians, was ruled by a constitutional monarchy that abolished slavery in 1852 – before the US. In 1983, a very small group of wealthy white landowners forced the final ruler of Hawaii, Queen Lili’uokalani, to cede power of the kingdom of Hawaii to the US. The islands became the 50th state in 1959.

“Over the past century, a number of groups, from the US military to tourists to the extremely wealthy, have continued to exploit Hawaii,” Oliver noted.

Firstly, the military, which leases large swaths of Hawaiian land at extremely low rates – in one case, $1 – and have bombed areas for “training purposes”, not cleaning up waste. Just three years ago, the military’s massive fuel storage facility on Oahu had a spill which poisoned the water system that served 93,000 people. “The US military has a pattern of causing an absolute mess in Hawaii, with activists having to struggled to undo the damage,” said Oliver.

Case in point: the US army seized the Mākua Valley after Pearl Harbor, evicting local families who lived there for generations with the promise that the land would be returned six months after the end of World War II. That still hasn’t happened. “Instead, it’s yet another of Hawaii’s sacred spaces that’s being used for target practice,” said Oliver. The activist group Mālama Mākua successfully sued the army to stop live fire training in the valley in 2004, but can only visit twice a month under military supervision.

On the tourism front, though it contributes over 18% to the state’s GDP, “Hawaii does seem set up to benefit wealthy outsiders”. There are currently 32,000 short term rentals in the state, meaning one out of 18 houses is a vacation rental, and nearly a quarter of Hawaiian homes were purchased by buyers outside the state. Hawaii is now the most expensive state in the nation for housing, and because the state imports about 90% of its food, residents also pay some of the highest prices in the nation for groceries.

“But maybe the ultimate expression of the extent to which Hawaii is being reshaped by wealthy outsiders is its growing population of billionaires,” said Oliver, noting that 11% of the state’s private land is owned by just 37 billionaires, including Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison and Oprah Winfrey. Ellison bought 98% of the island of Lanai – including its grocery store, single gas station and the community newspaper – for a reported $300m. “He’s basically everyone’s boss and landlord,” said Oliver.

But “nothing compares to what’s being done on Kauai” by Zuckerberg, “a real boy who wished upon a star to become a wooden puppet”, Oliver joked. The Meta founder and CEO is building a giant compound on the island that has more than a dozen buildings, at least 30 bedrooms and bathrooms, a tunnel that leads into a 5,000-sq-ft underground bunker and 11 treehouses connected by intricate rope bridges. To secure the land, Zuckerberg sued hundreds of local residents to dispute their ancestral land rights, “using a legal maneuver pioneered by white sugar planters”, Oliver explained. “It is the most on-brand white guy in Hawaii thing he could possibly do.”

Zuckerberg did eventually withdraw from those lawsuits, and penned an op-ed promising to “work together with the community on a new approach”. But he continued to buy up parcels of ancestral rights land and support his co-claimant in the lawsuits, an owner who wanted to buy out the rights of all the others. That co-claimant did successfully get the land to be put up for auction, then bought them for $2m. “Who can say where he got the that money?” Oliver mused. “Apparently, not me, legally. Maybe $2m just fell out of a random treehouse somewhere.”

“It does seem like that new approach for the community ended up with Zuckerberg getting what he wanted anyway,” Oliver continued. “And billionaires like him will insist that they contribute to local charities and help the economy there, but it’s the larger dynamic at work here, where wealthy outsiders can out-purchase and out-maneuver a local population, that can be so dispiriting.”

Taken together – “the cost of living crisis, the low wages of a tourism dominant economy, the off chance of being exploded or poisoned by the US military” – it’s “frankly no wonder that so many are choosing to leave the island,” said Oliver. Each year, 15,000 native Hawaiians leave the state for the mainland, which now has a larger Hawaiian population than Hawaii itself.

What can be done? “When a situation is this complicated and took this long to develop, there aren’t going to be quick and easy solutions,” said Oliver. But he recommend some “obvious” steps, such as not renewing US military leases on Hawaiian land, restricting short-term rentals and second homes, and focusing state government resources on developing a diverse local economy.

“The solution is not going to come down to any single trip you might take,” he added. “It’s going to require much bigger systemic choices. That said, if you do end up visiting, try to be aware of the history that you’re stepping into.”