Why spend our money on EVs...

...when we could be helping (through our oil purchases) to pay for Saudi princes to build 85,000 ft.² "compounds" in Beverly Hills?

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-megamansion-20110322,0,3318151.story

Benedict Canyon neighbors unite against mystery landowner's planned 'megamansion'

They say his planned 85,000-square-foot family compound pushes the bounds of common sense and decency.

Click to expand...

What BS. Doesn't sound like the "land of the free". I doubt they would have protested if the guy was an English billionaire, instead.

evnow said:

I doubt they would have protested if the guy was an English billionaire, instead.

Click to expand...

Who knows. I think it's funny that, at the end of the article, they quote a guy with a 7800 ft.² house wondering "why anyone needs an 80,000-square-foot compound." As the owner of a 1600 ft.² house, I wonder why anyone needs a 7800 square-foot house. :lol:

evnow said:

I doubt they would have protested if the guy was an English billionaire, instead.

Click to expand...

I don't think such reactions are necessarily as ethnological as you assert...the very alternative you present, UK billionaire (OK, maybe just many-multi-millionaire) Edge has a Cali development project under vigorous NIMBY protest as well:

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-edge-malibu17-2009apr17,0,6504196.story

abasile said:

I think it's funny that, at the end of the article, they quote a guy with a 7800 ft.² house wondering "why anyone needs an 80,000-square-foot compound." As the owner of a 1600 ft.² house, I wonder why anyone needs a 7800 square-foot house. :lol:

Click to expand...

Yes, life is so relative.

I remember a report I saw a few years back - when S Africa had just voted to abolish their blatantly racist system. They interviewed a guy who said their hundreds of acres of land and a huge house was just enough for a family of 3 contrasting with people who lived literally in 10x10 ft shanty town dwellings.

wsbca said:

evnow said:

I doubt they would have protested if the guy was an English billionaire, instead.

Click to expand...

I don't think such reactions are necessarily as ethnological as you assert...the very alternative you present, UK billionaire (OK, maybe just many-multi-millionaire) Edge has a Cali development project under vigorous NIMBY protest as well:

Click to expand...

Very different concerns ...

Residents worry that the project would produce an environmental disaster, since it would mean extending a road on rugged slopes through slide-prone areas, running a water line under similarly challenging terrain and grading more than 70,000 cubic yards of earth.

Click to expand...

Not some mumbo-jumbo about "pushes the bounds of common sense and decency".