Posted on 02/03/2007 4:33:51 PM PST by blam
This guy smoked waaaay too much dope back in the 60's
I'm not crazy about environmentalists, but at least this guy is putting his money where his mouth is and buying land instead of telling someone else that they can't use their land.
The guy may be a fruit, but at least he's a reasonable fruit - he's not lobbying a government to take someone else's land, he's purchasing it all on his own. If he wants to make it a nature preserve, so be it.
Actually I don't have a problem with the guy using his own money to do something like that. Obviously the people down there have other ideas.
"This guy smoked waaaay too much dope back in the 60's"
My question is this...how do these aging hippies end up being worth so gosh-darn much money? I mean, you spend your 20's, 30's & 40's pretty much brain-dead, and in 20 short years you make that kind of cash?
One of Life's Mysteries. I could name fifty people that have lived their lives that way, and come out on top financially. I just do not get it. Family money, maybe? Trust funds that are so large to begin with that 30 years of drug buying can't deplete them? LOL!
That's how I feel, too.
Why do they worry. He will be dead soon enough.
He got caught fooling around on his wife Suzie Tomkins, who many think was the brains and design talent behind Esprit. They had an acrimonious divorce and Suzie was left with the company that is much downsized these days.
That's part of the details that I heard. I don't know the whole story, but Doug Tomkins is no saint.
I'd do the same thing if I could. I would rather do it here even though I would be in danger of having it taken away so someone could produce greater tax revenue with it.
Guy needs to get himself an Argentine partner, someone to put a local face on the project. Start a bottling factory outside of the preserve with an Argentine partner, hire a bunch of locals, and start exporting bottled water from the aquifer. That should settle the government down.
"preserve some of Argentina's last frontier lands from human encroachment by buying them and turning them into ecological reserves..."
Private property. Don't see anything wrong with that.
Personally, I think it'd be great if he did it here.
Land's probably cheaper in Argentina, and I'm sure that there are fewer restrictions on when and how he can re-introduce species into the ecosystem.
Doug and Suzie Tompkins started the Esprit clothing line and stores. They were very hot in the 80's and 90's. They made many millions or billions.
Doug fooled around on Suzie, they got divorced. He had to sell his share. Suzie was a hard worker. I doubt if she was "brain dead" at any time. They probably made hundreds of millions in less than 20 years.
America is a great county. You can start with a good idea, hard work, ambition, drive, sacrifice and a little (or a lot of) luck and in 5 or 10 years make a billion dollars.
The always had money...AKA...TRUST FUND BABIES
Just ask Medea Benjamin about it.
Well, we're two years into our computer repair business. Our plan is to build it up, sell it in ten years and then hit the road.
I know it can be done. :)
Maybe he plans to have a really big marijuana farm.
I agree.
Ted Turner is the largest private landowner of land in the US. I don't like the SOB but, it's his money.
Douglas Tompkins changed the way America dressed--twice. As a 20-something ski bum, he founded outdoor retailer the North Face. After selling that in 1968, he helped his then wife Susie start a dressmaking business, which soon became the hot fashion line Esprit. Their array of comfortable, boldly colored mix-and-match clothes struck just the right chord with Americans during the 1970s and early 1980s. By the mid-1980s, Esprit was annually selling hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of shirts, dresses, slacks, and accessories. But then America's clothing tastes turned conservative, sending the company into a tailspin. And the pair divorced. So in 1990, Douglas sold his share of the company to his ex-wife and moved to a vast ranch he'd bought in Chile. He no longer has any connection to Esprit.
My only problem with Turner having that much land was the fact that he was getting farm subsidies till just a couple of years ago. Other than that I've got no problem.
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