It is so massive he has to make affordances Epstein never had to. You can visit Lanai today for example. I took a day trip there a couple years ago. Saw the cat sanctuary. Not much else to do there. There is a little holdover company town inland from the Dole days but I didn't visit that. I'm not sure how much time Ellison even spends there. I get the sense that having these some 3k common folk holdout residents plus visitors makes it a bit less attractive than it might have seemed when he signed his name on 98% of a Hawaiian island. Seems a couple years ago he shifted his primary residency to his mansion near Mar a Lago. Bored of the plaything now, I guess.

I spent some time on a Pacific island. After a couple weeks, I ran out of things to do and places to go, and was bored stiff.

Maui was like that for me after a few months. I found the timezone more alianating than the location.

This is probably his zombie apocalypse location that he has on stand by

The size of the land isn’t inherently why those concessions were made.

Hawaii had full legal authority to sell the entire thing, the same as the US Virgin Islands had full legal authority to sell Little St James

There is nothing in the parent US constitution deterring that either.

Hawaiian authorities partially by a hair sliver decided to try to do something to benefit the Hawaiian people in the face of capital, while collecting the capital. A more patient Ellison or one determined not to have anyone there could have wound up with the whole large private island.