Setting Our Own Agenda

The recent Hawaii 2050 conference on sustainability was a reminder that, whether we know it or not, we are all involved in a conflict that pits a local view against a global view.

Are we to develop our own vision for Hawaii’s future and attempt to follow it? Or are we to be swept along by globalization, swimming with the tide as best we can?

In this broad view, disagreements over privatization of public resources become the most immediate and illuminating dimensions of a deeper conflict. (I refer to controversies I’ve written about previously, such as Block J, Hokulia, development of the Kakaako oceanfront and construction of cabins at Ka Iwi near Hawaii Kai.)

I grant that privatization has an allure and, in some instances is apt. Privatization is said to be aimed at streamlining government and putting our resources to work. We are promised that privatization will lighten the government budget and lessen the need to tax. Privatization is said to be about efficiency, and government had best stay out of the way.

In fact, privatization is increasingly about what the economist John Kenneth Galbraith described as a mechanism for creating “private wealth and public squalor.” Carried far enough, privatization becomes a mere cover for transferring wealth, influence and privilege to the private sector at the expense of the public.

It seems apparent, at least from my viewpoint, that government in Hawaii today is inclined toward privatization up to the point that specific proposals generate a public backlash. Instead of government periodically running for cover, we need it to make a conscious change of direction. We need a new Hawaii Plan—which is the impulse at the heart of efforts such as Hawaii 2050.

The Hawaii 2050 conference brought 500 people together from throughout the Islands to talk about Hawaii’s long-term future. In one day, we only scratched the surface, but certain priorities bubbled up repeatedly, with many variations. They were: strict environmental protection; clean beaches; clean air and clean water; rigorous land-use planning; development of homegrown alternative renewable energy; regulation of water resources; support for diversified agriculture and greater food self-sufficiency; effective public transportation; preservation of native ecosystems, and on.

Such ideas quickly add up to a Hawaii that sets its own agenda. If we keep talking in this vein, we will recover a strong sense of common ground. We can tip the scales in favor of longer-range planning and longer-range decision-making. The headlines over land controversies will become beacons that help us maintain our way in the face of the constant pressure to be guided by the bottom line.

When I addressed the convention, I was heartened by the response. The idea of a Hawaii State Plan backed by 12 functional plans did not seem like an abstraction to this audience. When I talked about buying up one special parcel after another to protect the character of Windward Oahu, I felt especially connected.

Engaged in thinking about the long run of things, this crowd had no trouble with the idea that government can and should buy up resources purely to protect them—not to put them to work, but to keep them a part of the public scenery.

Because we are an island society heavily dependent on tourism, we have the added incentive of caring for our means of living. Environmental protection, planning, sound land use and—yes—daring to let land idle, are all in our immediate as well as longer-term self-interest.

The public commons is to be protected. In the face of global pressures, we should be setting our own agenda.

George R. Ariyoshi, chairman and cofounder of Convergence CT and Cellular Bioengineering, is the former president of Prince Resorts Hawaii Inc. He is active in international business circles, particularly in Asia. An attorney by profession, Ariyoshi served in elective office in Hawaii from 1954 to 1986. He served as governor of Hawaii from 1973 to 1986 and was the first Japanese American to be elected governor in the United States.

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