A mainland friend that I hadn’t seen for 20 years wanted to visit me for his birthday, along with his entourage of 12 other social media creators from around the world. In advance of his visit, he shot me over an iMessage: “Get me a house, with a large pool, that’s close to where you live, where I and my team can stay and hang out for the next three days.”

“Forget it,” I texted him back. “Just stay in Waikiki and get multiple rooms or a presidential suite.”

“Why?” he demanded to know.

“It’s too complicated for me to explain to you in a short time, this is Honolulu we’re talking about,” I answered.

And so, he and his associates came to Hawaii, stayed for three nights in Waikiki, and brought all their bucks to the altar of Big Tourism, just like the millions of other visitors who daily come to Oahu.

And if you ask me, that is precisely what’s wrong with our state. In case you haven’t noticed, Hawaii, and most especially, Honolulu, are places where money amasses with big corporations while the rest of the local population fights over a token trickle of cash that barely percolates down to them.

Oahu residents are living on a 21st century neo-plantation of haves and have-nots. The difference between these two is stark. Those who are “haves” get money by influencing politicians to create preferential regulation and subsidies that allow them to maintain monopolies by eliminating competition (or making it too expensive to compete). Like the fictional Gordon Gekko of the movie Wall Street, these people can be summed up in a single sentence: “I create nothing; I own!”

Those who are “have-nots” earn money in the form of salaries by creating value through back breaking labor or intellectual servitude for the haves. They pay subscription costs for their sheer existence in the form of income and property taxes to the government, and through the purchase of consumer goods and services from corporations. Because they don’t own things, or because their ownership of things is subject to severe regulation, unlike haves, they can’t use the things they own to make money for themselves.

That, dear friends, is why, regardless of pandemics, recession, inflation, stock market crashes, or even war, the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer.

If you have time, and you didn’t have the benefit of reading it in high school, I recommend all of you read John Steinbeck’s novella, “The Pearl.” An impoverished fisherman finds a giant pearl of great value and plans to sell it to improve the life of his family – but unbeknownst to him, everyone in his town is controlled by the same pearl cartel.

His doctor wants him to give up the pearl in exchange for medical care. His church wants him to give the pearl to “God” (which in turn will be sold by the church for profit). And all of the pearl local merchants are owned by the same company, but pretend to be competitors so they can fix the purchase price of pearls at below market rate. Sounds like how Hawaii operates during an election year, if you ask me.

We like to virtue signal a lot about “reducing inequality” in Hawaii. If you really want to reduce inequality and close the gap between haves and have nots, you must let ordinary people have the freedom to own things and monetize those things to make a profit.

This is why it was somewhat of a welcome relief that U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson granted a preliminary injunction against parts of Honolulu Ordinance 22-7. The law as originally codified severely restricted homeowners from renting out properties for less than 90 days, which makes it extremely hard to make money as a vacation rental.

The federal government seems to be allergic to Honolulu officials and their policies lately, but I won’t get into that today. The point is, for now, Honolulu can’t completely enforce the full provisions of the law that targets vacation rentals, and we should use this pause to think and consider how we move forward from here.

If you ask me, we should just abolish Ordinance 22-7. And before you government-subsidized rent-a-nonprofits come out against me with your minions citing white papers saying that vacation rentals create inequality, the real “inequality” is a government that sets us up to fail and forces us to fight amongst each other for scraps.

Instead of blaming homeowners for the housing shortage, why don’t we point the finger at the state and county who have a myriad of complex regulations and approval processes which have throttled the construction of new homes on Oahu? In fact, how’s the state doing with meeting its commitment to housing Native Hawaiians?

Instead of blaming tourists for crowded streets, heavy traffic and no parking, why don’t you point the finger at the state and county for not building better, modern streets and creating more room for visitors? Remember those online memes where people used to ask, “If not for government, who would build the roads?” Yeah? How come Honolulu government can’t build roads?

Stop talking about “inequality” when you’re allowing the greatest driver of inequality of all – a government that won’t do its job when it comes to roads, sewers, parks, housing – to operate without any accountability.

This is precisely what big corporations want, where we fight amongst ourselves and blame each other rather than helping each other to each get wealthy and empowering each other to all own a piece of the American Dream. Small businesses and homeowners built America, and if we can learn a lesson from that, small businesses and homeowners can also save Hawaii.