Loudest voices overwhelm efforts to find middle path

The Superferry has become the all-purpose symbol for virulent pro-corporate-globalist types who see the enterprise’s failure as the pox that persists in blocking Hawaii from its rightful place as a Pacific economic powerhouse.

Forgotten is that the Superferry’s business model did not exactly pencil out to profitability, and that its masters had not recognized the need to follow the rule of law. They swatted aside legitimate environmental concerns and sought instead political fixes to their incorrectness, which ultimately were ruled unconstitutional.

Also forgotten is the support the ferry’s plan initially received from regular people, farmers, small businesses and tourists who saw its potential as an alternative means for transport that had been, and still is, dominated by air carriers.

Many things went wrong or were bumbled by Superferry’s handlers, but the dogmatized image today is that the venture was assassinated by a gang of granola-munching elitists and just-say-no localists.

So it is that when a business encounters resistance, or even reasonable questions about its effects on a community, narrow-visioned profit apostles wield the Superferry as the smoking gun of Hawaii’s shoot-itself-in-the-foot economic wounds.

On the other side is the knee-jerk reaction of self-anointed culture-keepers who turn blind eyes to the wants and needs of many of their fellow citizens, claiming impossibly to speak for all of them.

When the loudest voices suffocate discussion, no one but the noisy gains.

To take American Safari Cruises at its word, it offered tourists a low-volume visit to Molokai, which has maintained, less by design than by neglect, a quiet atmosphere compared to Maui and Oahu.

The yacht that carries 40 passengers at most — less than half the load of an average Oahu tour bus — discontinued stops at Kaunakakai harbor after it was blocked from docking by people on surfboards and small boats.

At a meeting of Molokai residents last week, some supported the yacht’s visits because of the economic benefits; others worried that tours in Halawa Valley, along the coastlines and other sites could affect their subsistence living; and still others wanted more information before forming opinions.

Molokai has been consistently a difficult place, an island where the influx of affluent people who can afford million-dollar homes and vacation condos underscores the poverty of many residents whose ancestries reach back through generations, where epic battles over hotel and luxury residential development has divided friends and families and left broad swaths of land vacant and basic infrastructure abandoned, where financial opportunities are met with a dose of skepticism, where some purposefully reject consumer lifestyles.

While other islands have adapted to modern needs and habits, changes have come slowly to Molokai, which now makes it attractive to tourists who desire an “old Hawaii” experience.

Molokai people have looked across the channel as their neighbor islands have been transformed by the push for economic development and the consequential population growth. No doubt they would like to have more control over their fortunes.

While not impossible, their efforts will be nullified if extreme voices who have their own interests at heart overwhelm.

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Cynthia Oi can be reached at coi@staradvertiser.com.