Rampant Yosemite Park Reservation Scalping
Sacramento Bee -- "Campsite reservations and permits to scale Half Dome have become such hot commodities that the National Park Service is scrambling to halt the auctioning of park access to the highest bidder. The flipping of reservations and permits in Yosemite – the third-most-visited national park – is so rampant on Internet sites like Craigslist that park officials are "becoming more aggressive" in trying to shut down these operators, said Yosemite spokesman Scott Gediman."
"We want to stop it as much as we can," he said. "It's not fair. These (reservations and permits) aren't intended to go into the after-market. But it's becoming more sophisticated. … People are finding ways to abuse the system."
Posted 2:40 PM Post Link 8 Comments
8 Comments:
Not sure about this example. The purpose of national parks is to make natural settings available to everyone, regardless of rank.
If park admittance and reservations goes completely to a free-market system, we could see parks as playgrounds of the better-off only.
There are rare cases in which the price mechanism fails. Pollution is one example. Medicine may be another. Park admissions again may be an example.
So, public campgrounds are crowded at Yosemite and some shenanigans take place: go to a private campground at Yosemite.
This just shows the disconnect between supply.and demand of national park reservations. What the Federal government needs to do is confiscate more private and state land through eminent domain to create national parks. When the Federal government has more national parks, they can offer more reservations. Thereby increasing supply and restoring balance to the free market system.
QWuote from Benjamin: "There are rare cases in which the price mechanism fails."
The pricing mechanism doesn't fail. You simply don't like the result that it gives. Why is your concept of failure the right one?
If you have a scarce commodity (parks, medicine, whatever), then it has to be rationed in some way. Letting bureaucrats and politicians do the rationing only gives the illusion of fairness.
Do you think senior politicians and bureaucrats have any problems getting into national parks whenever they want to?
Geoih-
You make a valid point. On the other hand, if the mission of a certain public agency (orginally) is provide recreation for free, then charging anything violates that mission.
When I was growing up, admission to parks was free. It made me love this country, as did the good and free public schools and libraries.
Not everything is balanced in a checkbook.
For example, suppoise a free market results in hookers standing in front of a church on Sunday and soliciting customers? What if your next door neighbor converts his house in a heaviyl trafficked 7-11, or brothel?
Do we let children die for want of medical care, regardless of ability to pay?
The price mechanism simply fails when it comes to pollution. Like reverse Obamas, polluters spread the cost of production around, but without compensation.
Why the right-wing is so dunderheaded when it come to pollution, I do not know.
Benji, I think that word that you keep using, "free," doesn't mean precisely what you think it does.
"When I was growing up, admission to parks was free. It made me love this country, as did the good and free public schools and libraries."
I believe even you know those things aren't free. Are you trolling again today? Or, I should ask, still trolling?
Quote from Benjamin: "Not everything is balanced in a checkbook."
Schools, libraries and medicine do not fall from the sky or pop out of the ground. They all have costs that have to be paid. Just because these costs were hidden from you in the past doesn't mean they weren't there and being paid by somebody.
Pollution has always been something where the government has interfered, sometimes in favor of the polluters, sometimes in favor of the non-polluters. It is fully politicized and corrupted by special interests where those connected to political power set the policy.
To think, with the present depth of government involvement in issues relating to pollution, that somehow more government involvement will make the situation better, is to simply not recognize the failure of the system.
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