Privatize the National Parks?

ryanebelhar said:
Ron: I think the entire government should be privatized. Chuck E. Cheese could run the parks. Everything operated by tokens. Drop in a token, go on the swing set. Drop in another token, take a walk. Drop in a token, look at a duck. |
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Curse you. You beat me to it.
 
Actually, don't the National Parks cost the government money to run? Why would any private company want to buy an asset that does nothing but loose money?

It's like a case here in my area where a guy owned a strip of land that could only be used as a road. All the people who lived on that road had the right to drive on it without any fee and the owner could not build anything on the land. So he stopped paying property taxes and let the government reclaim the land. It was nothing but a loosing proposition for him so he did the logical thing.
 
Weak Kitten said:
Actually, don't the National Parks cost the government money to run? Why would any private company want to buy an asset that does nothing but loose money?
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Basically they'd bid on a contract to maintain the park, if they can do it for less than the government they get the contract. If they can't then the government awards the contract to themselves.

Again, they would not own the park, just manage it. And I doubt there's much money to be saved by privatizing them.

pet peeve: loose<->lose

Not the same thing.

/pet peeve
 
Ah, I understand what you are saying now. That makes sense, as long as the national government is still the one making the rules on how the land will be used.

Sorry about hitting your pet peeve. I actually sat there for a while trying to remember if it was one or two "o"s. Thanks for correcting me!
 
Orthodox Libertarianism involves selling the national parks to the highest bidder with no concern of what they person plans to do with the land.

Obviously, there is no danger of libertarians instituting that plank of their platform. I just wanted to point out that there are people who do want the land itself to be sold.
 
WildCat said:
Privately managed does not mean "privately owned". The government would still own it.
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Either way works really. As long as the government can set regulations to keep them as publicly accessible parks without monorails and water slides, I'm not sure it really matters who officially owns it.

GeeMack said:
Your idea of obviously stupid things is likely quite different from that of the companies who might think they can make a profit on roller coasters in the Grand Canyon and monorail trams cruising around Yellowstone.
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Sure, but hopefully not so different from that of the people who would actually set the rules.

I should note that I'm not actually in favour of the idea. We had a very similar issue just recently in the UK where the government actually tried to sell off a bunch of national land and was eventually forced to give up the idea. In that case, it almost certainly would have meant not only the end of public access, but most likely the end of the forests in question entirely. So obviously it is possible for ideas like this to go badly if they're not thought through properly, it's just that they need to be discussed based on the actual pros and cons of any proposals, not just blindly dismissed with hyperbolic claims about roller coasters.
 
I'm not talking about "managing them" I'm talking about selling off the parks to the highest bidder with them being able to do whatever they want with the land. Strip mine them. Turn them into waste dumps. Whatever.
 
I should point out that a lot of people were against the formation of the national parks. They thought the land was too valuable for private development to be set aside as a preserve.
 
Travis said:
I'm not talking about "managing them" I'm talking about selling off the parks to the highest bidder with them being able to do whatever they want with the land. Strip mine them. Turn them into waste dumps. Whatever.
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That's not what was suggested in the thread you referenced in the OP.
 
Really? I don't recall it being really hashed out what was meant.

Maybe my mind went there because I live right next to Yosemite and local loggers are always complaining about how they can't cut down the huge Giant Sequoia's in there.
 
I wonder what the current proponents of 'public lands, privately managed', or the even more extreme 'sell public lands off to the highest bidder' folks would make of the man who led from to top in the effort to get these lands preserved for all Americans and for all time: Teddy Roosevelt. He was a Republican, after all.
 
Arisia said:
I wonder what the current proponents of 'public lands, privately managed', or the even more extreme 'sell public lands off to the highest bidder' folks would make of the man who led from to top in the effort to get these lands preserved for all Americans and for all time: Teddy Roosevelt. He was a Republican, after all.
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There is a growing group of Republicans who consider him one of the architects of the downfall of America and its values.

As for selling the land, those folks are so Libertarian that the hold no regard for anyone who moved the country in any direction other than unbridled freedom.
 
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ryanebelhar said:
Ron: I think the entire government should be privatized. Chuck E. Cheese could run the parks. Everything operated by tokens. Drop in a token, go on the swing set. Drop in another token, take a walk. Drop in a token, look at a duck. |
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Cool. I have a bunch of Chuck E Cheese tokens sitting on a bag on the shelf at home.
 
Who's to decide what use of land is worthwhile if it's not market-profitable? Moreover, why should I have to give MY MONEY at GUNPOINT to manage land that OTHER PEOPLE have decided is important?

Just parodying what we might hear from the other side. Though someone may just say they want to press this question with no irony.
 
WildCat said:
Basically they'd bid on a contract to maintain the park, if they can do it for less than the government they get the contract. If they can't then the government awards the contract to themselves.

Again, they would not own the park, just manage it. And I doubt there's much money to be saved by privatizing them.
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Actually, some of this has also already been done; it's called "outsourcing" and it's been studied in a number of divisions in the NPS. The idea was that some functions of the national parks, aside from concessions provision. could be handled by private agencies. Currently the handling of hiring documents has been outsourced, but studies showed that many other functions originally thought to be outsource-able were not profitable enough for private companies to be interested in.

For example, having private companies do fee collection (at the entrance booths) was studied. Many parks are too far away from a good population source for this to be attractive to private companies and the gov't could do it cheaper with GS-3 fee collectors. It didn't pan out. However, using Ticketron and other similar companies for processing campground reservations does work.

Many parks do lose money and are subsidized by government budgets. There are some that really can't be used for much of anything else, though; private companies wouldn't be able to turn a profit if they turned them into something other than a park due to location, poor climate, poor soils, lack of subsurface minerals or any other resource that could easily and cheaply be exploited. Some might be usable as rangeland or to extract oil & gas; some of the battlegrounds are in locations that would make good housing subdivisions.

But surveys generally show that most people in the US (and elsewhere) think that the parks have value outside of monetary gain. Those that don't have been "de-commissioned" over the years - quite a number of them, in fact...
 
Its already privatized in major ways. The worst ways: monopolized.

In many areas they allow single vendor monopolies, this can be on food, parking, lodging. I know that this had the best of intentions, allowing someone to do a job cheaper or better than the feds could, but its become more of a racket. State parks can be even worse. Having a towing company manage parking in some parks leads to a suspicious shortage of paved parking lines and an unprecedented denial of vehicle access to common, formerly travelled parts of the parks. If I were a bit more cynical I would say so as not to let people get to an area where they can park and the tow company might not see them
 
We dare not.

The zombie of Theodore Roosevelt would rise up to slay us all.
 
Travis said:
The idea was brought up in this thread. So what do you think of it? Could The Grand Canyon use a roller coaster or two to bring in more people? What if it would make way more money for the owners to just throw a dam across Yosemite Valley? And those Giant Sequoia, surely they are worth a bundle for their lumber.

I'm just not sure I think that selling off our National Parks to commercial interests is wise. Maybe the most popular ones could be kept in decent condition on account that they are already so visited (though I doubt programs like the Yellowstone Wolf reintroduction would continue). Though they'll become much more expensive to visit.

But what of the smaller National Parks? Would they just become housing developments or some other type of new use?
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Do that and corporate parasites loot and destroy them. Just say no.
 
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