Private Ownership of National Parks?

[Perry]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLirNeu-A8I
If you have an opinion on this and a YouTube account, please feel free to vote on this video and the comments...

[Hikin_Jim]

It didn't sound like he was advocating privatization per se. The professor even says "there's no silver bullet."

As for the presentation itslef, well, it's a bit simplistic in many respects. For one, in the example of the ranchers, it doesn't say anything about the ranchers sitting down together and doing this radical thing called "talking." I mean people could sit down and come to an agreement couldn't they? It's as though the ranchers operate in a vast unbridgable vacuum.

With its advocacy of holding people directly responsible for their actions and also allowing them to benefit from good decisions, again it's simplistic. How do you judge "good?" And how do you assign a value to the benefit? Beyond that and more importantly, good over how long of a time? A park manager might be rewarded for keeping costs low, but if he doesn't do important maintenance, the cost over time may actually be higher.

The main problem with his "benefit from good decisions" argument is that land managers will act in their own best interests if allowed to do so. Unless you can somehow reward them for acting in the best interests of the public, the public will still suffer. The system we've got is far from perfect, but it beats the heck out of privatization of something like a national park.

HJ

[HikeUp]

I’ll take Yosemite. Opening offer is $5. I’ll just do a little email verification and proceed to it.

[zippetydude]

The idea scares me on the surface, but in a way it could work with very careful regulation. Picture, if a person who has grown up loving a certain park had the opportunity to actually administer that area, but could move quickly and concisely in directions that would improve the park without a 10 year $100,000,000 study of the possible ramifications. Unintended consequencea are always a risk, but if each step had to be implemented in small, incremental steps, the good changes could begin quickly, perhaps saving important natural land forms and critical species. If the steps were small and limited in their possible impact, even if they screwed up the changes would be reversible.

The whole key here would be to make sure the changes could only be enacted by people who have experience andcommitment to an area and are not just yahoo loggers, etc. who still think that the earth's resourceswill never end.

z