Do you know what’s in the GW Parkway? Fort Marcy Park - where HRC shot Vince Foster because he was going to expose her sex dungeon under the pizza shop!! It all comes together now!
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I’m wondering if there’s a way to solve this problem with grizzly bears.
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It worked for Elisha.
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Someone on the internet is taking you seriously…
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That probably applies to all non-blowing-shit-up Federal spending.
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Finally idiots can get their picture taken with a bear without government interference!
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At least the rangers won’t have to waste their time fishing the bones out of the hot pots anymore when people get dissolved skinny dipping.
I’d expect recovering people’s remains is a pretty unpleasant duty in Yellowstone.
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IIRC, the greatest chunk by far of the Federal spending is all the welfare stuff, Medicaid, Medicare, and whatever else US has. Military spending, while large, is less than that.
It’s a little surprising that they chose a campfire girl rather than a girl scout for that illustration.
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As of today, the Smithsonian Institution and all of its associated museums and buildings are closed until the end of the shutdown, as well. Military guard for the tourist industry in DC is all furloughed. Somehow I don’t think all of those people are evil Democrats that deserve to be out of a job post-Christmas.
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I’m going to guess that some people didn’t want to totally ruin vacations. Either they will be open soon and the Parks Service can clean up or they will be fully shutdown along with the rest of the non-essential services.
To be fair, I don’t think that a bunch of government controlled property being shut down due to a lack of funding as a result of a stand-off over a desire to further restrict free movement over the border is really a great example of how libertarianism doesn’t work. Hell, it might even be an argument for it. Especially since the widespread confusion of everyone trying to figure out what is and isn’t open seems like an example of government inefficiency in the communication process. Working the shot at libertarianism into the article feels like a cheap shot at a straw man.
To be fair, there are plenty of schools of thought within American libertarianism that is perfectly fine with government run parks, it’s not all a bunch of people worshiping at the altar of Rand.
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Like so many things this administration does, it seems to make more sense if we assume their goal is undermining public trust in government by fostering chaos and the appearance of incompetence. Leaving the parks open and unsupervised seems like a pretty easy way to damage the reputation of an institution beloved accross the political spectrum.
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Perhaps if the Republicans and the President had not failed to fund the government, the confusion would not exist. You are actually blaming closed government agencies for being uncommunicative?
The ‘libertarian failure’ is meant to examine how removing government from the parks is failing ot make the parks better. ie, if you have unregulatred open space, it works Less well than having a regulated park. Ergo the idea that a government-free world works more effeciently is being shown to be incorrect.
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It is also yet another data point on a large stack of data points illustrating the truth of the “Tragedy of the Commons”…
(The Tragedy of the Commons is that resources or goods held for the common good are exploited or spoiled by people maximizing their own utility at the cost of the overall utility for the entire community. The original example was cows or sheep grazing in a public field. As long as all of the members of the community only had one or two animals in the commons, and they were sized appropriately, everything was good. If Bob the Rancher decided that he was going to graze a hundred cows in the commons, all of the vegetation was eaten and everyone else’s animals starved, and then so did they. The solution to the commons is rules and enforcers of the rules, which is basically “government”, much to the chagrin of libertarians. The commons can be anything, including air, water, roads, schools, or in this case, parks.)
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Thank you for the reply, fiatrn!
I agree with you wholeheartedly! The current administration rightly should bear the blame for the current crisis. The Democrats’ unwillingness to give in to an overtly racist and authoritarian set of demands should in no way be held against them. As far as the confusion goes, I was attempting to address the points raised in the original article about closures being poorly communicated. To use an example from the article, it was mentioned that some campers were discovering a lack of parking only after driving down a long and narrow road. I don’t know that it would be unreasonable to post signs about the closed parking before drivers reached the point of no return.
That’s all just nitpicky stuff though and not really worth arguing over, I don’t think. I am admittedly playing devil’s advocate here, I am not one of those libertarians that believes that all government is, by definition, inefficient. I do believe that libertarians that feel that way would point to the government’s inability to communicate the closure of services in a clear and convenient manner as an example of government inefficiency.
I agree with you that the author certainly seemed to intend this, but my issue was that I felt it was a gross misrepresentation of libertarian thought at best. I believe that most libertarians would not seriously suggest just turning off the lights and going home on government projects like this. There’s a big difference between transferring government property to private stewardship and just shutting everything down. I think it’s worth pointing out that these are not really unregulated spaces. If they were, people would be able to use all those closed off parking areas. Non-functioning government isn’t the same as no government, which is why I felt that the comment was something of a straw man.
All that said, I hope that this shutdown is resolved as soon as possible and people can get back to enjoying these wonderful parks. Even some of us libertarians think they are wonderful things just the way they are.
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I have to admit that I’m not 100% up on libertarian beliefs; is the current thought that our national parks should be transferred to private stewardship rather than be government-run?
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please properly label this and all future articles about it as TRUMP Government Shutdown
he had his budget for the fence earlier this year, he even was going to sign a previous bill just before all this happened, then he turned on the TV and they told him what to think
overflowing toilets is kinda perfect symbolism, don’t you think?
hurry the F-up Mueller, file the Trump Jr. charges on Friday so we can get the nuclear implosion over with
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That’s a tough question. Apropos of my original gripe, libertarianism is a vast and complex school of thought. There are lots of libertarians would definitely argue that parks should be privatized. There’s also plenty of libertarian schools with socialist streaks who love that we have government run parks. I’m personally part of the latter camp!
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