So “privatization” is like Harvard University or the Foundation of Really Rich People who Want Their Names On Something more than being scared that Walmart will buy it.
In the Free to Choose series Friedman used Harvard as an example of the superiority of private universities to public universities. I think he compared it to UCLA where a bunch of students hanging around a swimming pool was used to illustrate education at UCLA.
Those that want to privatize national parks want them operated as for profit institutions and if a profit cannot be earned they should be converted to more lucrative uses. I can imagine hunting lodges, trails where motorized vehicles could be used, and even condo developments not to mention opening them up to resource extraction. I think our experience with for profit universities illustrates that for profit is not always better.
In any case, there is nothing magical about government ownership of a natural resource (cf USSR, Venezuela, North Korea, etc.)
I think it is better to have governmental oversight and private ownership. To be sure, where the government can get bought off because the governmental actors (say, the speaker of the House, as a random example) can profit via insider trading, which is totally legal because they wrote the rules… well, that’s not really effective oversight. But then, I suppose the government actors could profit in many ways, too, in a direct governmental ownership situation.
I would love to hear more about the ineffectiveness of government regulation, though, from those of us in the insurance industry.
Additional: this is -really- getting off topic, but if you want to hear a criticism of Friedman from me, I have one: tax withholding.
That’s a pretty broad statement as almost all students go to not-for-profit universities which turn out virtually all STEM graduates in the country. What type of university did you go to? What’s an example of a well run for profit university?
Have you ever heard of what’s called a mixed economy which involves both public and private ownership. Would you like to see your local public library turned into a private for profit enterprise?
Eh, I didn’t say exorbitant. Charge foreigners Y/X where Y is the average cost to maintain the park per year and X is the average number of annual visitors.
Charge Americans (Y - T - Z*(Y/X) / (X - Z) where T is the taxpayer funds they receive and Z is the average number of foreign visitors.
Or something along those lines. You’re essentially charging what it costs, but crediting Americans for the amount we already paid via taxes (but poor Americans get subsidized by rich Americans).
Maybe charge based on how far you had to travel to get there. Encouraging people to explore their local communities for recreation is probably not a bad thing.
Differential pricing for foreign nationals would not be unprecedented. Did some checking and about 20% of all visits to national parks and monuments are from foreign visitors. Just a guess but I suspect a disproportionate number comes from visits to monuments.
So you want to discourage foreigners from visiting then? That’s a pretty big industry -
International travel plays a critical role in the US economy. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2019, international visitors spent $233.5 billion experiencing the United States
And, it we charged $100/day for visiting national parks, they would have spent $233.6 billion. I don’t think the difference is going to discourage anyone.
$100 a day for an all-day park like Yellowstone, would be pricey but not exorbitant. It would be prohibitive for some of the other parks. I like the existing situation of a high cost for a single visit (especially during peak season in the most popular parks) but an annual all-park pass is very reasonable.
In America, we use the word “libertarianism” to refer to minimal control of economics by the government.
If you’re asking what happened to it, I would contend it was never popular. 99% of people could care less who is in charge of the economy, because they sure as hell aren’t in charge of anything.
If the government could use fiscal or monetary powers to keep the economy stable and growing, with minimal bubbles, inflation, unemployment, etc. average folks would happily cede control of all the things they don’t control anyway. Of course that’s a very big if.