> There is no conceivable rationing method that won't eliminate large
> percentages of the US population from having access to the the river.
> That's GOOD, that's the point of a rationing system.
Would you then propose that we stop advertising the Grand
Canyon.
The first rule for getting out of a hole is: Stop digging.
> The people capable of putting together a private trip are a *far*
> smaller percentage of the US population. [than those who can afford
a commercial trip]
Based on your first point, this makes me wonder why you think
we need concessionaires at all.
This position, that NPS should let those capable of doing it
themselves use the canyon first, before providing any
concessionaire services, was the jist of the Wilderness Public
Rights Fund lawsuit in roughly '79. It's an argument based on
the organic act that enabled the formation of the NPS.
I personally don't think you need to go that far, but I also
believe that the WPRF suit was correct in its basis and if NPS
doesn't accommodate actual demand for trips it will leave itself
exposed to more litigation down the road.
Ben
>
> > > The miner's canary in this system is the Boy Scout
> > > or Explorer troop or similar youth group.
>
> I don't agree with this.
>
> A trip down the river is a valuable experience. Given the scarcity of
> the commodity involved, it would be more accurate to call it a
> *precious* experience.
>
> Therefore, it *should* be expensive to go down the Grand Canyon. You
> either pay with money, or you pay with time and committment. But by
> one or another of these measures, basic supply and demand economics
> dictates that the cost *must* be high. A high cost in time,
> committment, or money means that an average boy scout troop is simply
> not going to go down the Canyon. By the same token, the average boy
> scout troop does not going skiing in the Alps, or take six months and
> hike the Pacific Crest Trail.
>
> That's the way it should be. Any system that does not eliminate the
> average scout troop will either be unfair, or completely blow the
> resource management criteria. To state that another way -- if the
> system makes it feasible for the average scout troop to do a trip,
> then there will be lots of scout troops doing it -- either displacing
> non-boyscouts, or overloading the resource.
>
> This gets me back to one of the central problems in this debate --
> what is 'fair', anyway?
>
> At the driest possible level we define fairness in terms of
> probability -- you set up some basic qualifying criteria (eg, sending
> a postcard to the NPS), and then use some procedure that guarantees
> that each 'qualified' applicant has precisely the same probability of
> 'winning'.
>
> This dry approach, though arguably the only 'truly fair' one, is
> unsatisfactory to many, because it fails to take into account the
> relative subjective value of the experience. That is, such a system
> has the unfortunate characteristic that some people, no matter how
> strong their desire for a trip through the Canyon, will never get
> chosen. We could say that a lottery is 'fair', but it isn't 'just',
> somehow. A 'just' sustem also includes some accounting for relative
> value.
>
> The 'common-pool' approach is fair in the 'dry' sense, but has no
> 'justice', and, while I can appreciate it from an intellectual
> standpoint, I actually prefer the flexibility of the current flawed
> situation. Someday I may need to sell my car, and float down the
> river in something less than 3.6 years :-)
>
> --
> Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited",
> kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke...
> PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55
> http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html
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-- -------------------------------------------------- -- Ben Harding blh@hydrosphere.com -- -- Hydrosphere Resource Consultants -- -- Hydrosphere Data Products -- -- 1002 Walnut, Suite 200 -- -- Boulder CO 80302 -- -- -- -- 303-443-7839 voice 303-442-0616 fax -- -- -- -- Publishing Natural Resources Data on CD ROM -- -- Consultants in Natural Resources Planning -- --------------------------------------------------========================================================= To unsubscribe from RiverAccess, send a message to majordomo@hydrosphere.com containing the following: unsubscribe riveraccess