>> City officials were aghast at large numbers of individuals playing Pokemon Go who visited parks, littered, trampled grass and flowers, and stayed past park hours.
This seems like a legitimate issue though. How do you propose it be solved?
This seems like a legitimate issue though. How do you propose it be solved?
Is the game responsible for people littering? Or tramping grass (seriously, its grass... lets get over ourselves) or flowers... Is the game responsible for that, or are the people who do the wrong thing responsible? This points at the overall shifting of blame for everything that is becoming so common in our culture... put the blame on the person who does the wrong thing.
> Is the game responsible for people littering?
I feel like you didn't answer my question?
Edit, to clarify: I'm asking what the actual solution is: expecting the city to pay for skyrocketing enforcement? Or letting the park get trashed and then blaming the citizens? Or just closing the park and blaming people for it happening? etc.
> put the blame on the person who does the wrong thing.
Perhaps more permanent solution to the problem is in order such as fencing around the flowers getting trampled. End the drug war if you want to save money elsewhere for this.
Edit: See edit above. The question isn't whom to blame, the question is how to resolve the issue. Blaming people doesn't generally resolve an issue, but enforcing it or putting in place mechanisms for preventing it or some other tangible action might.
As far as flower-trampling, just shrug and wait for the fad to pass. It's not a big deal.
How much easier is it to enforce no one in the park past $10 than no camping in the park.
All this suggests that locking parks overnight is more about every government's burning desire to "think of the children" and control everything possible than any legitimate concern for public safety.
It would be reasonable to expect that the job of these city officials should be to (a) encourage the people to visit parks even more; and (b) maintain the parks adequately to their usage - if people use the parks more then it obviously costs more to maintain, but it also obviously means that people are getting more benefit from the parks and they want them to be maintained more.
Enforcing the rules about littering and trampling flowers is part of maintaining the park; but if people are routinely staying past park hours (the whole concept of park hours is a bit strange to me, I'd expect parks to simply be unserviced but otherwise available 24/7), then likely that's a sign that these hours should be extended - the purpose of littering restrictions is obvious but the only legitimate purpose of restricted hours is that the population wants the hours to be restricted for safety reasons or whatever; if now it turns out that the population doesn't want that restriction anymore, then it shouldn't exist.
I was just pointing out that "enforcing rules against littering, using parks after hours, etc." isn't the solution to them, they see it as the problem.
the national parks are almost fully funded by the people that visit them.
I do not use any of the Local Parks, I do not pay Pokemon Go, I do not have a use for either
People that use the parks should pay for them, then if there is an increase in activity from something like Pokemon Go that means Revenue also increases to pay for the increased costs to maintain the asset.
I am fine with that, it is not ethical to take money from people by force to pay for things like this, if their was value in the community for a park then the community would find a way to voluntarily pay for it, if there are not enough voluntary support in the community to fund the park then the park should not exist
Even if that were true, National parks are big, which means the additional space taken up by toll collection infrastructure at parking areas (and the staff to man them) aren't a big deal, and they present lots of needs for people to stop and buy things which creates concession opportunities.
This is significantly less true of most (but not all) local parks.
But, anyway, even National Parks funding comes mostly from appropriated funds; fees (both directly from visitors and commercial services) are on the order of a couple hundred million of the single-digit billion dollar annual parks spendibf. And even that amount actually spent doesn't meet upkeep needs; the National Parks have deferred maintenance costs on the order of four times the annual budget.
Source on this? I feel like if this was already the case then the issue of cutting national park funding wouldn't be such a big deal, and yet it is.