In case someone wants to watch a video about the same topic, Everest: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bchx0mS7XOY
The other thing is the reliance on the Sherpa moving all that stuff up and down the mountain. (Capital S is the people) Being a sherpa is a super hard and dangerous job for some thrill seekers.
That's not a whim purchase for most people, and probably out of reach of e.g. the lower 50% of US incomes, but for a huge number of people it's an achievable amount if climbing Everest is your lifetime dream.
I have a hard time supporting politically that we owe deference to a minority experiencing shallow novelty and calling them life dreams, given the externalized costs foisted on society as a whole.
There are peaks closer and the difference in sensory experience is marginal.
This is just “more money than I can spend so I’ll shovel it a little at everything.” Which is politically indefensible given how society is manipulated to enable it.
How many people know the second highest mountain in the world? It's K2, most people have at least heard of it. How about the third highest? Kangchenjunga. Never heard of it, had to Google it.
So for people who want a recognizable achievement, Everest is pretty much the top. Not just in climbing, but any physical achievement. Unless Nepal restricts the number of climbers, it will only get worse.
K2 is so remote that there was no local name for it (hence, the designation K2).
The article says so many people are doing it, the techniques are so well known, there’s little new info to glean in the activity itself, so it’s basically Xbox achievements for people with excess money as far as my subjective take on its value.
Our economy is so ridiculously hung up on gamifying FOMO and statistics to satisfy yet another gameified endeavor in financial economics.
And we rip tons of resources out of the ground each year to support our generation diddling their novelty button.
All I mean is I’m pretty done supporting the marketing BS of a bunch of aristocrats.
$50,000 is enough to do any one of starting a small business, or owning a classic car, or getting a masters degree in a subject you enjoy, or to own a boat or a tiny prop plane, or take a year or two off to try to write the next great novel, or buy a small plot of land in the wilderness to put a cabin on, or take a pretty fantastic round-the-world trip, or serve as a down payment on a small house in much of the US, maybe a fixer-upper depending on your location, or to throw a really amazing wedding. Or to climb Mount Everest.
Any one; if you aren't a rich asshole, you only get to pick one (or if you're a rich SWE, like 4-5). But, like, a lot of people can scrimp and save and take out a second mortgage and do one.
I understand why you think wanting to climb Mount Everest is a stupid dream, and I'm sure that a hearty number of the climbers are rich assholes who don't bat an eye at dropping $50k on something they don't really care about. And heck, most of the people who do dream of climbing Everest aren't in the physical shape to actually go and do it.
But still, it's a pretty common dream of a lifetime, of the right scale that a huge number of people are able to attempt it.