Am I understanding this correctly: you need to pay for a permit for hiking in some places in the USA, and it's a lottery so you might not even be able to go once you've paid the money?
This is like when that new gelato place opens up and has a 45 minute line for $15 ice cream, and the regular ice cream place is basically as good and has normal prices and no line.
First you pay to participate in the lottery. This is money you've lost no matter what.
Then if you win you pay a second amount for the permit itself.
The fact is, demand for these spots are too high. I'd rather see an auction, but that'd be too unfair for people who aren't rich enough - public goods are still public and should be available.
On the private land side, more and more landowners are leasing their land for hunting. I'm in the rural midwest - not long ago you could hunt on just about any private property simply by walking up to the person's front door and asking nicely. Nowadays more and more properties are leased out and under strict contracts that limit access. In my area many contracts limit foot traffic, not just hunting.
Luckily my family owns land, and we let neighbors on it, but this is becoming more and more outlier philosophy. I totally get it all and understand it from an economic point of view, but it doesn't make it suck any less.
On the public side however, this just doesn't sit right with me. There must be a different solution.
It made sense to me, as I was under the impression that the money went directly to the park. But the fact that it goes to a middleman changes things.
I mean, I get it, I understand that they need to limit the amount of people visiting certain sensitive ecosystems, but still... something about this just seems fundamentally wrong to me. Access to the great outdoors, to nature, seems like such a fundamental human right to me.
No it wouldn't.
Imagine MrBeast’s “I bought the entire national park for the next century” video. You want people to always have a chance to go, no matter the demand.
Everyone wants ultimate freedom then complains when they show up and everyone else with ultimate freedom has trashed the place.
The general public has a huge credibility problem of its own to grapple with, but somehow it’s always someone else’s job to sit and reflect, find the solution.