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I'm a camp host for a USFS campground. It takes 3+ seasonal employees to clean the bathrooms, remove the trash, monitor the chlorine content of the drinking water and repair things. Together they maintain a dozen or so campgrounds.

As a camp host I occasionally do these tasks when these employees are absent as well as my usual duties. For this I theoretically receive a small stipend. I say theoretically because the payroll operation is so understaffed it is five months behind in paying me.

Without the seasonal staff, I don't see any way the USFS can keep the campgrounds open as well as do many other functions.

I don't think many Americans understand how 40 years or so of declining agency budgets have hollowed out the staffing of many government agencies.

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> I don't think many Americans understand how 40 years or so of declining agency budgets have hollowed out the staffing of many government agencies.

Can you provide a citation for where you’re getting this data indicating that the USFS budget has been declining over time?

Based on the data I found, the USFS budget has increased steadily from 2011-2024 [0]. The 2024 budget was $9.3b [1] versus $5.1b in 2011 [0]. The 2025 budget was cut from 2024, but still higher than the 2020 budget.

[0]: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46557

[1]: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12396

Doesn’t this mainly go to wildfire suppression, and in fact as wildfires have multiplied over that decade, hasn’t the service regularly raided its normal accounts in order to cover its bills for fire prevention and control?

Notably, there has never been a sustainable level of fire fighting and forest management funding in the USFS as far as I know.

We just didn’t have to care, but now it is starting to catch up with is.

> The 2024 budget was $9.3b [1] versus $5.1b in 2011 [0]

For context: Just keeping up with inflation puts the 2011 budget at $7.1b in 2024.

They also claim to have "13 billion dollars contributed to the U.S. economy by visitor spending each year"[2].

Investing $9b into $13b of revenue sounds like a great use of government funds to me.

[2] https://www.fs.usda.gov/about-agency/newsroom/by-the-numbers

>> Investing $9b into $13b of revenue sounds like a great use of government funds

No. By math alone, it is a horrible waste. It would be a good investment if those funds generated economic activity resulting 9+b in tax dollars. But this is about parks, not simply stimulating the economy. The value of parks cannot be expressed in dollars.

How many people buy tents, hiking boots, RVs, etc to use at parks?

No doubt they spend lots of money, but if net economic activity was quantizable then we wouldn't need to spend tax dollars. We could charge use fees and have the RV producers and hiking boot makers contribute in order to safeguard their business. But parks have value beyond the economic. They are valuable as cultural centerpieces. They define national identity. Without Yellowstone, the US would be less of a country. Without Central Park, New York would not be as iconic a city. These things need to be funded without regard to economic activity. They are beyond math.

References to economic activity in relation to parks can be dangerous. Once we see them as engines of economic activity, then we will seek to maximize that activity. A national forest should not be described as a source of timber fees and tourist dollars. Down that road comes drilling for oil in parks, more roads, more hotels and the inevitable conversion of wild fields into condos.

This is so frustrating.

Even if it makes financial sense, the fact that we can only quantify a public good in USD (or any other currency) is a tragedy.

Not all things have a monetary amount associated to them, but they are still somehow valuable.

> the fact that we can only quantify a public good in USD (or any other currency) is a tragedy

Money is the way we quantify the relative value of anything vs anything else. That's all money is.

I think because it's state-run, the "value" is extremely hard to quantify, in many directions. It might be over-valued, as people who've never seen it have to pay for it, or under-valued, as money that people might've paid to visit the park has already been taken from their paycheques.

And without that funding and government running the parks, they simply wouldn't exist for anyone to use.

I dislike your framing of this.

Any reason why?

>> because it's state-run, the "value" is extremely hard to quantify

The value of a privately-operated park would be no less difficult to quantify. National forests are not theme parks. They have a value even if nobody ever sets foot inside.

Probably true, but I think if you offered a billion dollars for a square foot of national park, you might be able to buy that square foot. There is a value somewhere in it that's negotiable between the people who have it and the people who might want to buy some of it. A billion dollars (as an obviously extreme example) could set up a lot of conservation elsewhere in the park, or elsewhere in the country.

Maybe it is not supposed to be quantified. At least not in a monetary value.

This requirement that everything must have some currency value attached to it is a societal disease. We can extrapolate this to say that anything that increases the country GDP should be done.

I can think of many awful examples. Maybe it makes more monetary sense to uproot every last tree to extract lumber. Maybe it makes more monetary sense to just kill people with serious illnesses or disabilities instead of building more hospitals. Maybe it makes more monetary sense to just put every damn child to work in the mines or in an Amazon fulfillment center instead of sending them to school.

I can go on. As long as we can only measure the value of anything in USD, we can justify quite a lot of things that would be pretty awful for society as a whole.

> This requirement that everything must have some currency value attached to it is a societal disease

No it's not - I'm saying currency is how we measure the relative value of things. Money isn't separate to how we measure something's value; it's the thing we use to measure value. It's like saying "every object having a length value attached is a societal disease; we shouln't only attach a cm value to all objects".

> It's like saying "every object having a length value attached is a societal disease; we shouln't only attach a cm value to all objects".

That's not what the GP said, though. They said that the idea that everything needs to be valued in dollars is a societal disease. Not that everything that can be valued in dollars is a societal disease.

> Money is the way we quantify the relative value of anything vs anything else

Most common != only

I think the GP's point (perhaps not articulated well) is that we shouldn't even try to quantify the value of public goods like this, in dollars.

For example, a smallish local park in my neighborhood is completely free and generates $0. Various entities spend some decent amount of money to maintain the park. The value is in how many people visit the park and enjoy it, which is inherently not quantifiable.

The only thing you can quantify is how many people visit the park each day or week or whatever, and, say, the average number of person-hours it is used per time period. Maybe those are useful metrics that can help inform whether or not the park's existence is justified, or as to how much money should be spent maintaining and improving it, in a very rough sense. But that's not the same thing as quantifying its value.

Obviously, I wholly agree with your preference for moral and values based justifications.

But I also acknowledge ROI does help fend off alternate agendas. My state's investments in birdwatching, vineyards, hunting/fishing/gaming. etc have huge ROI. Thereby empowering the conservationsists in those never ending policymaking slap fights.

Adjacently, I've seen (local) budgets for pre-K get over the hump because of their outsized economic impact. Some people only see the world thru dollars signs.

Framing with positive ROI helps moot the "we can't afford it" zero sum scarcity mindset. Like exposing NIMBYs.

Based on the ROI, we can't afford TO NOT invest in our national parks. Taking away the economic counter arguments shows the opponents just don't want to. For reasons.

While that’s a large change, it’s worth keeping in mind more than half the difference is just inflation. $5.1b in 2011 is $7.3b in ‘24

The overall Forest Service budget has indeed been increasing, but it's nearly all going to wildfire fighting. I recently wrote about the state of forest road funding and went in depth on this here: https://ephemeral.cx/2024/09/losing-access-to-the-cascades

> Overall, in 1995 16% of the Forest Service budget was dedicated to wildfires. By 2015 it was 52% and by 2025 it’s projected to be upwards of 67%. Without large amounts of additional funding it is virtually guaranteed that the Forest Service’s budget will continue to be siphoned away by firefighting needs.

>but it's nearly all going to wildfire fighting

i.e. subsidizing states with antiquated "just don't touch it, but also fight every little fire" forest management policy

There is a, non trivial, crime factor in most wildfires.

There is a non-trivial crime factor in every crisis that provokes a large subset of society to flee.

If areas were having small semi-annual fires cleaning out the brush rather than these once per several decades monsters there wouldn't be the need for people to flee and there wouldn't be the same crime impact. And routinely dealing with small fires would make all the organizations involved better practiced when the big ones some around.

Those areas would be burning exactly the same as before, starting in 20 places at 4 AM in the most windy night of the year. The criminals just would bring a can of gasoline.

How relevant is that though? If eg lightning can do the same thing isnt it only a matter of time? Genuine question, im new to west coast and lightly thinking about it, arent our options ultimately either regular burns, cutting trees down, or a mix? I see the insane amounts of underbrush and it seems impossible to clear it all regularly in a cost effective way, to avoid then need to burn. But IDK, very curious.

Even if "no crime ever" were somehow a policy plan, I'm not sure how this would change anything in terms of Forest Service decision-making.

If forests are maintained as a tinderbox then that's unstable, regardless of whether the immediate cause of ignition is lightning or human activity.

States don't get to set controlled burn policy in forests managed by the USFS, but of course they're called in to fight the inevitable fires.

It's hard to imagine how these services are being cut when we're running a $1.8 trillion deficit this year. Clearly the priorities of our current FedGov admin are askew.

One hopes things will improve after November 5...

Unlikely. It's easy to find out where federal spending goes as it is all public. The biggest outlays are for health care, education, and social security and other pensions. I don't hear much call for less spending in any of those areas from people who actually want to be elected.

#3 biggest spend is net interest on outstanding debt.

https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

Don't worry, soon we will outsource these services to private companies for 5x the price, but then the budget will get approved due to lobbying!

Then we will ask why we even have the government owning parks in the first place, and privatize the national parks!

You will pay $500 to park and you will like it!

I say convert it all to dispersed camping. Leave the zoos, I mean national parks, to the common overcrowding. Let us have our forests back. It’s obvious that their policies have led to many of it burning down in mega fires that get so hot it kills every living thing in its path.

Ah, yes, make it harder for people to enjoy and admire nature. Then people will lobby to raze it down as “no one uses it anyway.”

While you're right, undeniably there are many parks where fencing and parking lots have desertified or made unsightly much of what is in and around the "preserved" areas. Very sad.

USFS campgrounds are setup (generally) in places to reduce the damage caused by the public, because given enough people, the ‘public’ becomes abusive and we can’t have nice things. And in many areas, there will always more enough people that it will cross that threshold, regardless of what anyone calls the place.

USFS campgrounds in truly remote areas excepted, but any available camping near a highway is going to be a public safety hazard quickly without someone responsible for keeping it clean and somewhat organized/policed.

USFS ‘managed’ campgrounds generally were setup where there was already a problem area.

So are you proposing Rangers sit there and drive anyone away trying to do what they want to do? Or we turn these spots into National parks? Because just saying ‘dispersed camping’ doesn’t work either without someone sitting there enforcing it.

This pattern has been played out time and time again. The next steps will be:

"Camp bathrooms are always so dirty, and there's never anyone to staff to help!"

"How can the bureaucracy fail so badly, I don't know why we even pay for the USFS if this is the best they can muster"

"We should privatize this. Maybe we could even sell naming rights. Colgate campgrounds, anyone?"

"(Private companies continue to run shitty camp, citing 'hey, at least we're better than the USFS')"

"Remember how the USFS failed so badly? You can't trust the government to do anything!"

It's been the playbook of every government agency that has not been funded properly for about a generation now (thanks, Reagan). Slowly defund a service so the quality degrades, then complain about the quality and say you couldn't possibly fund the service if the quality is that low.

It drives me up the wall how bleeding obvious this is, time and time again, and yet, here we are, doing it again to the USFS, one of the most important agencies we have in (for instance) ensuring people have access to nature, preventing wildfires, managing our timber stocks, and sequestering carbon.

But this is the government failing! What's more, privatizing it to buddies with uncompetitive corrupt bidding processes and terrible contracts would also be government failure.

See, there is a difference between 'government' as in the workers who make the government run daily, and 'government' as in the politicians that make the policies.

The parent poster you replied to is speaking about the first, and you are speaking about the second.

No I'm not, I'm talking about the entire machine of government. Politicians don't make decisions in isolation. Bureaucrats and public servants aren't immune from incompetence or corruption.

So you are saying that bureaucrats are defunding themselves?

No. They certainly enter into and administer contracts with private companies that are unfit, incompetent, and corrupt though. I've seen it more than once.

You didn't actually believe elected politicians all personally carry out the bidding and contract process and oversee the projects themselves, hopefully.

The person you responded to was making the point that by underfunding government agencies, then they couldn't do their jobs properly and then that would be evidence that government was ineffective at doing that job, which would be used to rationalize privatizing that job.

Then you said that it was the government which was responsible for doing that in the first place so that is evidence that the government is bad at its job.

I then pointed out that there are policy makers in government, and employees of government, and that the two have separate responsibilities.

Are you saying that employee corruption and private contracts are directly responsible for government agencies being given inadequate funding and staff so that they cannot be effective?

I seems to me that policy makers cutting the budget or not allocating enough of a budget for staffing would be responsible for this, and that private contracting is more of an effect of not being able to hire adequate staff.

> [...]

The thread is right here to read. The attempted point was basically that privatization is bad, but the poster made up this convoluted scenario that seemed to miss the fact that this is a government service, and in any case horrible and corrupt privatization contracts are made by governments.

> Are you saying that employee corruption and private contracts are directly responsible for government agencies being given inadequate funding and staff so that they cannot be effective?

Also no. I'm saying what I wrote, no more or less.

That scenario has been used since the Reagan administration to destroy government services. If you want to say that it hasn't, then argue for that. Don't bring up unrelated issues related to contracts and corruption. Address the 'convoluted scenario'.

> Also no. I'm saying what I wrote, no more or less.

> But this is the government failing!

So you are saying that defunding government is a government failure. Is there another way to read that?

I can't do all your work for you. If you want to say something, why don't you say it, instead of repeating 'the thread is there, read it' when you wrote one sentence and then refused any given interpretation of it.

It is like asking a child what they want and they repeat the same ambiguous thing over and over.

I have decided either you have no idea what you mean or you do not care to make it known, so, good luck with that.

> That scenario has been used since the Reagan administration to destroy government services. If you want to say that it hasn't, then argue for that. Don't bring up unrelated issues related to contracts and corruption. Address the 'convoluted scenario'.

That "scenario" of government incompetence and corruption makes for government waste and poor services yes. I didn't bring up anything unrelated.

> So you are saying that defunding government is a government failure. Is there another way to read that?

Trying to put words in my mouth and taking wild stabs in the dark or deliberately misconstructing what I am saying is not "doing all my work", lol. DOn't do the stupid internet arguing style of "Oh so you're saying ...". I'm saying what I'm saying, if you're unclear about it just ask a normal proper question.

Continuing to say 'I am saying what I am saying' without clarifying anything despite repeated request while scolding me for being stupid after specifically asked you what else it could mean is hands down the the most asinine thing I have heard from anyone on the whole internet for this past month.

But you didn't actually say anything of substance. All you said was, "But this is the government failing!"

What is the "this" that you are talking about?

"The entire machine of government" is not a homogeneous mass.

The USFS, if properly funded, is perfectly capable (as history has shown) of maintaining our national parks.

If the idiots in DC don't continue to fund them properly (as they haven't been), and that causes problems, it doesn't mean the USFS is a failure and can't maintain our parks, and the only solution -- because "the government" failed at it -- is to privatize it.

That is, you can't say that "the entire machine of government" failed to self-manage the parks, but then say "the entire machine of government" was successful in privatizing the parks. (Especially considering the latter would end up in a disgusting capitalist failure anyway, but one that fiscal conservatives would cheer, because even though the parks would be an objectively worse experience for everyone, at least someone is making big money managing them.)

This is the legislature failing, not the bureaus though. Like, USFS isn't the problem here. The problem is legislators hamstringing it.

> This pattern has been played out time and time again.

I wish more people would recognize it's a standard playbook, quite intentional.

> thanks, Reagan

Who's the president now and why is he absolved of all responsibilities?

These things develop over a long period of time and much of this mentality was planted by Reagan (and other conservative economists, mostly inspired by Reagan). The push to privatization is a slow process. We're seeing it catch up in many areas, particularly education. In the next coming decades, I'm not confident free public education will be viable or even available.

It's partly Biden, for sure. It's partly Trump. Partly Obama, Clinton, Bush...

This partisanism is useless. I'm not a democrat, I'm not a republican, but it's absolutely clear that Reagan represented a policy change that every admin thereafter has been happy to uphold.

and maybe he was right ? We have a "service" that can't even keep bathrooms clean. Maybe government is the problem?

They can't keep the bathrooms clean because their funding has stagnated and much of it has been redirected to firefighting. This is... what this entire article and discussion is about. It's a little bizarre that you could take "maybe government is the problem" from all this.

USFS employees seem generally great, and competent at their jobs. If any part of government is the problem, it's the legislators who aren't funding them well enough. That's not a reason to take management of the parks out of the government's hands; that's a reason to stop voting for pro big-business fiscal conservatives who want to trick people into privatizing things because "government doesn't work for this", when the reason it doesn't work is because they deliberately broke it.

>It's been the playbook of every government agency that has not been funded properly for about a generation now

Has the funding stagnated or has the mandate of these organizations expanded.

Way back when Regan was cutting things the median USFS camp ground "with bathrooms" probably had an outhouse and the fire rings were probably literally old truck rims tossed on the ground, If a camper wanted toilet paper or a grill they brought. And when they wanted to move the outhouse or add more campsites they probably didn't do a formalized environmental impact study (even if done in house that sort of stuff still costs something) because that wasn't considered within the scope of their jobs. Funding has not kept pace.

> Has the funding stagnated or has the mandate of these organizations expanded.

Does it matter? Expanding scope without increasing funding is functionally equivalent to maintaining scope and reducing funding.

If the USFS is expected to do more, they need more funding. If they aren't getting it that's a problem. If the USFS is expected to do the same, they need at least the same funding (adjusted for inflation, at minimum). If they aren't getting it, that's a problem.

This is what happens when your deficit is increasing by $1 trillion every 100 days.

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