Probably it could be sold for billions of dollars if the private owners could exploit it economically. For instance producing lumber, building a theme park, charging for visits and tours, etc…Otherwise, it has no economical value.
Nothing would be wrong, but who would buy it and why?
If I choose to invest some of my money in Yosemite’s park share, what kind of return can I expect? What would be the dividends of this “investment”? Will the investors be allowed to cut the trees, search for minerals which could be mined, charge for visits? If not, what kind of investment is that? Why would I pay for a piece of real estate that I’m not allowed to use and which doesn’t produce any income, hence which actually has no value? Would you buy a share in your neighbor’s house under the condition that you wont be allowed to live in the house nor to rent it?
The only thing I could imagine would be for the new owners to rent it to the US goverment, if it stays a national park. But then it’s not much different from keeping the debt. The USA will have to pay the rent instead of paying the debt’s interests. What would it change?
I assume from your references to “admissions, concessions, etc.” that you want the National Parks to continue to serve as places where Americans can go to relax and discover the natural wonders of their country. You didn’t answer my question about whether mining or logging or massive development would be allowed, so i’m going to assume that you just intend for the Parks to stay basically the way they are, except that they will be owned by shareholders and not by the government.
If that is the case, then i’m afraid that clairobscur is right–there’s no way these places are going to break even, let alone show a profit. The National Parks Service 2003 Annual Report (warning: large pdf) shows clearly that the income generated by the National Parks does not even come close to covering operating expenses.
If you look on pages 34 and 53 of the report, you will see the following figures:
Cost - Services Provided to the Public 2,710,492
Revenue Earned from the Public (261,406)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Net Cost of Services to the Public 2,449,086
Cost - Services Provided to Federal Agencies 76,246
Revenue Earned from Federal Agencies (74,006)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Net Cost of Services Provided to Federal Agencies 2,240
Net Cost of Operations $ 2,451,326
(all figures are in '000s)
So, the NPS as a whole spends almost $2.5 billion each year to provide its services to the American people and to other federal agencies. The federal agencies section almost breaks even, so let’s just focus on the public services.
If you get rid of the government funding that basically allows the NPS to carry out this task, how is the Service going to survive? Because i assume that, in your zeal to cut government spending, you’re not going to want the government to prop up the parks if they can’t make a profit. If you want these newly-privatized parks to make money, you’re going to have to rely on providing services to the public, and charging for those services.
Services provided to the public cost, last year, a bit over 10x what the public paid in fees, admission costs, etc. Do you really think that people will still come if you raise prices by 900 percent? And even raising them that much would barely allow you to break even.
Sure, there are factors that i haven’t taken into account, but even these fairly rudimentary calculations suggest that, absent any plan to radically revise the way the parks are actually used, they are not going to be much of a lure for investors.
Of course, there is a separate argument about whether or not the government should be subsidizing the NPS to the extent that it does, but no matter what you think of that issue, the fact is that a privatized park system is extremely unlikely to provide a profitable investment opportunity.
A fair price could never be had for national treasures such as Yosemite. The market price would be based on the potential yield, irrespective of the huge existence value. (See Kubursi for info on calculating existence value - - it’s a fascinating field!)
Instead of selling Yosemite, what might be more effective would be to lease certain rights, such as rights to manage the park under government regulation, as is already done in many places. This allows for multiple uses more easily, for specific rights can be leased where appropriate, and restrictions on leases can ensure that the existence value is taken into consideration, rather than just the potential yield. The question then, however, would simply come down to who can run the park on a more cost effective basis - - the park service or a private contractor.
I agree with you, but would like to point out that zecs in Quebec are self-financing as long as one does not consider fire control. I thnk that what it comes down to is what level of facility and service is provided for what price. Zecs are self-financing because usually there are few if any amenities, and no services.
My favorite fantasy! How would you do it, rjung? Whisper in Gore’s ear, “no, no, no, not just a few counties – call for a state-wide recount!”? Or see to it that West Palm Beach uses a normal (non-butterfly) ballot?
??? All the spending on star wars missile defence, big weapons systems, military hardware of all sorts – it’s all just to put people to work? To reduce unemployment? Why not put them to work doing something useful? Something that will do some good? Repairing our infrastructure? Developing alternative power sources to end our dependence on Middle Eastern oil? Building and staffing new schools, colleges, hospitals, clinics, housing? De-programming Fred Phelps?
Your not going to get the money back from the poor countries, so why bother wasting time adding “interest”. The countries demanding the money should just let them off the money and forget about it. “Love thy neighbour”
And a big “Hi!” and “Welcome back!” to Thatcher’s Britain. It’s like the 1980s all over again!
This was the policy followed by the Evil One; privatisation. Basically it involves selling national assets at ridiculously knocked-down prices to your business buddies. You get a short-term cash injection to tide over your finances and pay for those tax cuts. Meanwhile the public get shafted by monopolistic companies exploiting assests that they used to own.
Overall benefit to country: nil.
Benefit for those who pulled this scam off: Future position on the company board.
I didn’t say that, but it is certainly a substantial benefit we’d be tossing out the window if we put an end to government spending on the military as the Eisenhower quote seems to be advocating.
With what money do you intend to pay these people? The money not spent on the military has been given away, again as the Eisenhower quote seems to imply, to the hungry, the homeless, the downtrodden and poor. Eisenhower didn’t say that every tank not built is one more mile of Interstate Highway for hauling commercial goods.
You’ve posed two strawmen to me, and I’m not gonna defend arguments I’m not making simply because you wanna foist 'em off on me. Rather, I agree with you that spending the money in a sustainable and productive manner is far better than tossing down the toilet of wealth re-distribution -if it’s gotta be spent at all. Which it doesn’t; not at the rate it’s currently being spent anyway. All did up there was to take exception to Eisenhower’s glib statement (Something I’d really like to see in context; I seriously doubt he was advocating what’s implied in that single passage.) and try to show how stupid it is to balance an equation that has but one side.
You say, with what money do I intend to pay these people? I thought that was plain. I was saying, if govt officials’ real purpose in spending money on expensive weapons systems, missile defence, etc, is to put people to work, why not instead put people to work doing something useful?
The money I’d use to put people to work on repairing the infrastructure and other worthwhile projects would be the money that I’d take from speding on expensive unneeded weapons systems, unlikely to ever work missile defence, etc.
I don’t know what you mean about “the money not spent on the military has been given away”. I was talking about spending that is classified as “military spending” or “defense spending”.
OTOH (to add something I didn’t say), anoher option exists. Instead of shifting money from defense spending to non-defense spending, we could spend less on weapons systems, period. In other words, reduce govt spending, reduce the debt/deficit, reduce taxes.
Question: do you think a really big reduction in the military budget would would result in economic collapse?
I say it’s been “given away” on the basis of the Eisenhower quote. That quote implies that if we quit spending so much on military materiel, there’d be more for welfare programs. Ergo, it’s being given away to a non-productive sector. (Non-productive from the gov’t view, meaning that it generates no new, or greatly reduced, revenue for additional gov’t operations - no tax dollars.)
Not a collapse perhaps, but putting millions of people out of work is certainly gonna cause a large downturn. Both because, well, these people gotta find new jobs, and the havoc it would play with the stock market. It all depends, of course, on how big a cut you wanna make in military spending - and how that money made available is then spent. Wealth re-distribution is a very inefficient means of spending money.
Again, I’m not trying to argue against your proposition that money not spent on military products can be just as effectively spent on public infrastructure; in all likelihood it can—and just as likely to greater immediate public benefit (don’t know about the long-term public benefit; a strong military offers protections for the future of a nation that I won’t even try to assess here). I’m arguing only against the idiocy of the Eisenhower quote, where money not spent on the military is given away—wasted—with no return to the government.
Eisenhower, being a conservative, was hardly advocating welfare spending in place of military spending. He was merely recognizing that if you spend money on a battleship, it’s not going to be spent on subway cars.
Let us compare and contrast these two, as both involve government spending:
The battleship, once built, is done accruing any sort of economic benefit to the country, in any direct way.
The subway cars, by contrast, will spend their entire useful lives shuttling people back and forth to their places of employment and, as a bonus, will also carry tourists and shoppers and so on.
That’s the tradeoff.
Now, a military asset is an economic asset, to the extent that it protects the country from damage, as 9/11 certainly illustrated. That single attack caused massive amounts of economic damage, and obviously if military assets had been available to stop that attack, it would have had a very direct economic benefit. (Which makes you wonder why we’re spending all that money but still can’t stop such an attack, but I suppose that’s an entirely different thread.) But such direct economic benefit from military spending is rare in the US. Thankfully.
Except for, ya know, all the materiel required to keep it in operation, the maintenance supplies, the periodic upgrades, the supply and support of the bases where these ships are ported, any number of private commercial enterprises in the vicinity of military stations - all of which is supplied by, and purchased from, the civilian sector, thus creating a supply of civilian jobs, and in turn, tax revenue to the gov’t. The economic benefits, to both the private sector and, (what we’re actually talking about here) to the gov’t, in the form of taxes returned hardly stops when the ship is launched. I mean, you put gas in your car, buy car care products, get oil changes, new brakes once in a while, don’t ya? Monetary transactions, all of which are taxed, certainly don’t stop once you’ve signed the loan application, right? Same deal.
Which is why I said I’d like to see the quote in context and expressed disbelief that Eisenhower actually meant what that quote, read in isolation, implies.
Yep, different thread, but the way the military is currently organized and the rules under which it may be deployed are the reason why it is almost wholly ineffective against terrorist attacks. Terrorist simply use a strategy and tactics that which are designed to take advantage of this weakness. There’s no real mystery why the military is ineffective here.
Deterrence. Intangible asset. I alluded to this earlier.
The speech was made to point out the futility of the cold war, to call the post-Stalin USSR to task with respect to the USSR’s dangerous aggression, to announce the USA’s global interest in stable nations, to propose military and arms limitations and UN inspection, and to declare total war on poverty.
Here is the context of the excerpted passage:
Eisenhower went on to speak on the necessity of a free world, specifically including eastern Europe, south-east Asia, and Korea.
He warned of atomic war, and proposed disarmament programs including military personnel limitations, arms limitations, and UN inspection.
