Originally Posted By: Steve C
There are ways to convince people to have smaller families. But .gov still gives tax breaks and other incentives for having bigger ones.


Steve, there's a whole host of people posting here that are in their 50s. During our formative years (20s), approx 3 BILLION people had voluntarily (or forcefully) opted out of participation in the global economy.

By that, I mean mainland Chinese, the Indian subcontinent and Soviet block. They were stuck in their respective country regions, and we in the West got to run wild, treating all the "cool" places as our own.

You, me and everyone else in our generation not only had this world to ourselves where Calif had almost 1/2 as many people (20m vs 40m), but there was also very limited overseas tourism. In this context, it doesn't matter what local/nat'l gov't does - the primary growth segment is coming from foreign sources.

But the problem is that so many people seem to have built up these false expectations and sense of entitlement. Like the "way it was" is the rule, rather than the exception. In actuality, today is reality, as there are now 7 billion people in the world traveling hither and yon driving cross border traffic.

So when you get bureaucrats aligned with those who have difficulty accepting facts, we end up getting the types of ham handed, brute force methods seen in the WZ. But there are larger political realities, in that if the rule of law isn't applied fairly, society can descend fairly rapidly as disdain escalates into outright rebellion.

We can see it with the rangers - these people are simply civilians charged with set responsibilities. They aren't your/my boss and they don't own the land - they are part of the larger community, which is why they are still subject to the civilian justice system. Unlike military control, the only way policing works is to have community buy-in. But if a system is judged to be unfair, trust begins to erode and we all know where that leads.

That's why the parks and services need to abandon their confrontational style and begin to address how to actually manage ever increasing crowds. And, it's really not that difficult if one is willing to consider a few simple measures. Again, the Valley: (a) stay on trails & designated walk ways; (b) camp in designated tent sites; (c) place solar toilets in key strategic areas.

Not hard - rules can be applied by region in specific, heavily used areas eg Whitney, Half Dome, etc.

Last edited by Hobbes; 10/09/19 05:05 PM.