Ahh, you have to love Americans' capitalistic tendencies. I mean, where else can you spit in the face of someone hoping to enjoy a low-cost stay in a national park by reserving a $20 campsite in Yosemite National Park and then putting it up for auction for $249 on Ebay?
OK, to be fair, that price is for three nights in that campsite, so the person auctioning site No. 48 in the Lower Pines campground in the Yosemite Valley is only seeking $189 for his trouble in securing the site via the federal government's nation-wide recreation system. And if you can't find time to head to Yosemite from August 24-27, site No. 402 in the North Pines campground is reserved for August 12-15 and being offered for a mere $174.
Another seller with a conscious is offering a campsite in the Upper Pines campground July 25-26 for a mere $27.
Park officials say there currently is nothing they can do.
“Apparently it’s been going on for a couple years. It’s not just us. It’s anyone on the reservation system. There’s nothing that says that sites aren’t transferable," Yosemite spokeswoman Adrienne Freeman tells me. "We don't condone this. We’re looking for ways to prohibit this, including working with Ebay. But it doesn’t fall under the penal code for scalping.
"The bottom line is these sites should be available to the American public for a reasonable price. That’s what camping is all about.”
Thanks to Glenn Scofield Williams for tipping us to this story.
Comments
Why is reselling something dishonest? The person buying the campsite reservation on eBay is paying for the added value of not having to deal with the concessionaire or sitting on the phone with credit card in hand waiting to make the transaction. Obviously it was worth it to them to pay what they did, because they willing forked over the dough. In economics this is known as a "value-added" commodity.
This year I wanted to go to the Alabama-Georgia football game, so I went online to Stubhub (a ticket reseller) and found that tickets for that match were averaging about $350. I know the original price for these same tickets is around $40. Does the high the mark-up bother me? Not at all. That is what is known as the "market value" and I don't begrudge a season ticket holder for trying to capitalize on it. For Alabama football games, this season, it is a sellers market.
I will watch the game on TV and know that many of the people in the stands were happy to pay the market value for something that originally cost much less. Capitalism is a great thing.
Beamis...capitalism also breeds pathetic consumptious greed! The parks are not pawns to enhance the pockets of the greedy. We learn to share not exploit!
So you don't invest? You don't own stocks? Would you be ashamed to sell your house for twice the price you paid for it? I sort of doubt it.
We have to share not exploit! I guess our concept of exploitation are totally different. In capitalism all transactions are voluntary, while in government they are not. If you don't pay your taxes you go to jail. If you don't like the way the post office or the park service is run, well too bad because they are both government monopolies. Pay your taxes and shut up!
Now who's the real exploiter?
i agree with beamis. who in their right mind would pay that much for a campsite in a national park? let someone voluntarily do it if they want. it's not so much a widespread problem at this point, it's a blip on a highly topical blog. and frankly, the park service wastes enough of its budget mucking things up, like that totally lame new visitor center at arches, to try and regulate small things like people auctioning off their campsites on ebay. if we're going to worry about this, then let's just forget about unimportant things like stopping the spread of invasive species, declining interp program budgets and rising entrance fees because they already get so much attention anyway. (use your sarcasm detector here)
Beamis, I know there's a little bit of larceny and greed in all of us, but were not talking about the parks being part of the stock market or the New York stock exchange. Were talking about a feasible price system within the parks that fits the needs of every visitor. The parks should never be used for some type of football scapling to the highest bidder. Geez, this is all about money, and not enough about taking poverty inner city kids (example of have nots) to enjoy these beautiful crown jewels called the National Parks. However, your point of view is interesting.
$25 to enter Zion and Yosemite is larceny, especially for a taxpayer funded facility. Confiscating our wealth through a corrupt tax code to drop bombs on Baghdad is larceny. A voluntary exchange of goods and services between consenting adults is NOT larceny. It called free trade.
The person who purchased the reservation is happy and so is the person who bought it. This is what makes for a free and happy society. Therein lies a huge distinction.
Those left outside the process are not happy. Trade does not exist in a vacuum. Let's say one guy owns the water, your neighbor owns the boats, and you own the navigator schools, and assume that all are equally valuable. If your neighbor gives his boats to the guy who owns the water, tell me that doesn't have an adverse effect on you as the owner of the navigator school since one guy now owns 2/3 of the resources in the trade equation. When you realize that trade never happens on equal footing, that there is never any assumption of fairness in "free trade," then a lot of other people get affected when two other people make a deal (and that gets exacerbated the more resources owned by those making the deal).
When Bechtel builds a road to a mine because they were sold the rights, who and what is still hurt? A lot of people, animals, and land who had nothing to do with the deal but are still affected by it.
Theft and larceny is the lot of governments and private individuals alike all based on the lie of entitlement.
For more on where I'm coming from an anti-capitalist, anti-authoritarian perspective, read John Locke, Yellowstone, and the Dogma of the Right to Private Property.
Jim Macdonald
The Magic of Yellowstone
Yellowstone Newspaper
Jim's Eclectic World
Beamis, good points well taken! But I also think, that those that can out bid a average smuck like me, probably is one happy camper with the big bucks to spend. Now, that doesn't make me happy...does it!? I guess, as the old adage goes: "he with the most toy's wins"...sad but true. With that kind of philosophy (or adage) I don't think this makes one holistic happy society. Of course, who said life is fair. Ask the poor kid in the ghetto's if he can afford a pair of decent hiking shoes to trek the trails of Yosemite. Probably not! As far as free trade is concerned (NFTA, as a example with Mexico) perhaps we wouldn't have this huge problem with illegal immigration in the states. Such a imbalance! Just a thought or fuel for the fire.