|
Quoted from excerpted article below:
Given the response of private parks to consumer preference, what kind of parks would consumers prefer and be willing to pay for? Some newly privatized parks, particularly those in or near urban areas, would undoubtedly be redeveloped for mass recreation. Some urban parks might even cease to be parks at all because recreationists might not be willing to pay enough to bid away the land from alternative uses.
President Bush, his management team and Congress have embarked upon a public lands privatization agenda, the likes of which we have not seen at anytime in America's history. It makes the privatization efforts of President Reagan and James Watt pale in comparison.
Sadly, the details of this agenda are known to few other than those who are actually directing the transition from public ownership to privatization.
Pasted below is a short excerpt from a lengthy and detailed Cato Institute report on public land privatization. What I have provided gives only the basic nuts and bolt of how to use Recreation User Fees as a first step in the processes of transferring management control from public to private hands.
For those who think Fee-Demo should be "fixed" --- please think again. Fee-Demo can certainly be "improved upon" --- but any attempt to do so without fully understanding the reasons for which fee-demo was created will serve no purpose other than to facilitate the privatization/ commercialization agenda detailed in this Cato Report.
Scott
To learn more, click here.
---- excerpt follows -----
PARKS, PROPERTY RIGHTS,
AND THE POSSIBILITIES OF THE PRIVATE LAW
James P. Beckwith, Jr.
It is commonly assumed that private property rights are incompatible
with the preservation of such environmental and recreational amenities
as our national parks and that governmental ownership is therefore
required. This paper takes a different approach and argues that private
alternatives to public ownership of parks are legally feasible and are
desirable on both efficiency and ethical grounds.
<snip>
User Charges
As has been noted, the low cost of visiting parks has led to overuse
and deterioration. Even with continued public ownership of the parks,
this suboptimal pricing is not inevitable. Indeed, if equilibrium
prices were charged for access to the parks or for particular services
within the parks, much could be done to ameliorate present conditions.
With the payment of a user fee, the consumer pays for a service in much
the same way as in the private sector; and in the case of the public
parks, the incentives for park users are drastically altered. In the
absence of user fees, the public parks are financed out of general tax
revenues. Park users thus have an incentive to lobby for increased
appropriations for public parks in the rational expectation that the
bulk of these costs will be borne by the majority of taxpayers who
rarely use the parks. As a result of these incentives, more public
expenditures are made for parks than would otherwise be made. The user
fee internalizes these costs and introduces important economizing
incentives by imposing the cost of the parks directly on the park user.
If the price of recreation is raised, less of it will be demanded by
consumers and overcrowding in the parks will be reduced. In addition,
the payment of user fees is a precise indication of consumer preference
that will generate useful information on just how much people actually
value the competing uses of the parks, and one could expect an increase
in park uses that people are willing to pay for.29 It has also been
suggested that the user fee is a more equitable allocative device
because it eliminates cross-subsidies within a given community or by
one community of nonresidents.30
User fees in public parks (and in privately owned parks, as will be
discussed later) are feasible only if nonusers can be excluded from
users. It is one thing to define property rights in a park;31 it is
quite another to transfer those property rights to fee-paying
consumers. It is essential that property rights in the parks be
defined, transferred, and enforced because it is by the alleged
inability to exclude nonusers that public control and the avoidance of
user fees can be justified, if at all.32
In most national parks and in some municipal parks, entrance by users
is monitored, and very low fees are charged for entry. In most
municipal parks, entry is not monitored, and the cost of entry is zero.
This does not mean that monitoring could not occur. For most parks,
particularly those in wilderness areas and those urban parks with few
entrances on public roads and city streets, the transaction costs of
monitoring and charging for entry are low enough that exclusion of
nonusers is feasible.
To be sure, in a few cases the exclusion of nonusers may not be
feasible because of multiple access. City parks with multiple entrances
on public streets present particularly difficult problems.33 Should the
imposition of user charges for these city parks require the closing of
intersecting streets in order to preclude free riders and reduce the
transaction costs of monitoring entry, one could expect inconvenienced
motorists to join subsidized recreationists in opposition to the
proposal. Similarly, merchants dependent on walk-in patronage attracted
by the suboptimal pricing of nearby public parks would also object.
Although exclusion of nonusers is usually feasible and one is able to
demonstrate the benefits resulting from equilibrium pricing,
market-clearing prices are rarely, if ever, charged for access to
public parks. Why are the prices so low? This suboptimal pricing is in
large part attributable to the incentives of political entrepreneurs to
subsidize voters who consume recreation. Under federal law, for
example, the fees charged for access to the national parks must be
"fair and equitable."34 It is not surprising to discover that this
means that the prices charged are very low. Any realistic approach to
reform must grapple with this strong sense of entitlement.
Up to now the discussion has focused on reform within a context of
state ownership. It was assumed that the state would retain title to
the land and that reform would be aimed at encouraging prosperity-based
volunteerism, improving the efficiency with which public funds were
expended for supporting services, and enhancing the environment by
rationing access through user fees. While these reforms are certainly
desirable, they do not address the fundamental question of how best to
structure the ownership of the parks in order to preserve their natural
beauty.
Private Ownership Considered
Who should own the public parks? At present the parks belong to "the
people." Although at first glance this is a rhetorically reassuring
notion, it cannot withstand analysis. The public parks "belong" to
those persons who use them, and that is only some of "the people."35 It
need not be this way. The parks may be privately owned as, indeed, many
recreation areas already are. Existing public parks could either be
given away or sold to the highest bidder.36
What would be the consequences of such a transfer of title?37 At the
outset one should recognize that privately owned parks charging
admission fees face the same problem of exclusion of nonusers as would
a public park. Similarly, however, the transaction costs of excluding
nonusers are usually low enough that private admission fees are
feasible. Assuming that one successfully crosses the transaction-cost
hurdle, the benefits of freely transferable property rights in private
parks would be quite similar to those discussed earlier in a context of
charging market-clearing user fees. By forcing the consumer of park
amenities to pay directly for indulging his preferences, free exchange
would introduce important economizing incentives on the consumption of
recreation. Because demand curves do slope downward, private parks
would avoid major problems of overcrowding and degradation, and the
private firms operating the parks would have every incentive to
preserve their beauty in order to attract customers. The payment of
admission fees would generate information on consumer willingness to
pay for park services, and those park services that were preferred
would be provided.
Privatization of the ownership of public parks would, however, have
consequences that go far beyond those resulting from the mere charging
of market-clearing user fees.38 Government would have shed its
responsibilities entirely and would no longer be in the park business.
If the parks were given away, the recipients would receive a revenue
windfall when they, in turn, sold their land. If the parks were sold to
the highest bidder, the government would enjoy the revenue windfall. In
addition, because private firms respond to consumer preference, the
parks would become much more diverse as each entrepreneur sought to
satisfy as yet unmet consumer willingness to pay. Individual liberty
would also be enhanced because the provision of private parks would
rest on the consent of the contracting parties.
Given the response of private parks to consumer preference, what kind
of parks would consumers prefer and be willing to pay for? Some newly
privatized parks, particularly those in or near urban areas, would
undoubtedly be redeveloped for mass recreation. Some urban parks might
even cease to be parks at all because recreationists might not be
willing to pay enough to bid away the land from alternative uses. On
the other hand, much park land would remain untouched because of the
willingness of consumers to pay for access to wilderness. While the
precise allocations must admittedly be unknown because of the
prevailing suspension of the market mechanism, the probable general
trends are predictable.
<snip>
|
- Privatization 
