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I do find it ridiculous that hikers are allowed to attempt the climb, and that if they die on the climb their bodies are allowed to litter the landscape forever
by navidvulo 9y ago
I do find it ridiculous that hikers are allowed to attempt the climb, and that if they die on the climb their bodies are allowed to litter the landscape forever.
When you attempt a climb, it should be required that you pay a deposit that will pay for 1) removal of all trash left by you assuming that everything you carry becomes trash and 2) recovery and removal of your body in case you die on the climb.
Since mostly wealthy people do these climbs it shouldn't be a problem at all.
- mcguire 9y agoThe trash certainly, but I think there is something appropriate about having to step over bodies on the way.
- jessaustin 9y agoYour proposal is basically that on the event of a rich person's death, several poor people should risk their own lives to commemorate the way that he died. Is anyone surprised that isn't how it works?
- obstinate 9y agoI don't think the grandparent poster is suggesting that the sherpas be forced to recover the body. If you read the article, it makes it clear that in practice, several poor people already are cleaning up after the rich people who have climbed the mountain. It is already possible to buy repatriation insurance, according to the article. I don't think gp's suggestion that climbers be required to buy that insurance is unreasonable.
- alanfalcon 9y agoShould the Sherpas be forced to buy insurance as well? What about the ones going on these dangerous recovery runs?
- obstinate 9y agoI don't know. It's kind of beside the point of rich foreigners coming and littering up the mountain. Probably it should be required that their employers buy insurance on their behalf. In fact, they went on strike for something like this after the avalanche in 2014. But, yeah, fundamentally it's probably best for anyone who is going up to make or have made for them provisions to ensure they come down again, one way or the other.
- weberc2 9y agoEmployer insurance. This cost would be passed to the customer necessarily.
- louithethrid 9y agoIf a sherpa detects a foreigner wont make it to the top, shoots him and returns with the equpiment- would the church of economics and the great magus consider that a blessed act?
- mikeash 9y agoPoor people are already "required" (i.e. paid enough money to do it willingly) to risk their lives helping rich people get up and down the mountain. This doesn't seem substantially different.
- nradov 9y agoHauling a heavy dead body down the mountain is a lot tougher and more dangerous than carrying some extra oxygen bottles and food. In the death zone the porters are already working at the outer limit of human performance.
- webtechgal 9y agoThis. Never actually been in the death zone - my highest has been just under 7km, but it was hard enough carrying my own stuff up and down.
- jessaustin 9y agoThat's a neat trick, quoting a word that would have made the parent comment unreasonable, as if the parent comment had actually used that word...
- malandrew 9y agoHe's proposing that they put up the money for there to be an offer that is sufficiently attractive that the market will solve the problem. No one needs to be forced. They can take the offer to remove the body if they think offer is attractive.
- c0nducktr 9y agoYeah the market solves the problem by sending poor people to risk their own lives to commemorate the way the first person died. Just because The Market is making it happen doesn't make it any less detestable.
- weberc2 9y agoI guess that depends on whether you think a choice between poverty and dangerous work is worse or better than poverty without a choice. Personally, I'm not a fan of slavery or poverty, so I tend to prefer market-based solutions to problems.
- bicubic 9y agoAh yes, The Market. Everything is okay if it's dictated by The Market, right? Child slavery in the coffee industry? That's cool, working exactly as The Market should be, quite efficient even. Sex trafficking? The Market. Fucking up the planetary environment to the point where it may no longer be hospitable to human life in a few hundred years? Don't worry, that's The Market. No one needs to be forced, you just apply huge wealth differentials and get poor people to submit to slavery and life threatening circumstances like recovering rich people bodies from mountains willingly.
- weberc2 9y agoI don't know why people are so reflexively bitter when anyone mentions the market. No one in this conversation is claiming that the market solves all problems. Capitalism isn't perfect, but it's a whole lot better than the alternatives, and we can admit as much without committing ourselves to any ideological platform.