5 ms·

They were complaining the enforcement was what was expensive... "It cost the city tens of thousands of dollars in additional law enforcement."

• dragonwriter 9y ago
  Government doesn't have a right to cheap enforcement that trumps rights held by the people, like those protected by the First Amendment.
  • Sleeep 9y ago
    Yeah, I totally agree with you. I was just pointing out that "enforcing rules against littering, using parks after hours, etc." isn't the solution to them, they see it as the problem.
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
• barsonme 9y ago
  I don't quite understand the issue. It's the government's job to keep up public infrastructure regardless of how heavily it's used—that's something the left _and_ right can agree on.
  • minikites 9y ago
    The right does their best to cut government revenue via lower taxes, so how do you propose maintaining infrastructure with less income?
    • syshum 9y ago
      Make people that use the resources pay for them. the national parks are almost fully funded by the people that visit them. I do not use any of the Local Parks, I do not pay Pokemon Go, I do not have a use for either People that use the parks should pay for them, then if there is an increase in activity from something like Pokemon Go that means Revenue also increases to pay for the increased costs to maintain the asset.
      • ecnahc515 9y ago
        Unfortunately, if parks were mostly paid by the people using them, we would have no parks. Most people won't pay to use a park, and would instead just no go. Additionally, it's often extremely difficult to force people to pay to use your park. It's different with national parks which people travel to for the sole purpose of going to the park, but local parks, lakes, etc will have a much more difficult time making people pay for it.
        • tostitos1979 9y ago
          You should check out the parks/beaches in some towns in Westchester and CT (e.g. around Greenwich). It is a disgrace that they have people sitting there enforcing access (e.g. residency).
        • syshum 9y ago
          >>Unfortunately, if parks were mostly paid by the people using them, we would have no parks. I am fine with that, it is not ethical to take money from people by force to pay for things like this, if their was value in the community for a park then the community would find a way to voluntarily pay for it, if there are not enough voluntary support in the community to fund the park then the park should not exist
          • SerLava 9y ago
            Ugh, it's a park... relax.
      • dragonwriter 9y ago
        > the national parks are almost fully funded by the people that visit them. Even if that were true, National parks are big, which means the additional space taken up by toll collection infrastructure at parking areas (and the staff to man them) aren't a big deal, and they present lots of needs for people to stop and buy things which creates concession opportunities. This is significantly less true of most (but not all) local parks. But, anyway, even National Parks funding comes mostly from appropriated funds; fees (both directly from visitors and commercial services) are on the order of a couple hundred million of the single-digit billion dollar annual parks spendibf. And even that amount actually spent doesn't meet upkeep needs; the National Parks have deferred maintenance costs on the order of four times the annual budget.
    • dragonwriter 9y ago
      A common method supported by the right (especially the libertarian right) is to sell off the (non-defense, non-law-enforcement) infrastructure, so that it is no longer a public thing that government needs to maintain.
    • barsonme 9y ago
      Sure, and the left just takes that money and spends it on "entitlements" (quotes used on purpose). We could play this game for days if you wanted.
      • minikites 9y ago
        I specifically omitted my own value judgement so it's amusing to see value judgements projected upon me via downvotes and snarky comments. If you think a neutral restatement of commonly trumpeted goals and their direct outcomes is a political jab then I think it says more about you than it does about me.
        • barsonme 9y ago
          Judgement does not need to be blatant in a statement for it to have been cast. At any rate, I think my response was sufficient in that I don't really care which party has control of the pocketbook, they both have an obligation to spend money on infrastructure and they both find ways not to, even if it's a common goal.