<story><title>Why is Booz Allen renting us back our own national parks?</title><url>https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/why-is-booz-allen-renting-us-back</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hcurtiss</author><text>Man, I may be in the minority here, but I find recreation.gov to be one of the very few &lt;i&gt;excellent&lt;/i&gt; government websites.  We use it every summer for whitewater rafting and camping reservations.  You can disagree with how permits&amp;#x2F;reservations are offered (e.g., lottery, first-come, etc.), but none of those decisions are made by BAH.  They were given a task and, unlike so many government contractors, did it very well and relatively rapidly.  The fee structure can be changed, but whatever the magic was, I wish it were repeated throughout government at every level.&lt;p&gt;I think the biggest issue with recreation.gov is that so very many people are desperate to use public lands.  Population levels in the western US have exploded in the last twenty years and we&amp;#x27;ve developed almost &lt;i&gt;no&lt;/i&gt; additional recreation opportunities.  For so long as that&amp;#x27;s true, the scarcity and price problems are only going to increase.  But at least we have a well-functioning website with which to tackle the problem.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Aunche</author><text>&amp;gt; Population levels in the western US have exploded in the last twenty years and we&amp;#x27;ve developed almost no additional recreation opportunities.&lt;p&gt;There are &lt;i&gt;a lot&lt;/i&gt; of great places for hiking and camping. The problem is that everyone wants to go to &amp;quot;the best&amp;quot; places, so you end up with a lot of people competing for a permit for Mt. Whitney rather than go for a similar alternative like Mt. Langley.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why is Booz Allen renting us back our own national parks?</title><url>https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/why-is-booz-allen-renting-us-back</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>hcurtiss</author><text>Man, I may be in the minority here, but I find recreation.gov to be one of the very few &lt;i&gt;excellent&lt;/i&gt; government websites.  We use it every summer for whitewater rafting and camping reservations.  You can disagree with how permits&amp;#x2F;reservations are offered (e.g., lottery, first-come, etc.), but none of those decisions are made by BAH.  They were given a task and, unlike so many government contractors, did it very well and relatively rapidly.  The fee structure can be changed, but whatever the magic was, I wish it were repeated throughout government at every level.&lt;p&gt;I think the biggest issue with recreation.gov is that so very many people are desperate to use public lands.  Population levels in the western US have exploded in the last twenty years and we&amp;#x27;ve developed almost &lt;i&gt;no&lt;/i&gt; additional recreation opportunities.  For so long as that&amp;#x27;s true, the scarcity and price problems are only going to increase.  But at least we have a well-functioning website with which to tackle the problem.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>prescriptivist</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m glad it works for you but man I am peeved that they instituted it in the katahdin woods and waters national monument area of the east branch of the penobscot in maine. People have been just heading down that waterway on trips since time immemorial and it&amp;#x27;s generally not a problem finding a site, but if it&amp;#x27;s particularly busy you would pull up and ask someone if they don&amp;#x27;t mind sharing. I&amp;#x27;ve never turned a person down and I never will, but also I&amp;#x27;ve never paid for a campsite on a river. I feel like paying to book a site just changes the dynamic of a shared waterway so much.</text></comment>