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Comment by greiskul | Hacker News Reader

If all the money goes to the park, none is going to the poor people. Seems like you are advocating for a system where rich people get to go to public parks, and poor people get nothing.

And if you are doing a raffle for park tickets, you are not deciding to "help them in the form of tickets" for them. They signed up for the tickets. They want to go to the park. Is it a bad idea to allow poor people that want to access a park to have a chance of doing so?

And auctions are a way of optimizing pricing of stuff. But not everything in life is about money. For instance, organ donation recipients. Do you think an auction system for organs would be a better world than the existing systems? Should we just give the poor people that wouldn't be able to afford an auction for an organ some money, and then let them die?

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> If all the money goes to the park, none is going to the poor people. Seems like you are advocating for a system where rich people get to go to public parks, and poor people get nothing.

I don't understand. It seems like you are suggesting mixing up your welfare system with your park system?

I suggest: have one system that gives poor people money. And have another different system to run the parks.

> Do you think an auction system for organs would be a better world than the existing systems?

Yes, vastly superior. Thanks for bringing this up.

See eg https://www.econlib.org/archives/2014/06/the_fungible_ki.htm... ro https://www.econtalk.org/tina-rosenberg-on-the-kidney-market... or https://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2012/SheltonMcKenzi... or https://www.econlib.org/archives/2003/03/organ_transplan.htm...

>If all the money goes to the park, none is going to the poor people. Seems like you are advocating for a system where rich people get to go to public parks, and poor people get nothing.

Poor people weren't going to enter a lottery for the chance to visit a park anyway. At least this plan gives all the money to the park.

Those lotteries generally do have a relatively high likelihood of getting you a spot. Paying $10 for a fifty percent chance of a permit vs. paying $100 in an auction does make a difference.

I really don’t understand where your claim that poor people wouldn’t enter the lottery is coming from. That seems like a nonsensical conclusion to me.

To me a lottery seems like the perfect solution, it‘s just that some of the current implementation details suck.

The fee to enter should be quite low, its only function to reduce gambling the system (besides having policies in place that also do that). It should not be possible to enter multiple times.

The service provider of the lottery should not be paid proportional or in relation to how many people enter the lottery. At least not in any kind of directly coupled way. All income from the lottery should first go to the parks and then they pay the service provider from that income.

And that‘s the problem solved.

Lotteries are fair, at least if you can’t enter multiple times and if the chance of getting a permit is still somewhat decent.

> Those lotteries generally do have a relatively high likelihood of getting you a spot. Paying $10 for a fifty percent chance of a permit vs. paying $100 in an auction does make a difference.

What makes you think that the auction price would go up to $100?

Assuming they sell raffle tickets to all comers, but they have a limited, fixed number of winners per day that gain entry; then I would assume that world where a $10 ticket give you a 50% chance of entry is a world where the auction clearing price would be roughly $20.

The kind of lottery you describe (where you can enter multiple times) is basically equivalent to an auction. Just more complicated and less predictable.

> Poor people weren't going to enter a lottery for the chance to visit a park anyway.

What? Poor people like to take vacations also and national parks were traditionally a rather cheap way to do so.

Theres also a lot of poor folks who's purpose in life is literally visiting those parks. Recreation.gov owns big wall climbing permits for Yosemite for instance and a significant number of young dirt bag climbers that live in their cars in order to climb full time and are very definitely poor apply for those every year.

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