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Comment by jtbayly | Hacker News Reader

> campsites having no online presence at all.

I don't think this was an improvement. It has led to fewer people being able to use the campsites, as they are easily and cheaply reserved. Thus, people who have plenty of money to spare reserve them on the off-chance of wanting to use it that day. But when that day comes, they don't show up.

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Sounds like the solution to that is just a large deposit that’s refundable upon arrival?

Doesn’t that still just favor people with more money? If you’re tight on money you won’t be able to afford the deposit. And if you’re really rich you still don’t care about the deposit.

Also in many places the camping fee itself is already steep.

Correct it doesn’t equalize the richest to the poorest, but it does equalize much more of the in-between, where surely the vast majority of this issue lives.

In general it seems with runaway wealth inequality we need an easy way to set fees and fines as a % of ability-to-pay (i.e. equalized pain-of-payment). We also need this for parking and traffic violations, for example.

Yep. Personally seen people book two weeks for the off chance they might go for one of those days.

Unless they're doing individual daily reservations, it doesn't work like that. You forfeit the entire reservation if you don't arrive on the start date, but you can always depart early.

You can edit your reservation, which means you can book two weeks, then change it so you only use the last three days of July 3,4,5 (for example). This means that by the time reservations open for July 3, all the spots are taken.

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