Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism • Hacker News Board

Re: Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

#131

Post by tptacek » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 6:06 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #126

frereubu wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a side note, I wish people would stop prefacing their comments with "At the risk of being downvoted..." or "Unpopular opinion here, but..." Just state your point as clearly as you can and allow your arguments to stand or fall on their own. One of the things which drew me to HN was the lack of this kind of language, and I feel like I've seen more and more of it recently.

I wonder if we should add a guideline about that, a la: Please don't comment about your own comment ('unpopular opinion here', etc). It's noise and it's boring.

We already have a guideline against talking about voting. "Unpopular opinion but here goes" or "spicy take here but" is just normal human conversation, and it doesn't actually add much noise; sometimes it's even a little useful. I wouldn't crud up the guidelines with this, but maybe refine the "commenting about voting" guideline.

Re: Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

#132

Post by athriren » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 6:06 PM UTC

dang wrote: post #126

frereubu wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a side note, I wish people would stop prefacing their comments with "At the risk of being downvoted..." or "Unpopular opinion here, but..." Just state your point as clearly as you can and allow your arguments to stand or fall on their own. One of the things which drew me to HN was the lack of this kind of language, and I feel like I've seen more and more of it recently.

I wonder if we should add a guideline about that, a la: Please don't comment about your own comment ('unpopular opinion here', etc). It's noise and it's boring.

I would appreciate such a guideline.

Re: Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

#133

Post by scarejunba » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 6:07 PM UTC

cletus wrote: post #55

Welcome to the world of, by some measures, "too many" people having too much disposable wealth. There are obviously worse problems to have. But overtourism is a problem that's only going to get worse. This even affects Mount Everest where people are literally dying just to say they stood at the top of the world. And Everest simply can't support the number of climbers now. You see this in US national parks where the o…

Why not just auction? That way you don’t have the misallocation of quotas without auctions, the uncertainty of lotteries, or the deadweight loss of incorrect price choosing. Pick a number the trail can handle, auction tickets.

Re: Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

#134

Post by scarejunba » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 6:09 PM UTC

vageli wrote: post #94

Scoundreller wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe if the source countries of the tourists could realize that if they liberalized their own country, their citizens wouldn’t dream of leaving so much just to walk around high. But I have my doubts.

> Maybe if the source countries of the tourists could realize that if they liberalized their own country, their citizens wouldn’t dream of leaving so much just to walk around high. Are you implying that no tourists visit Amsterdam from such liberal places, or that the only reason people go to Amsterdam is for drug tourism? Or something else?

California has legalized marijuana but if you visit Amsterdam you’ll see hella Californians. I think, in general, folks visit Amsterdam for lots of reasons. It’s kind of a well known city, and once one of the big cities of a massive empire.

Re: Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

#135

Post by dymk » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 6:10 PM UTC

atq2119 wrote: post #101

brainwad wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rationing is not a very fair way to distribute goods or services to people. Some people may value it just enough to pay the entry fee, while others might value it a lot more, but now they have the same chances of receiving it. If you prohibit people from on-selling their tickets, then you also causes losses when people change their minds but are already locked in by the lottery.

This kind of argument only works if everybody has the same amount of money (or other tokens) to spend. In the real world, market prices for this kind of thing simply select for rich people, not for who values the experience the most.

The value of something (especially a luxury like travel) is literally how much you'd be willing to spend on it.

Re: Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

#136

Post by StavrosK » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 6:11 PM UTC

Grue3 wrote: post #84

Scoundreller wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think of it as “Only rich people used to be able to come here, but now people of more moderate means can, oh noes”.

Alternatively, "only white people used to be able to come here".

This is a useless comment because it takes a wealth issue and tries to turn it into a racial issue. There are poor white people who couldn't go and rich black people who could go, so it's not even apt to say.

Not everything needs to be a matter of race, especially outside the US.

Re: Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

#137

Post by luckylion » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

PeterStuer wrote: post #71

bjornsing wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea it’s a funny word “overtourism”. I guess it’s what you call it when other people go on vacation (whereas when I go on vacation it’s just “tourism”). :P

Dosage matters. Many things that are completely destructive or toxic are not a problem and even beneficial and enriching in small dosage. Tourism is most definitely one of those things. Typically it benefits a very few in the host location while externalizing the destruction of the culture, the environment and the quality of life for the many that have these places as their home. So it is not about 'you' vs 'the othe…

> It is about the quantity of people exceeding what is a healthy balance.

As it is everywhere. If two people don't pay taxes, society functions just normally. If everybody doesn't pay taxes, there is no funding for even the most basic programs. When the argument is "a bit is fine, just not too much", the second part of the argument should always be "and here's how we determine who gets to enjoy it and who is forbidden from enjoying it".

Re: Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

#138

Post by nitwit005 » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 6:19 PM UTC

wellactually wrote: post #9

mytailorisrich wrote: post #3

There's no silver bullet. Tackling overtourism means limiting the number of tourists. One way to do that is to impose high enough prices.

Another way would be to charge a modest lottery entrance fee and limit the number of winners to a sensible quota.

Aside from the fairly large costs involved in running multiple large international lotteries, you'd have to build checkpoints around massive areas, stop people from buying tickets off of the winners somehow, deal with the corruption issues, and other exciting unintended side effects.

All because a tax on a luxury (which tourism certainly is), wasn't fair enough.

Re: Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

#139

Post by atq2119 » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 6:19 PM UTC

dymk wrote: post #135

atq2119 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of argument only works if everybody has the same amount of money (or other tokens) to spend. In the real world, market prices for this kind of thing simply select for rich people, not for who values the experience the most.

The value of something (especially a luxury like travel) is literally how much you'd be willing to spend on it.

"Value" is an extremely overloaded word. Even within the narrow universe of money, economics, and finance, there are many different notions of value (e.g. market value, book value, replacement value). More broadly, what most people intuitively understand as value is independent of money and hard to quantify, but that doesn't make it less important.

I do appreciate that people want to make something as important as value quantifiable, but like all measurements there are pitfalls, and I merely pointed out a rather important pitfall when attempting to measure value using money.

Re: Norway's Bold Plan to Tackle Overtourism

#140

Post by magduf » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 6:20 PM UTC

skohan wrote: post #109

graeme wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at it this way: why is the desire of today's middle class to travel by air more important than the survival of civilization tomorrow? Travel imposes heavy costs on the world, in its current carbon based form. It's only affordable because we pass these costs on to the future.

It's not just the desire to travel by air, it's the economics. When I first moved to Germany I looked into doing a few trips by train, but the flights were much cheaper.

That definitely sounds like a failure of regulation. Taxes should be levied, and probably also subsidies put in place (from those taxes), so that train travel is cheaper than air travel. Train travel doesn't require nearly as much energy as air travel, per passenger.