This 58-year-old libertarian will give you an earful...

[yankees60]

With the hotel industry devastated, entrepreneur Warren Meyer's 6,000 campsites and mastery of wrestling government bureaucracy have become a winning formula for beating the pandemic.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/baldwin/20 ... 0ec5064837


I envision many here enjoying / appreciating the above article.

Some excerpts:

"Ask Meyer what magic he works to turn a government money-loser into a private sector money-maker and this 58-year-old libertarian will give you an earful. It boils down to this: A for-profit concessionaire is motivated to make an operation more efficient. A government agency is motivated to make it less efficient. In the government, he says, “pay and prestige are based on size and staffing.”

A government parks department hires environmental science graduates who collect full-time salaries and costly benefits. With rare exceptions, RRM hires retirees who live in their own RVs at a campground. A lot of them are couples who split up the chores. Most of them are on Medicare. They work part-time and start at minimum wage.

Worker exploitation? Maybe not. Most of the 400 workers return for the next season. Meyer gets 5,000 applicants for the 50 to 100 vacancies.

It was spluttering about left-wing economics that got Meyer ensnared in park management. Not quite two decades ago he published a blog post about privatizing government services. A reader who owned a park concession company wanted to know if Meyer had the courage of his convictions. Buy me out! Meyer did."



"RRM took over a park in California suffering from a serious case of deferred maintenance. Government inspectors came in and condemned a deck with rotting wood. Meyer obediently had the deck removed. Then he was cited for removing the deck without a deck removal permit. “I thought I was going to jail,” he says.

He escaped that contretemps, only to get in trouble with California authorities again for putting a kiosk on a parking area. The offense: failing to do a soil analysis. To satisfy the bureaucrats, RRM had the asphalt cut open, took a soil sample, then replaced the asphalt.

Ferocious lawyers lurk everywhere, especially in California. A state law mandates a half-hour unpaid lunch break. Some workers there asked Meyer, in writing, for permission to work through their break so they could earn an extra half-hour of pay. He agreed. Then a lawyer showed up with demands for damages. The arrangement was invalid because there has to be a separate lunch document for each day rather than one document for all the days. Gotcha! Meyer settled the case."

[I Shrugged]

Good article.

[yankees60]

Good article.

Seems like he IS "fighting city hall" AND winning?

VInny

[Libertarian666]

Good article.

Seems like he IS "fighting city hall" AND winning?

VInny

Why should it be necessary to do that? What is the advantage to all the red tape he has to fight?
All the energy he has to expend on those tasks is energy that could be used for something productive.

[yankees60]

Good article.

Seems like he IS "fighting city hall" AND winning?

VInny

Why should it be necessary to do that? What is the advantage to all the red tape he has to fight?
All the energy he has to expend on those tasks is energy that could be used for something productive.

Agree. Just pointing out that he's one of the few actually able to fight City Hall AND win.

Vinny

[Libertarian666]

Good article.

Seems like he IS "fighting city hall" AND winning?

VInny

Why should it be necessary to do that? What is the advantage to all the red tape he has to fight?
All the energy he has to expend on those tasks is energy that could be used for something productive.

Agree. Just pointing out that he's one of the few actually able to fight City Hall AND win.

Vinny

+1