Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

We'll perhaps visit them at the zoo.



Oh, good, so when that happens they'll be making some flimsy claims about conservation and combating climate change to justify creating a poor imitation of Jurassic Park that wealthy and middle class people can visit.


I think people are conflating (fiction writer) Michael Crichton's claims of Jurassic Park being for the wealthy and well-connected with the real-world economics of a zoo.


Can you elaborate?


As people have noted in other threads: Zoos, generally, maximize revenue (and community value, which is its own ineffable thing that matters a lot... The economics of zoos aren't just in dollars and cents, they're also in the local community thinking of them as a shelter, care space, and opportunity to see exotic animals without going to another continent and not, say, an animal-prison and a blight on the community, the kind of opinions that matter when zoos need more land to operate or want to form research or educational partnerships with neighboring institutions) by being a place the public can afford to go.

As far as I can tell, the idea of a dinosaur zoo as an exotic locale on its own island is... Pretty much a whole-cloth invention by Michael Chrichton. Based loosely on Disney, and even Disney's first two theme parks are places a public can drive to (and Disney works hard to keep prices down against the onslaught of the supply-demand curve of "very few parks that everyone wants to go to at least once in their lives"). It's an idea very detached from reality and I'm pretty sure it was a plot device to make sure our characters were trapped on the island instead of being able to just walk to the gate and drive away.


True philantropists it seems.

(Never mind, that they never conserved anything)


"HN is 90% someone imagining a guy, tricking themselves into believing that guy exists and then getting mad about it"




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: