>>1989828I mean, at least in my state when I was working at one, that financial gripe isn't true - we had a lot of equipment which was 5-10 years old and couldn't get the budget for more.
Most of those ideas that you disagree with aren't the fault of the employees, but rather people higher up who they've never even met. There's tons of good reasons for telling people what they can and can't do, and I'm sure that 90% of the people know better yeah, but 10% of them really do need the ordering. How do you differentiate those groups of people on appearance alone? You can't - so, for better or worse, gotta treat them all equal and yell at everyone.
You are right that there's a lot that can be done better, and it slowly is as the sciences progress; fire suppression is almost public knowledge now to be terrible for hardwood forests, but it wasn't public (policy?) to consider that for a long time.
And I can't speak for half of all Americans, but I would wager that a good portion (not all) of the people living paycheck to paycheck are bad with money or are struggling with substance abuse problems. You can definitely take issue with the poverty problem in the United States, how people aren't taught money management in school, or how those with substance addictions often don't get the help they need, but taking it out on parks and park staff isn't the hill to die on for any of that. Those people usually make minimum wage themselves and the ones who make more than that (rangers etc) aren't exactly millionaires either.
$10 really isn't THAT big of a deal.
