Its uplifiting but shouldn’t we value these things as a society and fund it accordingly? I hear we are a rich nation. Instead we depend on the charity of some rich guy who wanted to take care of his own daughter.
I hear we are a rich nation.
By “we”, do you mean the US? (I’m guessing based on the dad here living in a US state.)
My impression is that US billionaires and large corporations are rich, but most US residents and social benefit programs are not.
large corporations are rich, but most US residents and social benefit programs are not.
That all depends on what you classify as rich.
Certainly: median income isn’t amazingly rich, around here half of households have an income of $75,000 per year, or less. Not a lot when houses cost $300,000 and up.
The social benefits programs are very blurry- people who pay a lot in to social security take a lot out - if you were never fortunate enough to have a high paying job, you don’t get much.
Large corporations, by definition, flow a lot of money - some enrich their shareholders more than others.
All told, the real problem with the US is that income inequality has been going in the wrong direction (greater) for decades.
No public water parks please. Let’s get good universal healthcare, universal basic income, better education and job security for special needs folks. Then they can decide if they want to spend their money on a water park, or maybe skydiving for those who hate water, or a trip to Spain. You know, actual functioning capitalism. The safety net should be set to thrive, not survive.
This charitable water park actually fits right into this vision. I have no problem with it.
Can we have proper social safety nets and still have people with 51m dollars to spend on having fun?
I believe absolutely yes. $50 million is a lot but it’s not a ridiculous, grotesque amount of dynastic wealth. It’s the cusp of ultra wealth. It could be earned through hard work, though unlikely. And with a safety net those who have it could more comfortably give it all away. Anything more than about $100m is disgusting to me. Musk is worth 10,000x the water park. We need to give him the French treatment.
Sweden and Norway have more millionaires per capita than the USA. So I’d imagine having a safety net will increase the number of charity water parks.
What are you sone kind of filthy socialist?? I suppose you think we should fund schools and libraries too??? Disgusting. Round here we fund the military and billionaires
Most people do value these things, they just don’t have the political power to enact them.
The people who do have that level of power see it as a move that wouldn’t help them, and would hinder their political goals in other areas (they don’t have an infinite budget, and they have people to pay or whom they owe favours).
…and those who have this sort of money to burn, only got that money by being tight fisted and ruthless, so lost the mental agility and empathy to do this sort of thing.
But yes, the majority of poor, tired, politically disempowered people do support this sort of thing… Then a swath of them think “but I could never go to such a place, too many wheelchairs and gross children” and another group thinks “Don’t we have better things to spend money on,? Local parks, drunk driving issues, business relief”… So it becomes a question of a whole hierarchy of values.
Different values win under different political, cultural, and structural systems, with different inputs, and most of the time “supporting the values” doesn’t necessarily mean supporting the pragmatics - let alone adopting the role of someone actually driving and pushing every day to get this sort of project funded, supported, known about, popularised, paid for, and then built, run, and maintained.
So is that you? OR - do you - like most people - “value” these sorts of things on an esoteric, personal level… But you’re mired in other states of being still.
There’s meaning, then there’s meaningful. We all mean well, but few of us are capable of meaningful actions on this scale.
So the question either needs this sort of understanding automatically (so everyone knows the pragmatics), or to be turned on the person asking? Don’t you? Where’s your meaningful action?
It’s probably down here with the rest of us, which is what makes it uplifting when one person manages to have the skills and opportunities to put themselves in a position where they can step up, and they actually do something.
A rich country with poverty enforced on its people, the wealthy is only for a small select few. Which is why you don’t have healthcare and worker rights and everyone can afford to have a house, food and family. The presence of a rich guy that can spend this amount of a theme park says it all about the inequality in our societies, while other people starve to death he is making fun rides. Its a failure of many successive elections, the electorate is at fault.
The presence of a rich guy that can spend this amount of a theme park says it all about the inequality in our societies, while other people starve to death he is making fun rides
That’s a bad faith argument.
So ok say he donated all his money to feed starving people.
Why did he spend his money on those starving people and not these starving people?
Why did he spend money on starving people when these people over here are being genocided?
He saw his daughter having a shitty quality of life and decided to make a safe space for her and others like her.
Its the Bushy “Thousand Points of Light” bullshit. Sure, there are a thousand points of light, in a country of three hundred million with five percent with serious needs of some kind or another.
We should, but it’s also nice to hear about the people with money who aren’t complete assholes and actually do good things with their money.
It’s honestly weird to me to think how many don’t, as it has been shown that doing good deeds for others can result in a fairly strong dopamine reaction. Like why wouldn’t you want to get high by doing nice shit for others?
I get what you’re saying, but it’s an amusement park. It’s a nice thing, but it’s not exactly the first thing I’d spend tax income on.
I was thinking more along the lines of “oh hey you’re building a water park, cool! By law it must be handicap accessible so please make a section easily accessible and here is a $1mil grant to make that possible, show us your plans before we issue the permit”. This feels fairy reasonable.
Short of the grant part, isn’t that basically what the ADA does?
The ADA is toothless right now.
Oklahoma City Police and the state were found to be in violation of the ADA by using police to respond to mental health crises, inappropriately imprisoning and institutionalizing people with mental health disorders.
After Cheeto Mussolini got into office, he ended the investigation and there are no plans for meaningful change. I doubt that any ADA issues are currently investigated.
Should do, yep, but obviously not well if dudes getting PR for doing it privately.
Still, it’s a niche amusement park. Not really the purview of the government.
I had to be sure that it exists.
It does and it’s pretty awesome! I’ve taken my niece and nephews there on more than one occasion and we’ve road tripped with friends who have kids with ASD.
My city has a large number of billionaires. My city also has 20 schools without air conditioning. I always wonder how monstrous you have to be, to know that there are children in your city who are roasting at school, and you don’t get off your billionaire ass and start calling up hvac companies to get that shit going. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night knowing I have all that money and people need it
Wikipedia: In 2005, Hartman sold his homebuilding business to establish The Gordon Hartman Family Foundation so he and his wife, Maggie, could aid children and adults with special needs.
Seems like this is not a wealthy billionaire or millionaire, but instead a hard-working guy who risked everything to help his daughter.
And my dad didn’t even care enough to buy toothpaste.
Hey at least he stuck around.
eh, yeah, this is pretty fantastic. thanks for sharing!
Molly Burke, a blind YouTuber, did a video on it recently.
I opened the comments hoping to get some better context on the park itself. I’m looking forward to watching this, it’s exactly what I wanted so thank you.
Seen this place posted countless times. I will upvote it every time.
Same, but I feel it’s spam at this point and am blocking the community for it.
Many people haven’t heard of it and like it being reposted. When people are tired they’ll naturally downvote this to oblivion.
Thanks for letting me know, I’ll be sure to create a new account every once in a while to make sure it does get posted so people see something happy in these horrible times spam or no.
It’s refreshing to see actually uplifting news here for a change. Thank you. ;)
