There's a very long thread on CoasterBuzz about cutting hours at various parks, with the opposition saying it's about bad greedy companies sticking it to their customers. It's a pretty good debate, and relatively civil. I deflected some of the personal attacks and it seems to be staying on track.
As much as I'm a tree hugging, peace loving, gay marriage approving liberal, I tend to be more business minded than I like to admit. Despite never having a true passion for business, I'd like to think I understand it better than most people. I weaseled some Brits out of a $100k for a stupid domain name, and made my hobby pay bills (or at least, afford me very cool media creation toys like cameras and computers).
Coaster enthusiasts are an interesting lot, and generally I think it's great that they're so into their hobby. I get that way myself in streaks, though it's only one of the things that I really get passionate about. But the community also has a bit of a Utopian view about the way things should be. Not only is the idea of parks being businesses somewhat foreign, they are frequently unrealistic.
Just in the last day, I recall seeing posts about how one park "deserves" a certain ride because it's "fair." Then there's the whole feasibility thing, whether it be the survival of Conneaut Lake or a Disney park in the middle of nowhere. These are a few of many frequent examples that demonstrate a lack of understanding about how a business fundamentally operates. Now granted, I'm sure some of those posts are by kids, who probably wouldn't know any better, but even then, that seems reason enough for concern.
I'm not an investment banker or anything, but you need some fundamental understanding of the way capitalism works, and what your place is in it. I'm talking in a broad context here. Credit card debt is at a record high, defaulted mortgages are rampant, and our morons in Washington continue to write checks on credit to fund a war no one wants (and was started on false pretenses). We can't compete with companies from other countries. We bow to lobbyists to keep supporting industries that can't support themselves. Where does it end? We've got a serious cultural problem here.
We do have some great success stories, like Google for example, but overall we essentially invented capitalism, but we suck at it. That's unfortunate.