Disaster strikes Pompeii... Collapse of several walls

[M. Demetrius]

Not just a few historical sites in Texas have been dropped by the State, and taken over by private enterprises. They seem to work just as well or better without all the government intervention. Nothing wrong with offices' being charged to manage things, it's just that the "taking charge" in a management sense is not "without charge" monetarily. Everybody who works wants to get paid.

With enough offices to check on each other, soon, there are more managers than workers, more offices than historical sites. And yet, there are irresponsible individuals who damage or disregard historical sites, even when the site is the source of their income (for privately owned sites). The second generation of owners may not have the same zeal as the first.

It's a hard question, and not easily solved. Consider just the Colisseum...that "fallen section" of the outer wall was not accidental. Those stones were removed to build other buildings long before the present administration in Italy, so we can't lay blame on them, can we? I've heard several versions of how the original flooring collapsed, but I'm not sure how that happened. Maybe just time and fatiguing mortar, rotting timber supports. The ancient buildings are ancient. If the almost-ancient people had been maintaining them right along, we'd be in better shape today. But they didn't. Here we are. And mostly, we're finger-pointing instead of clearing rubble and bracing walls, aren't we?