I’ve only watched the first episode. But that said, if you looked at it sensibly, you’ve got 4 days (or less, maybe sometimes more) at each camp. Blow the first hundred grand on matches, tents, machete and hatchet. Now you’re not blowing energy each camp building the same shelter over and over again, you’re saving energy on harvesting food and fuel, and you have a stable water source.
Or option two, you try to get them to buy nothing and hope you can outlast any of the snowflakes.
I’d go with the first scenario. Blowing 1/10th of the prize money on splurge purchases will get people to want to conserve money even further, and honestly, why make your life suck while waiting out the others whining themselves off the beach? Feed them, make them as comfortable in camp as possible, and they’ll still leave on their own.
There’s just too much opportunity for them to spend money on themselves or cost you money by not making the next camp on time. Out of that first hundred grand, $15k of it was lost, and the ‘power players’ gained nothing from it other than stronger snowflakes. Blow the money, no temptation, and you set the marks for the second camp.
I see your logic but you have to watch a few more episodes. Cody wanted to wait to buy the necessities in order to force flares. It worked with the morons who gave up their shoelaces and ended up with ruined feet.
The rest of the snowflakes had their tent and numbers so they bought 3k burgers 15k worth of pizzas at every opportunity. So they were fine until they got too lazy to boil water.