Forget the 'but gear quality will be poor' argument. Any knife is better than no knife. The numbers of people who get by with cheap equipment is legion. The most used knife a friend's boat is a discount store fillet knife bought twenty years ago. You have to use a steel on it a couple of times a day and it is a fraction of its original size but it still cuts. The quality of knives used by our ancestors was pretty poor and our more distant relatives often made due with slivers of stone, often as small as a fingernail. A $4 compass will still tell direction well enough to prevent you from walking in circles.

There is also no need to have requirements amount to a huge burden. A requirement for boots, compass, knife, and two ways to make fire shouldn't put anyone off.

Requirements can also be objective oriented. Like simply saying they have to have: 'the means to purify water at not less than one gallon per day for each person'. Or: 'Durable and effective, wind and water resistant means of getting out the weather while sleeping'. Objective oriented regulation tells you the outcome but does not describe how to accomplish it.

Don't like equipment requirements? The other effective way is to require a guide. The guide will tell you what to take or provide it, for a price, of course. Don't want to use a guide? Become one. Complete a field and sit-down test, pay your registration fee and go out by yourself all you want.