Comment by jaccola
2 days ago
By this logic anything could become government run but never transition from government run to privately run, creating a ratcheting mechanism that would eventually lead to ~everything being government run!
The pro case for privatisation (that I happen to believe in) is: you were paying for it anyway, via your tax dollars, having it private leads to competition and stronger incentives to improve/cut costs meaning it will net cost you less.
You are oversimplifying here. I ALREADY paid for the weather balloons and they are no longer being launched. This is not privatization in the way that you seem to think it is. This is explicitly against the will of the people.
I'm fine if they want to make new weather balloons and sell them to people to launch for whatever reason they want. Selling what by law should be public data is anathema.
You are also simplifying. You didn't pay for anything. You were taxed, and representatives selected in accordance with a social contract between government and the people (the Constitution), apportioned and spent (or didn't spend) the money.
That explicitly has not happened in this instance. Don't tell me how democracy works.
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Weather balloons are a recurring cost. It is not like you launch a weather balloon once and it provides data forever. You need to launch new balloons once the ones previously launched land. (This is typically a very short amount of time. Days not weeks.)
It is not like this company is going to take over the management of weather balloons you have already paid for. Or I don't know how you imagine this is going to work.
> This is not privatization in the way that you seem to think it is.
Can you tell me more about how you think it is?
> Weather balloons are a recurring cost.
What do you think taxes are? Do we pay taxes once and that's it?
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I imagine the government is going to start launching weather balloons again after they get sued for illegally firing the staff that's supposed to do it.
can you explain by what criteria you decide what data should be public or not?
How's that working out for public health in the states?
Weather reporting is a common good. It worked very well for pennies and benefitted the economy greatly. Why privatize it?
There is a key difference, privatization means a flat cost, whereas public means an income based cost.
About 30% of Americans get (NWS) weather data for free. They pay no income tax yet receive the same level of public benefits. On the other hand, a handful of Americans pay millions for weather data, and receive the same thing as those who paid nothing.
For a private service though, it would just be $20/mo or whatever for everyone.
Where did you get 30% from? I'm just curious since NWS data is widely used as a source for creating weather forecasts, which if I had to guess near 100% of people use in one way, shape, or form. I think Google uses it, so anyone with an Android phone is one click away from a forecast using the data.
On the matter of taxes being proportional to income, I'm not going to argue about progressive taxation or any moralistic standpoint of proportional taxation. From purely a utility standpoint, those handful of people probably reap way more value from that NWS data being available. The richest people (those paying the millions for NWS) usually are that rich from the labor of others, and those labor forces all get value from the data to help plan their days, including getting to the workplace safely. Another even more direct use for the economy would be routing of trucks through snowy passes, or planning for large construction companies.
~30% of Americans do not pay income taxes, i.e. they get public services like NWS data for free.
Nothing else you said is wrong, I'm just saying that government services are effectively progressively priced based on income.
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