George Patterson wrote:
Matt Whiting wrote:


I think if most "public" services were provided by a free enterprise
system, then we'd get a lot more in aggregate for our money.


I disagree. I remember when the Weather Station first came out, they had
very frequent local reports and paging of text weather of various cities
every 20 minutes or so. Also had some aviation weather, as I recall.

Then they started attracting advertisers. The pilot weather was gone the
next time I saw a report. By 1995, the local cable companies had
replaced the local weather reports with their own ads. TWS corrected
that a few years later by announcing that the local weather would be
displayed every 10 minutes (on the 8s). That forced the cable companies
to play it.

Basically, if you need something special and are perceived to be a
minority, private enterprise will cut you right out of the picture. If
weather info is provided only by private enterprise, we won't have pilot
weather unless something like AOPA provides it for us.

Yes, that is why I said in aggregate. We overall have much better
weather services today than we had 30 years ago when it was nearly all
government provided. I didn't say that aviation would be better off.
Actually, my point is that aviation is very heavily subsidized and would
likely take it on the chin without such subsidies.

Government is very wasteful, but it does provide for the special
interests in a manner that wouldn't exist were everything based on a
"pay as you use" basis. In the end it might work out OK, but it
certainly would look a lot different. I wouldn't pay school taxes if I
didn't have kids in school, but I'd probably pay $10/gallon for avgas,
if it was even available, and I'd pay for weather briefings, use of ATC,
use of GPS, etc.

Matt