Senate Bill S.786 could kill NWS internet weather products

wrote:
Matt Whiting wrote:

Blueskies wrote:




This could end up like things in Russia. Public money funded

resources are deemed too inefficient to be run by the

government, so the assets are put up for bid to private companies.

The private company acquires the asset, and then

sells the service to the public.Very bad idea for the NWS, very

bad idea for our freeways, very bad idea for our

airways...

I'm not sure it is all that bad. 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.


Probably so for some services, I dunno about most. In the instant
case, it is not feasible for private concerns to operate the weather
bureau infrastructure, inclusing constellations of weather satellites
and so on. There is also a need for consistant (preferably high)
quality and availabllity from the standpoint of public saftey.

The proposal would not significantly reduce the goernment's costs,
but would significantly reduce the public benefit. Not good.

A similar program during the Reagan era privatized much of the
Landsat data, after the Governement had paid for the programs
to obtain and archive it. The result was that it was priced
beyond reach of a lot of researchers. Oil companies could
afford it though.


The point is that we would have to have most taxes go away in order for
this to happen. If we paid no income tax at all, then we could afford
to pay quite a bit for the services that we actually need. There is no
question that government redistributes wealth in many ways. What I
don't know is what things would look like if the wealth was distributed
by a free market rather than by government. I really don't know who
benefits the most from the redistribution, but given that much of
government is now involved not with providing services, but with the
redistribution process itself (IRS as one major example), which adds
zero economic value, it is an interesting thought experiment as to what
things would look like if this waste were put to use productively.



It all comes down to what is less costly, the waste in government or

the

profit margin that a private enterprise would require. If the

private

enterprise is efficient enough that it can make a profit and still

cost

less than a government agency, then it is a good deal overall.



Not in the instant case. The government would still have all
the expense of operating a weather service--then a private concern
would get to sell the fruits of that tax money. E.g. Corporate
Welfare without even the meager benefits that something like a
subsidized sports stadium brings a community.

The proper and effective way to privatize services of this sort
is to put the operational support for the service up for competative
bidding by prospective contractors and NOT by privatizing the data
themselves.

I agree that any transition would be painful. I was just trying to
imagine what things could look like if the services were provided more
efficiently. Our revenue collection process now is a huge resource hog
that provides no intrinsic value. I can't find the source now, but I
recently saw a summary of how much money is spent simply related to
collection income taxes. This included the cost of the IRS, and all tax
preparation services such as H&R Block, tax software, tax attorneys,
CPAs, etc. The number of people and amount of money spent simply
counting and collecting taxes (and trying to avoid the same) was simply
staggering. Think how much more competitive our economy would be if
these people were actually growing, mining or making things or doing
something else with intrinsic value.


Matt