Aren't the problems you point to just business justification for companies offering this service for a fee rather than subsidizing the fees with federal debt?
Yes, of course. We're all reasonable adults who are capable of acknowledging that services of value cost money.
It just so happens that weather is a phenomenon which affects all people and requires large, distributed, passive infrastructure to effectively manage. It's a classic case where the public option is bound to be more efficient in terms of absolute resource allocation.
On what basis do I assert that it's "bound" to be more efficient? Simple: weather affects the production, transportation, and logistics of virtually all goods. The costs of weather are therefore distributed equally across society regardless of government policy. Government is very good at delivering this specific type of centralized basic infrastructure in a cost-effective way (see also: roads), so if we're all paying for it together regardless this is a no-brainer policy.
I've seen this repeated many times but I have yet to see anyone mention, by name, which paid weather service is selling a feed with the same level of service and coverage as the NWS/NOAA. Anyone?
Only NWS has a vast network of sensors: river gauges (with USGS), doppler radars, satellites, airport AOS automated observation systems, etc etc. to support the mission.
Most of the privates are just repackaging their feeds and data. So if you kill NOAA they will have to start almost from scratch.
Well you're describing the chicken and egg problem. If there is high demand for this data a company would fill that niche, but they would have no reason to until the free data is gone.
I also think this chain of comments is a bit off the rails of my original point (maybe my fault). It honestly doesn't matter if there is pain to be felt by removing government services, we spend entirely too much money and any solution to that will hurt.
If we are only willing to remove spending that hurts little to no one we might as well throw in the towel already, we'll never cut spending with that as a gate.
In my experience, having used several paid weather APIs for hobby crap, the NWS ones are generally the worst in every way.
They're slower, harder to query, the documentation is worse, and they have less data available because the others buy data from private weather stations and re bundle it in addition to pre processing and repackaging the Federal data into better formats on your behalf
I say this as a NOAA lover; the government just isn't good at building APIs.
Companies can and do offer data for a fee. In the same way that private toll road existing doesn't mean we should get rid of the highway system, a paid option doesn't mean the government should stop providing a publicly funded option given the immense value it provides to society
If the government option successfully creates a government monopoly, maybe we should?
In this case we simply don't know what the market needs or market value of these services are because no one is incentivized to compete with the subsidized government program.
How have they created a monopoly? This comment is on a post about a company that charges for this data, not to mention competitors like foreca or the weather company
I've noticed this user has a habit of asking these "questions" and then suddenly falling quiet when pressed more closely. (I think they are concern trolling)
If it's a public service or public data, it should be subsidized by the government.
Every American has an interest in seeing the weather for no cost. It's vital to business and recreation, not to mention safety. It absolutely makes sense for us to all pay a tiny amount.
