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This is an anti-pattern. Doing the work that the government should be (and was) doing and then selling back the data to them or others when the data should be (

• jaccola 1y 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.
  • huslage 1y ago
    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.
    • krisoft 1y ago
      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?
      • huslage 1y ago
        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.
      • tartoran 1y ago
        > Weather balloons are a recurring cost. What do you think taxes are? Do we pay taxes once and that's it?
        • Alupis 1y ago
          It's extremely unlikely any of your tax dollars were allocated to projects like what is being discussed here. It's much more likely (given the Federal Government's total budget and allocations) that this money was being borrowed and/or printed. So, put another way, is it better for the government to continue going into debt to operate projects like this with potentially dubious returns - or better to allow the private industry to find a way to operate it instead?
          • skyyler 1y ago
            >So, put another way, is it better for the government to continue going into debt to operate projects like this with potentially dubious returns Yes. The government is not a business. It does not need to turn a profit. Government services are not products for the generation of profit.
            • Alupis 1y ago
              Nobody said anything about profit. We don't need to move the goal posts here. There is a difference between the government operating programs with tax dollars and operating programs with fantasy money that ultimately hurts every single citizen.
              • skyyler 1y ago
                "potentially dubious returns" Another term for profit is "an advantageous return" (this is the first definition google gives for the word 'profit') I don't particularly enjoy litigating definitions, so I'll leave the interpretation of what I said to you, instead of trying to explain myself.
    • CGMthrowaway 1y ago
      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.
      • huslage 1y ago
        That explicitly has not happened in this instance. Don't tell me how democracy works.
        • CGMthrowaway 1y ago
          Which part? And I wasn't describing democracy
    • throwawaymaths 1y ago
      can you explain by what criteria you decide what data should be public or not?
  • thrance 1y ago
    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?
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  • Workaccount2 1y ago
    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.
    • gusgus01 1y ago
      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.
      • Workaccount2 1y ago
        ~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.
        • gusgus01 1y ago
          For the first part, I totally misread that several times. Sorry about that. Looking around, the exact number is quite hard to pin down because of the definition of it, but ~30% is probably a very fair estimate based on https://taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/tpc-number-those-who-dont-pay-federal-income-tax-drops-pre-pandemic-levels https://taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/tpc-number-those-who-dont...
• shaism 1y ago
  Do you mind elaborating? I agree that weather data should be public but I don’t see why we should restrict innovation in the private market if there is demand for it. Also more generally, I see no issue in the government outsourcing work to a competitive private market wherever possible.
  • huslage 1y ago
    I have no issue with it if it is part of a legislative/regulatory framework. This is not inside of any framework. There has been no conversation about privatization of NOAA or any of its functions. These things need to be explicit as part of a democracy. The current regime has upended that process and has created a situation where the government has no choice but to outsource data gathering to third parties. This is corruption and not in the spirit or the letter of the law. This startup is attempting to take advantage of an illegal situation which is just ridiculous. I'm happy if they want to sell fancy weather balloons to anyone that they want, even the government, but selling data back to the government that should be already collecting the data in the first place BY LAW is just corrupt.
• frankdenbow 1y ago
  The reality is that the government is not doing it, so the choices are to sit back and watch things crumble or have private companies work to try to fix things. I agree with you in principle that its a sad state of affairs though.
  • huslage 1y ago
    This is an excuse for normalization of a state of affairs that cannot continue to exist outside of a proper legal framework.
• mcdow 1y ago
  I can see why that might be frustrating. What about this problem makes it the best fit for the government to handle? Is it prone to natural monopoly? There are lots of things that the government can handle and shouldn’t. Just because the government handled something in the past isn’t a reason in-and-of-itself for it to resume handling it in the future. I’m genuinely curious as I am ignorant of the space.
  • jmcgough 1y ago
    What private industry has been pushing for for decades is privatizing weather data so they can sell it at a profit. But weather information is a huge public good and has been provided by the federal government for decades. Privatizing it adds more costs to public research, and means that people who don't have money to spend on weather forecasting - those living in poverty and most at risk when it comes to life-threatening storms - will likely die in higher numbers from severe weather.
    • fastball 1y ago
      "People will likely die" is a pretty bold claim. Do you have a citation that deaths were avoided because poor people saw a weather report?
• CGMthrowaway 1y ago
  Why can't private enterprise do weather?
  • huslage 1y ago
    There are many private weather companies.
    • fastball 1y ago
      Right, so why should "no one fund" another private weather company?
• bigveech 1y ago
  Just to put it in perspective: it costs $300–500 to produce a single atmospheric profile with current balloon infrastructure. The U.S. launches ~180 a day—that’s at least $54K daily. Not exactly “pennies.” :) And the government already buys the helium, radiosondes, and ground systems from private vendors—so the money’s going to private industry anyway. It’s just inefficient. With 50 of our systems doing 4 profiles a day (which is no where close to max scale), you get the same volume of data for way less. And on top of that, because we reach remote and oceanic areas that aren’t being measured today, the data is also more valuable! Also, the data you’re referring to isn’t inherently public domain. It becomes public when the government buys it and redistributes it. That’s true whether they pay for the infrastructure themselves or buy the data directly from a company.
  • huslage 1y ago
    I'm glad you have come up with something more efficient. The problem has nothing to do with efficiency. You are welcome to make a government contract to sell them equipment or data as you wish. My problem is with baseline services that have already been stopped that you claim to want to replace. This data feeds all of our weather models and should be done with existing infrastructure until congress changes things. The data must be freely available. The fact is that the data is available for anyone anywhere and is a valuable resource for scientists everywhere. Your current goals might be laudable right now, but that is not going to be the case when you have to pay back an investor 100x in 5 years. You will do everything you can to lock that data up and make it as expensive as you can. You will have no choice.
    • Daviey 1y ago
      It largely depends if it is bought by a public service under a license that allows public release, surely?
• khazhoux 1y ago
  Flawed premise. Weather modeling is not an essential service of a government
  • huslage 1y ago
    Tell me that after your house gets leveled by a tornado and you don't get a warning.
• msgodel 1y ago
  Better to put all the PE money to work on it than borrowing at 5%.
• counters 1y ago
  It's not - it actually the core mechanism through which the "Weather Enterprise" works. Over 20 years, an important report from the National Academies [1] laid out how an enterprise comprised of public, private, and academic sector interests could work cooperatively to bolster the public good that is weather and climate information and services. It has always been the domain of the federal government to provide core, foundational data products (including forecasts and raw weather observations of many modalities) for both bolstering academic research as well as private sector innovation. The government's mission in the enterprise leaves plenty of room for private sector players to extend, complement, and supplement the foundational services provided by the public sector. Sorcerer fits perfectly into the existing framework of the weather, water, and climate enterprise (WWCE). They produce complementary data and ensure that the government has access to it - even if the government must procure it (which they're happy to do - no one expects that these companies should give away all their data, gratis). But they could potentially greatly extend the core global synoptic observation system that powers conventional numerical weather prediction, especially for organizations which are more flexible and can work with broader data sources. This is the WWCE working well. The real concern is on ensuring continuity - making sure innovative companies like Sorcerer can persist, in perpetuity if necessary (or at least the data products they collect and produce). [1]: https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/10610/fair-weather-effective-partnership-in-weather-and-climate-services https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/10610/fair-weather...
• guywithahat 1y ago
  This is exactly the kind of thing that should be done by private companies, what are you talking about? This data should be something companies compete at to get better at