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Comment by _heimdall | Hacker News Reader

This is one I don't really understand why the change would be a huge deal in context, the framing of an article as republicans sabotaging the miracle of free weather report APIs is just confusing.

If our government were massively in debt and continuing to increase the deficit, maybe I'd understand wanting to consider weather report APIs as a public good worth funding with tax dollars. We should be cutting everything we can to avoid a complete train wreck though, why would this float to the top of the list?

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First, shutting down programs like this is like leaving the lights off in your home because you can't make rent of the mortgage. Saving $0.025 off your energy bill is not going to meaningfully help.

Second, it’s at the top because it’s a public good of obviously enormous value that a common shmuck can understand.

I guess I'm a common shmuck. What is the public good, and specifically why is it a public good that is so difficult for the free market to provide that the government needs to run and subsidize it?

>What is the public good...

... in providing a weather forecast?

It's not that weather is difficult for markets to provide. It's that it's worthwhile for the government to make it freely available to everyone.

> What is the public good

Accurate, scientific information to make informed decisions that can affect your safety and well-being. If you have to drive over a bridge or close to a body of water every day but you know there is a high chance of flooding tomorrow would you still travel to the same high risk area?

What do you think is the role of government? To improve the lives of its citizens should be up there, do you agree?

Public services like NWS use a public service model. The idea is literally to provide as comprehensive a service as possible.

A private service will provide a profitable service, which will be cut-down, nickel-and-dimed, and generally enshitified for profitability,

Financially, the relatively small cost of these public services makes a negligible contribution to taxes while providing huge national benefits.

Ask all of those people who just drowned in Texas and are complaining that the weather warnings should have been given sooner.

Is that a solution only governments can provide? And in that case was the failing at the federal or local level?

The failing was local, because the MAGA morons refused federal funding to install alarm systems because it came from Biden (until, of course, they quietly took it and redirected the funds to the Sheriff department).

The NWS worked perfectly and they were warned in time.

Why do you keep asking strangely presumptuous questions without answering the simple, direct questions yourself?

Are you honestly interested in discussion or are you more interested in pushing a particular narrative?

>This is one I don't really understand why the change would be a huge deal in context

This is likely because you don't use the weather reports for anything of value/importance in your daily life - there are other professions / government departments / etc that DO use these reports and require them for safety reasons.

Just for a quick example anyone involved in aviation.

NOAA is a military agency. It is not civilian, like VA, ICE, or Dept of State.

Weather provided realtime marine, atmospheric, and solar weather to better equip theatres of war and aid.

Without weather, soldiers conducting defense, offense, or aid operations have that much less intel on making decisions. The side effect is less climate change and national weather reporting.

If anything, the stripping down soft power, intelligence, science, and everything seems like a plan to turn us into a 3rd world kleptocratic kakistocracy. Then again, capitalism has went from innovation and creation, to extraction and worsening.

Maybe its time to let China take the reins and show what socialism can accomplish. If the videos on Xiao Hong Shu (rednote) are any indication, they're doing absolutely superbly.

NOAA is under the Chamber of Commerce. The military has their own meteorological capabilities from what I understand, though they may also use NOAA data. I don’t know how you mean that NOAA is a military agency, as they are not in the chain of command of any military agency or group.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Oceanic_and_Atmospher...

Even their officers are not armed services, though they do receive a commission. I think you might be thinking of something that I haven’t seen or heard about, so please let me know if I am wrong.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NOAA_Commissioned_Officer_Corp...

> We should be cutting everything we can to avoid a complete train wreck though, why would this float to the top of the list?

It makes a lot more sense when you consider that certain people think that climate change isn't real while weather science supports the idea that the climate not only can change but is changing, and that humans are the cause of it.

That has nothing to do with daily weather reports. I feel you on the whole climate change debate, it just isn't relevant here.

Weather data is incredibly important to a huge number of activities and to the general safety of the public, which is why the government is providing it in the first place. Debt to fund it is almost certain to economically productive. The republican controlled congress is cutting taxes and raising debt levels. A similar argument could be made that we should continue to fund services and raise taxes to reduce deficits instead

Because it’s not a drop in the bucket, it’s not even a droplet of mist

There are so many things to clean up before you get to this

Given that, Idy pose the same question to you, why prioritize cutting this?

I would almost consider this public infrastructure and we should definitely keep it

Well to start with, I'd ask if its just an easy one to cut - maybe because there are alternatives or it isn't really on the level of a fundamental human right.

Balancing our budget is going to hurt like hell and everyone will bleed. That doesn't mean the answer is to say fuck it and keep racking up debt.

Given the context of the historically largest budget deficit alongside decreased taxes on the wealthiest Americans, it's genuinely hard to believe the goal of this cut is balancing our budget

If you care abut the deficit, then should cancel that big tax cut that was just signed into law.

The problem is this predicted cut and others are a drop in the bucket (for the government). They are a rounding error compared to what’s added to spending with the recent bill.

It isn't just the recent spending bill, we've been racking up debt since Clinton was in office.

While I agree this wouldn't make a meaningful dent in the deficit, every bit helps. Should we instead sit around until there's political will to take on the budget of the DoD, entitlements, and our debt's own interest payments?

How are you continuing to thump this simplistic debt narrative, when it's painfully clear that the actual goals of the current administration are to balloon the debt and to destroy US soft power and stability that encourage people loaning money to our government at lower interest rates?

Surely you can see that if you earnestly want to talk about principled shrinking of our government's debt burden, the first step is to oust the current regime so that such editorial decisions can be made with the intent of helping our country rather than as a movement to destroy us.

The same people who want to cut this service just added a million times that amount to the national debt. Any claim that this is about saving money is transparent bullshit.

Free weather data has massive positive externalities. Just like in so many other areas, this administration is destroying a common good to benefit a handful of private individuals.

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