Isn’t this the point of NOAA?
Sorcerer (YC S24) raises $3.9M to launch more weather balloons
31–40 of 71 posts
Re: Sorcerer (YC S24) raises $3.9M to launch more weather balloons
#32What happens to weather balloons do they just drop out of the sky? Do they ever hit anyone? Are they just garbage the gets left on the ground?
Re: Sorcerer (YC S24) raises $3.9M to launch more weather balloons
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…
> Weather balloons are a recurring cost.
What do you think taxes are? Do we pay taxes once and that's it?
Re: Sorcerer (YC S24) raises $3.9M to launch more weather balloons
#34We should be expecting more government services now going through YCombinator. Lots of profit to be made in the name of efficiency.
Re: Sorcerer (YC S24) raises $3.9M to launch more weather balloons
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 whateve…
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 moralisti…
~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.
Re: Sorcerer (YC S24) raises $3.9M to launch more weather balloons
#36This 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 (and was) public domain is absolutely terrible for society. No one should fund this.
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.
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.
Re: Sorcerer (YC S24) raises $3.9M to launch more weather balloons
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> Weather balloons are a recurring cost. What do you think taxes are? Do we pay taxes once and that's it?
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?
Re: Sorcerer (YC S24) raises $3.9M to launch more weather balloons
#38Good timing "At least 10 sites have suspended or limited weather balloon launches because of the Trump administration’s cuts to the National Weather Service." https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/weather-balloon...
Their agenda is to intentionally make government dysfunctional as a catalyst to privatize everything. It's working.
Next up is the postal service.
Re: Sorcerer (YC S24) raises $3.9M to launch more weather balloons
#39This 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 (and was) public domain is absolutely terrible for society. No one should fund this.
Flawed premise. Weather modeling is not an essential service of a government
Re: Sorcerer (YC S24) raises $3.9M to launch more weather balloons
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 moralisti…
~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.
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...