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Given how much is at stake from hurricanes, why don’t you believe that companies wouldn’t have a big incentive to provide these forecasting services and data gathering?

As an economist, I don’t see why this is similar to National Defense. The problem with National Defense is that there is a big “free-rider” problem. There is no free-rider problem with forecasting the weather. Lots of people pay for these forecasts (businesses, media, people). Where is the problem?

In any case, there are two issues here data gathering and forecasting. Do you think that the government would provide the type of services that your company does as well as you do?

Lots of people pay for these forecasts (businesses, media, people).

The entities you mention are certainly paying something for the forecasts, but I'd be very surprised to hear that their payments collectively add up to anything like the fully-burdened cost of providing the forecasts. AccuWeather, for example, does not so much sell forecasts as they sell purty pictures that lower-budget TV stations can use to spiff up their weather reports. They can make money doing that because there is a real cost saving in producing the graphics once and having them used by local stations in dozens of cities, as opposed to every station having to duplicate all the nifty graphics machines and hiring somebody who knows how to run them.

But the fact is, there is a 'free rider problem' here too, since all these guys selling "forecasts" can price their product as low as they do because they are getting virtually all of their input data for "free" (read: at the taxpayers' expense.)

I agree that this is not an argument for having the government run the natural monopoly in data collection; we could use a privately-owned regulated-utility model to provide that. Trouble is, if all the costs really got loaded into the prices charged by AccuWeather et. al., would any of these corporate and media entities be willing to buy them at the new, higher price? If not, does that end up increasing the costs to the taxpayers in the long run, as people do not do what they could do to minimize destruction because they didn't hear it was coming?

Concerning similarities to national defense, another is that hurricanes represent uninvited trouble from abroad of a sort that most people don't want to believe will ever happen. If someone had tried to sell information concerning Japanese aircraft carriers approaching the Hawaiian islands in 1941, most people would have blown them off. Even today, most liberals think that the correct solution to the threat posed by al-Q'aeda is to stick their fingers in their ears and chant "la la la la I can't hear you." Sometimes the adults in the room just have to force the children to deal with threats that the children don't want to hear about.

Do you think that the government would provide the type of services that your company does as well as you do?

Oddly enough, my successful consulting business thrives precisely because of onerous government regulations. It is the health care equivalent of an accounting firm making sense out of the IRS tax code.

Back to the weather...

You have made some good points, albeit we disagree on several issues, including your favorable opinion about Accuweather. I believe most of us want our weather forecasts to be accurate, economical, and without sensational hype, tease, or commercials. As I've stated before, hurricane recon has been available virtually real time for several years. There are a variety of weather discussion boards where professionals and novices alike test their forecasting skills against the weather outcome. All in all, the NHC does a remarkably good job, particularly for a government agency. They have taken a beating in the press lately due to management issues, but that is another discussion. It seems to me there are plenty of other government agencies swallowing much larger portions of our tax dollars that are deserving of more press criticism than the NWS.

On the other hand...if you were to propose private contract maintenance of the NOAA buoy system, I would cheerfully agree with you.