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People can be bad at their jobs and/or can act irrationally.
But lets say, for the hell of it, we take a wild guess and presume that to be economically valuable it has to be if not easily tradeable at least actionable, but for whatever reason the hypothetical here is it's only useful in the US if the government does it. I would presume, though not propose, they could sell it to US enemies, such as China. Now I am not promoting treasonous activities, but I'm quite sure, some capitalists would happily do them.
>Can you think of any economically valuable reason why it might be important to know about weather trends or events in advance? Any at all?
You're damning me for questioning someone who presumed market efficiency with an appeal to economic value to a government that stands to capture that hypothetical value? The premise of the government acting on market efficiency was what I responded to, not my introduction.
If we're discounting the premised market efficiency of the government actor to which I replied, then the question was moot, and you're targeting the wrong commenter. But of course, that wouldn't fit your two-faced (and post response underhanded conniving editing 'centrally-') rebuttal, so you wait to set the catch-22 trap of damning rebuttal comments for acting on a premise introduced in a counter viewpoint.
The comment you originally responded to does not presume market efficiency. In fact it carries the opposite assumption - if markets were efficient then the loss of economic value from weather forecasting would be immediately apparent and we wouldn't need to discuss larger-concept models with the goal of overcoming inefficiencies.
That original comment posits an idea of "economic value" that is independent from what can be captured by whomever is contributing to it, which is what you seemed to be rejecting.
Of course if the government doesn't care at all about the 'market efficiency' of that value it's not clear why this question is even posed -- a hypothetically irrational rejection of the efficient projection of this value seems to be what the question contends with. The very question relies on a premise of someone somewhere acting with market efficiency on this data. With zero market 'efficiency' from the data, there's no useful market value generated whether you frame it as "capturable" or not.
Ah, no, but at least this puts our difference in stark relief. One can rationally appeal to government (as a democratic institution with a goal of furthering lofty ideals, like society and the economy in general) without necessarily appealing to government (as a selfish entity) desire to collect more tax receipts. If you must, think of it as appealing to individuals who may or may not support the government, and the government optimizing for that support rather than optimizing for mere tax dollars (which it can always print more of).
It seems your thesis here contradicts your prior argument. You're merely flip-flopping -- the private actors are acting with "efficiency" when one argues about government efficiency and the government is the one acting with efficiency when you're arguing the private actors aren't.
>Ah, no, but at least this puts our difference in stark relief.
It does nothing of the sort.
The reason why I introduce the notion of tax receipts is in part because some arguments presented appeared to dismiss the "efficiency" of private actors while still asking me to answer the question of how a private actor might "capture" the value of generating the data themselves even in the face of private buyers not buying it (one answer is: foreign governments or those they represent might be "efficient" enough to buy it). You've grasped onto that notion as if it's a "gotcha" presenting some stark difference. In fact it creates no obligation for the government to act solely on tax receipts, it's merely one more value proposition for a non-private actor to buy the data.
Not much point going much further down this "heads I win, tails you lose" flip-flop reasoning you're presenting, but good luck with that. You've created a logical contradiction at this point no matter which side you try to flip back to.
Or I'm pointing to the existence of arguments that fall outside of your paradigm of reasoning through direct economic self interest.
I'd guess the flip flopping you're feeling here comes from trying to shoehorn my argument into your paradigm, and it not fitting. The resulting logical contradiction does not imply an error in my argument, but rather the inapplicability of the paradigm you're attempting to use.
This is a diabolical level of gaslighting to present your logical contradiction as my fault. Perhaps the "shoehorning" you're finding is in fact a function of forcing your reasoning into the premise of appeal to economic value to which I responded while simultaneously damning my response in a way that created a contradiction in your logic.
>>Can you think of any economically valuable reason why it might be important to know about weather trends or events in advance? Any at all?
The whole premise of this was appeal to the economic interest of constituents of the people ending the program.
If you want to pretend like we're addressing an entirely different "argument" in whatever la-la land is existing in your mind right now, so that you can seriously make your statement, I'm not particularly interested in addressing your hallucinatory fantasies. Have a good one.
The specific problem here is imagining market participants as efficient actors. In reality, it's more like an NP-hard problem, and making logical appeals based around abstract models is exactly how we try to convince other market participants that something is in their interest (eg the comment you originally responded to).
In general, there was no need to come out swinging at me and accusing me of "gaslighting". Try more understanding, and less arguing. You'll get further.
If the data is economically valuable, mbgerring, then the private market and aligned states/charities should be the ones shouldering the costs.