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We really should have seen this coming, I suppose, but it was still something of a surprise to pick up yesterday's Post and read that the National Weather Service is facing charges of unfair competition.
Its competitors -- private forecasters who get much of their data from the NWS -- want to limit the amount of information that the NWS releases directly to the public. Otherwise, American citizens might just log onto the Internet, or call some federal office, for weather data, rather than pay a hard-working entrepreneur.
So there's a provision in a pending appropriations bill:
The National Weather Service shall not provide, or
assist other entities to provide, a service if that service
is currently provided or could be provided by commercial
enterprise, unless the service provides vital weather
warnings for the protection of life and property of the
general public ...
This raises many questions. The obvious one is How
much money did the Commercial Weather Services Association
donate to the campaigns of powerful Republican
representatives and senators?
But there are some general issues here, too, concerning governmental competition with private enterprise.
The big one is the U.S. Postal Service, which has many competitors, ranging from email and fax machines to United Parcel Service, Airborne Express, Federal Express and the like.
The Postal Service at first responded to competition by attempting to enforce a statutory monopoly on first-class mail.
Over time, that didn't work, and the USPS learned to compete. That has its good points, like convenience (the post office now sells shipping materials) and new services (express mail and the like).
It also has its drawbacks, such as turning the post office into a more retail outlet. When I'm in line to endure the paperwork of Form 3602R, I don't think I should be standing behind someone who wants to examine genuine USPS Daffy Duck neckties. Mailing tubes and padded envelopes make the post office more convenient; Hollywood marketing tie-ins just make it annoying.
The Postal Service also began aggressively marketing stamps to collectors, a good deal because every stamp that ends up in an album represents a piece of mail that it has been paid to deliver but will not have to deliver.
Selling new stamps to collectors is a competitive business; one competitor is the nation of Guinea, which just issued a set of Popeye stamps to market to American collectors. The stamps are valid postage -- in Guinea, on the west coast of Africa.
Lately the Postal Service has attracted competitors in the post-office box business, and its response has been attacked as unfair.
Those private boxes used to have addresses like 321
MAIN ST STE 201,
and anyone with half a brain knew
there was no office suite at 321 Main, that the address was
a mail drop. But now the USPS insists on something like
PMB 201 321 MAIN ST,
presumably so we know that this
is a private mail box, rather than a real office, and
thereby reducing fraud.
Competitors, like Mail Boxes Etc., charge that the Postal Service is just doing this to protect its post-office box business.
At any rate, the private sector and the government Postal Service both seem to function, without putting arbitrary limits on ways that the Postal Service can try to serve the public.
So it's hard to see why Congress needs to put limits on information that the National Weather Service can provide.
For one thing, we've already paid for gathering the information -- why should we have to pay again, through some private party, to get it?
For another, if the private sector is indeed more efficient and nimble than a government bureaucracy, why should the private sector be afraid of competition from the government -- so afraid that the private forecasters want a statutory prohibition on what information the NWS can disseminate?
There's probably no point in trying to stop this process of charging fees for what used to be part of the general package you got with your taxes.
Last week I went to meet someone in Park County. There I encountered, on U.S. Forest Service land that we all own, a sign informing me that if I wanted to drive any further on what had been a public road, I would have to pay a $3 user fee.
Our federal government doesn't want to compete with private enterprise, you see, and strolling in the woods is now a recreational option that competes with, say, going to the show. Since the movie isn't free, why should the forest be?
And if somebody is willing to charge us for a weather
forecast based on information we already paid for -- well,
serving the public interest
was not a prominent
feature of the Contract with America.
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