[genocidicbunny]

I hate that my cynicism is at the level where I think one of the things they will do if they end up privatizing it, is use price discrimination to hide 'sticking it to those liberal states'.

For example, a massive part of California's economy is in farming, and while most farmers are more conservative leaning, I am sure a vindictive admin will have no qualms with sacrificing them to stick it to California. Similarly with Oregon and Washington. And when prices of food go up commensurately in those states, they will spin it as "look at how shitty those places are, look at how much they charge you for food."

Or they will give discounts to large farmers while lowering data quality and increasing prices for the small ones, impoverishing or causing them to fail, such that they can be cheaply bought out, thus further consolidating the ag sector into a small handful of massive companies.

Another secondary effect that is worrying to me is in regards to how much aviation relies on weather data. Commercial aviation probably won't suffer much immediately -- they'll pay for the good data and pass on the costs to their passengers. With how much prices for airline flights already fluctuate, the difference will probably get lost in the noise so there won't be much public outrage. But GA pilots, especially ones operating from smaller airports might be affected pretty significantly. Flying a plane isn't exactly a cheap endeavor as is, and having to pay much more for weather data to fly safely might turn even more people off from flying. Down the line, that means less pilots that can fly commercial, which leads to yet another pilot shortage. It will also probably mean more GA accidents due to insufficient or shoddy weather data.