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by Alupis 375 days ago
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?
2 comments
skyyler 375 days ago
>So, put another way, is it better for the government to continue going into debt to operate projects like this with potentially dubious returns

Yes. The government is not a business. It does not need to turn a profit. Government services are not products for the generation of profit.

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Alupis 375 days ago
Nobody said anything about profit. We don't need to move the goal posts here.

There is a difference between the government operating programs with tax dollars and operating programs with fantasy money that ultimately hurts every single citizen.

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skyyler 371 days ago
"potentially dubious returns"

Another term for profit is "an advantageous return" (this is the first definition google gives for the word 'profit')

I don't particularly enjoy litigating definitions, so I'll leave the interpretation of what I said to you, instead of trying to explain myself.

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fragmede 375 days ago
This framing is off. Weather data isn’t a fucking mars habitat, it’s core infrastructure. Airplane travel, agriculture, emergency response, and private weather services all depend on it. If anything, handing it off to profit-driven firms creates more risk with things like black-box pricing, gaps in data coverage, or national security issues.

And, “dubious returns” ignores that some of the highest-leverage investments in history looked like this. Government-funded satellite weather programs, GPS, and early internet tech weren’t obviously profitable, but I'm so glad we wasted tax dollars on that.

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Alupis 375 days ago
The government obtains weather data in other ways. This isn't an all-or-nothing thing based on balloons...
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