[mindslight]

I don't see how I've "lost the plot."

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.

[mothballed]

The market efficiency it presumes is that an appeal to value is actually a rational actionable appeal to the government actor. That seems to be the whole point of the question (paraphrased) "can't you see the value of the thing we're losing" and speaking that to someone who stands to capture the value via tax receipts.

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.

[mindslight]

> The market efficiency it presumes is that an appeal to value is actually a rational actionable appeal to the government actor. That seems to be the whole point of the question (paraphrased) "can't you see the value of the thing we're losing" and speaking that to someone who stands to capture the value via tax receipts.

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).

[mothballed]

So you're back to to "fallacy" of market efficiency, expecting private actors to advocate to foot taxes with an expected ROI from capturing the value delivered by government implementation of the program. Yes you can appeal to the government without appealing to tax receipts, but under a value proposition premise we have here it's conditional upon the market being 'efficient' enough that either the private actors realize the tax / inflation paid is worth the ROI and/or the government finds it worth the tax receipts -- a value proposition doesn't make sense if none of the actors expect to realize it.

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.

[mindslight]

> So you're back to to "fallacy" of market efficiency, expecting private actors to advocate to foot taxes with an expected ROI from capturing the value delivered

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.

[mothballed]

>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.

[mindslight]

All you've seem to have done here is push your own favored framework, and then argue reflexively based on it. My initial point was that the assumptions of your framework would seem to be incorrect. You merely translated my point into your framework, and then blamed me for the resulting logical contradiction.

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.