Friday
Santorum the Europhile
There are plenty of reasons to loathe Sen. Santorum (R-Pa.). But somehow he always manages to come up with new ones. With that in mind, I'd like to prevent two news stories to compare and contrast.
Going chronologically, Alex at Marginal Revolution* linked, back in February to a Financial Times article on differences in the way government generated information is controlled and distributed in the United States versus Europe. Counter-intuitively, the United States system is described as "a benign form of informational socialism," while the European nations have a tightly controlled system of copyrights and user fees. The article focuses in particular on the free distribution of weather information by U.S. agencies It finds that the money invested by the U.S. government in weather information generates thirty-nine times its cost in social wealth, while the money invested by European governments only generates seven times its cost. So it seems from this article that the United States system is a better way to deal with this particular industry than the European one.
The new article (via Josh Marshall) is about how Santorum wants to ban government agencies from providing this information for free to the public (the government agencies are of course funded by taxes). If the public can't get it for free, AccuWeather will make more money. AccuWeather is based in Pennsylvania and is a Santorum contributor (albeit a small one). Despite the fact that the current system seems to be providing a large benefit to the U.S. overall, Santorum wants to scrap it. The bill is counterproductive and asinine; hopefully this is the last we'll hear of it.
*Unlike some people (the title of the linked post referred to the wrong one for approx. the first 24 hours it was up) I can keep their contributors straight.
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Going chronologically, Alex at Marginal Revolution* linked, back in February to a Financial Times article on differences in the way government generated information is controlled and distributed in the United States versus Europe. Counter-intuitively, the United States system is described as "a benign form of informational socialism," while the European nations have a tightly controlled system of copyrights and user fees. The article focuses in particular on the free distribution of weather information by U.S. agencies It finds that the money invested by the U.S. government in weather information generates thirty-nine times its cost in social wealth, while the money invested by European governments only generates seven times its cost. So it seems from this article that the United States system is a better way to deal with this particular industry than the European one.
The new article (via Josh Marshall) is about how Santorum wants to ban government agencies from providing this information for free to the public (the government agencies are of course funded by taxes). If the public can't get it for free, AccuWeather will make more money. AccuWeather is based in Pennsylvania and is a Santorum contributor (albeit a small one). Despite the fact that the current system seems to be providing a large benefit to the U.S. overall, Santorum wants to scrap it. The bill is counterproductive and asinine; hopefully this is the last we'll hear of it.
*Unlike some people (the title of the linked post referred to the wrong one for approx. the first 24 hours it was up) I can keep their contributors straight.
