That’s preposterous! I presume that the German people have already paid for the German Weather Service, and their app, with their taxes. In general it seems suspect to have companies make money off of repackaging data created with public funds...
Glad the US isn’t the only place with the privatize everything problem? (Please allow me to be hyperbolic.)
Is it fair that public funds are used to destroy one company’s business? That seems like a path to corruption. Imagine in the US if Democrats or Republicans were able to take reprisals against uncooperative businesses once they won power...
> Is it fair that public funds are used to destroy one company’s business?
When it costs basically nothing to do, yes! Turbotax anyone? Should governments be forced to make doing taxes hard just to give companies a chance to make big bucks for doing your taxes? That is nonsense!
"Fair" or not, if there's only one business i.e. a monopoly, then it ought to be socialized. Is it "fair" to profiteer because you're the only provider of something people need?
(This is a very old question - note the vitriol reserved for millers of flour in the Canterbury Tales.)
> Is it "fair" to profiteer because you're the only provider of something people need?
Generally No it shouldn't be socialised. If it isn't a monopoly of efficiency another company should be able to provide a product/service at a lower price. All you are doing it indirectly passing on the cost to the tax payer by subsidising it.
Obviously there are some exceptions to this depending on things like politics of a region (where a resource/service can be monopolised) e.g. rural areas. That is where a cooperative run by the local community might be better.
Why are you talking about profiteering? This was just a business doing it’s thing.
State sponsored enterprise is what happens in autocratic countries. At the whim of the ruler enterprise is expropriated, whenever something is seen as adequately tempting.
You may think some ill-informed voting public is an okay form of autocratic governance because you’d slap a ‘democracy’ label on it, but it would result in widespread expropriation of businesses by government officials who would consequently wield immense power. The economy would collapse because the incentive to outperform would be gone. There would be a brain drain from private enterprise into government bureaucracy. This is the principle reason why socialist and autocratic governments have relatively unproductive economies. When The People’s Republic of China realized this and permitted private ownership and enterprise, their economy took off as people found an incentive to work harder...
>State sponsored enterprise is what happens in autocratic countries. At the whim of the ruler enterprise is expropriated, whenever something is seen as adequately tempting.
Oh boy, you are not gonna like it when you hear about the "military industrial complex".
>The economy would collapse because the incentive to outperform would be gone.
You speak as if huge chunks of our society haven't been socialized with great results. You want to re-privatize the fire department, so they have more incentive to put out fires? Privatize the police force, so they have more incentive to stop crimes? It's not so straightforward as "private enterprise = proper incentive structure" - it's possible to engineer incentive structures with better outcomes than the free market.
Glad the US isn’t the only place with the privatize everything problem? (Please allow me to be hyperbolic.)