wrote:

That being said, the AccuWeather situation is in my mind quite
different because the NWS has been around since forever ago and one can
make the argument that fundamental weather forecasting is a matter of
public welfare no different from national defense or fire departments.

I would add to your argument that the NWS provides the information that
Accuweather etc. are selling. Thus, we're already paying for that
information in our tax dollars.

If Accuweather etc. were synthesizing the information completely on their
own, I'd be more sympathetic.

[Though then of course the issue of the age of the NWS would become more
significant.]

The change here is the Internet

I agree. We're seeing this in many industries, where the many-many
communication capabilities of the Internet are eliminating (or at least
"impacting") those that previously served as "middlemen" between provider
and consumer of some service or product.

[On the other hand, some have done quite well becoming a new sort of
"middleman" (think Amazon or EBay or Halfprice, for example). It'll be
interesting to see how that works out for them in the long term.]

Your example of municipal wi-fi is one that still sees me on the fence.
Consider the Cable providers and RBOCs. They were assigned local
monopolies in agreement with municipalities. But if the investment
required for the service had been sufficiently low, would it have made more
sense for the municipality to do it itself? Or would it have made more
sense to permit unbridled competition?

And where is the line between, for example, roads and non-physical forms of
"connectivity"?

- Andrew