Judah writes:

Do you equate charging a fee for service to genocidal murder?

In terms of how governments are allowed to slip towards dictatorships, yes.
The Nazis came to power in large part through complacency, and the willingness
of the people to trade freedom for a (false) sense of "security."

If the government were intent upon enslaving and/or murdering all pilots,
my feelings would be different. But the reality is that they want to recoup
some of the costs associated with providing weather and traffic services by
charging a fee for said provided service.

They are already doing that, else the services would not exist. It's only a
question of who is charged for the costs.

It's important to find a balance between charging all people for a service,
including those who never use it, and charging only the people who actually
use it. The former is unfair to some extent (although the per capita cost may
be very small), and the latter can be unfair if the charges per capita turn
out to be extremely high.

Suppose you have a service X that is used only by GA pilots. Should GA pilots
alone pay for the service, at $1000 per GA pilot (and zero for everyone else),
or should all entities operating aircraft pay for it, at $10 per GA pilot (and
$10 for all airline passengers), or should all taxpayers pay for it, at $0.01
per pilot (and $0.01 for everyone else)? Where do you draw the line?

While I wish that these services might still be given away, the reality is
that the best that I can hope for is that the fee is equitable and fair,
and that they don't try to gouge me just because they listen to people like
Manix and think that anyone who flies must be extraordinarily wealthy.

Not extraordinarily wealthy, but much more wealthy than average, especially if
they fly more than a few hours per year.

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