"Andrew Gideon" wrote in message
online.com...
Matt Whiting wrote:

Well, one out of two ain't bad. Financial institutions don't create
wealth either.

In an indirect sense, by helping move capital to where it can be best
leveraged, they do.

I'm not sure how this applies to our tax dollars paying for data that
companies want to sell to us again. Someone else on this thread mentioned
Jeppeson, which I think is a useful model. Jepp does a *lot* to add value
to the data for which we've paid. They don't complain that the government
sells charts; they simply sell better (at least in the opinion of enough
people to keep them in business) charts.

Exactly.

At least some of the weather companies do provide valuable packaging. I
don't happen to recall the maker of the unit, but I like the software
provided to pilots at an FBO I frequent. There's nothing there I cannot
get elsewhere, but the packaging - really, just the UI - is much cleaner
than the NSW's sites provide.

The FSS briefer can be using RAW data that's four hours old. Also, their
dissemination capacity is minimal.

What companies like Jeppesen, XM, and Meteorlogix provide is a whole slew
of enhanced, timely, value-addded services.


Then there are the services that combine weather with flight planning,
which
is a significant value added and well beyond what the government does.

But rather than actually earn their fees, some companies would prefer to
whine and try to take the product of our tax dollars and sell them to us
again. It's nothing but a con job at that level: selling something to the
people that already paid for it.

IIUIC, the taxpayers paid only for the raw data collection.