alt Hacker NewsCollecting and distributing weather data is a canonical example of a government function, even for the most ardent pro-market believers out there.
I almost wrote "even for the most asinine pro-market believers," but that's not true. There are plenty of pro-market believers so asinine that they can't even describe the classes of problems that markets are known to fail at solving – weather data collection falling into several of such classes.
> Collecting and distributing weather data is a canonical example of a government function
Heck, it's not merely "canonical", it's goshdang prehistoric: Governments have been involved in weather tracking (and responding to bad events) for more than five thousand years!
I'm having a hard time thinking of any task with a better pedigree, aside from adjudicating disputes or waging war.