From: VERITAS@U.WASHINGTON.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gis
Subject: Data costs -- a liberterian viewpoint
Date: 17 Nov 92 00:52:00 GMT
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Private firms have a very small system to operate within, generally their
customers, their stockholders and their employees.  They derive little
benefit from altruism and philanthropy.  Governments, on the other
hand, operate in a larger world that makes altruism and philanthropy (or
occasionally subsidy) very real positive mechanisms for creating value
and economic well-being for their constituents.

In the United States we periodically send hundreds of lawyers, golfers,
actors, used cars salesmen, and a few professors to Washington DC
where they get to play international geo-politician for a few years.
Unfortunately, some of these people also get to play domestic macro-
economist.  Their idea of macro-economist is more akin to an
unenlightened corporate book-keeper than to a guiding force for a
vibrant economy.  Our government has destroyed LANDSAT with cost
recovery policies and opened an opportunity for SPOT (with its
admittedly superior technology ) to charge its outrageous prices.  The
USGS topographic sheets have increased in price over the years far
faster than inflation, and the GPO (Government Printing Office) ordered
"competitive" pricing for its eclectic, socially and technically-oriented
publications.  These three examples show how government can very
effectively constrain the flow of useful, if specialized, information to
their citizens and friends abroad.

Against these examples of misguided government information constipation
we have the counter-examples of TIGER (US Census Bureau) and DCW
(Digital Chart of the World).  TIGER files, a crude but comprehensive
digital mapping product with address-matching capabilities, created
scores if not hundreds of small businesses and thousands of jobs with a
good economic multiplier.  All this is due to the free flow of reason-
ably priced (or free) digital data.

Information has value to society only when it is used.  Those that use
the data may add value to that information, and if enlightened or
entrepreneurial, pass it on to others.  No government on the face of
this earth has the abilities that small businesses have to utilize
information in new and very exciting ways, and at a profit.  Injection
of free information into an economy is fully equivalent to the creation
of capital, a point completely missed in the Old World.

If the Ordinance Survey chooses (or is forced to) play King Midas, the
people of the UK will suffer for it.  The threat of a dumping suit with
GATT is a real comic farce.  If the lawyers for British and European
agencies don't want the United States to "dump" information -- fine, we
can use our data internally and let the Europeans pay what their
governments demand.  Perhaps this policy will produce a new class of
criminal, the data pusher.  "Say buddy, wanna DEM?  How 'bout a
digitally enhanced orthophotoquad?"


For background in this network discussion one might read:  David
Rhind, War and Peace: GIS Data as a Commodity, GIS World, vol 5,
no 9, Nov '92 pp 37-39.  Director-General Rhind is a distinguished
scholar and,  no doubt, an immensely capable administrator.  The
government mandate for "full cost recovery" is responsible for the
outrageous prices that Peter Halls and many others have noted.

Rhind's comments on the future are his own responsibility.  These
predictions clearly assume a data environment and market that is
dominated by government agencies and shaped by "national and
international laws and conventions".  His predictions include (with my
emphasis) this bone-chilling sentence:  "The need for equity ensures that
UNAUTHORIZED USE OF DATA AND INFORMATION MUST BE STAMPED OUT to protect
customers who behave legally and fairly".  Customers are those that are
capable of paying government-set prices.  Legal behavior means adherence
to laws passed by the government to protect its own interests.  And
fairly means in accordance with our (government and their "customer"
elite) conception of proper behavior.

I  would prefer the cheerful anarchy of an uncontrolled data-sharing
society to one dominated by governments that force their "correct"
policies on the society.  Remember that a successful black market
means the government has failed to nurture the proper production and
distribution of goods.  Surely there must be a common sensible ground
here, somewhere.   Perhaps government's place is to regulate and
create standards, not to become a profit center.

                        Charlie Hendricksen  veritas@u.washington.edu
Newsgroups: comp.infosystems.gis