Volcano Monitoring and the Government’s Role
In Gov. Jindal’s response to President Obama’s State of the Union address a while back, Jindal belittled the volcano monitoring program saying, “Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.” Now that Mount Redoubt in Alaska has erupted many people are pointing out the importance of volcano monitoring. Coming from Lousianna, Gov. Jindal should know better about the value of government services.
To make it clear, scientists had suspected conditions for an eruption based on that volcano monitoring program. And they were able to detect the eruption when it happened at night when it could not be seen. This is important since the smoke and ash from volcanos is very abrasive pulverized pumice. This has destroyed jet engines before and reduced large aircraft to gliders. The FAA’s air traffic controllers and the National Weather Service (NWS) were able to isolate that airspace and protect flights both to Alaskan airports and transit flights to Asia.
But the interesting point that’s not yet being made is this volcano monitoring is a prime example of an non-market value. No private company sees a profit motive in doing monitoring. This is an example of something useful and valuable - it probably saved several flights and their passengers earlier this week - but is not provided by the free market. Market-based economics is valuable. But it is one tool, and not the only tool, in providing useful and necessary goods and services.
One part of the role of government is as a provider of extra-market goods and services (primarily services). Providing the military for defense, Coast Guard for recovery of people and vessels, volcano monitoring, air quality monitoring, and many other services. The one I use daily and rely on when flying is weather services. Even the commercial weather services rely on the weather data collection, observations and predictions that the NWS provides. For example hurricane forecasts have made storm avoidance possible. Fifty years ago this was not true.
Reagan famously said, “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem”. But government is only the problem when it is preventing us from doing something we want to do. When government provides us with necessary services we can’t get elsewhere, we tend to consider it our right. Reagan’s quote is catchy and any institution run by people can have problems. But both the GOP and Gov. Jindal ignore the valuable and necessary services that the government provides that protect our life, our well-being, and our economy.