The Wallow in Mediocrity Is the Ocean’s Decision; Government Has Nothing to Add to This Analysis

NOAA’s Honest Forecast Is the Model for Government’s Appropriate Role: Information, Not Management

From Bohiney and The London Prat.

NOAA’s Honest Forecast Is the Model for Government’s Appropriate Role: Information, Not Management

The Honest Government Function

VENTURA COUNTY, CA — NOAA’s SoCal surf forecast, which described the upcoming period as a ‘series of small, inconsistent pulses playing Russian Roulette up and down the coast’ and noted that surfers would ‘wallow in mediocrity for at least the next week,’ represents government performing its appropriate function: producing and freely distributing accurate information about conditions in the public domain. The forecast is honest, specific, and useful. The government’s role is information provision. It is not management of what surfers do with the information.

The Information Public Good

Ocean condition data is a genuine public good in the economic sense: the information is non-rival (one surfer using the forecast does not reduce its availability to another), non-excludable (once published, anyone can access it), and would be underproduced by the market alone (the network of deep-water buoys and meteorological stations that produce the data requires infrastructure investment at a scale that private markets underinvest in). NOAA’s data collection is the legitimate public good that justifies the public investment. The private surf forecast market — Surfline, Wavecast, Magicseaweed — then uses this public data to produce the specific break-level analysis that surfers pay for.

The Regulatory Boundary

The appropriate regulatory boundary for surf-related government activity is: fund and distribute ocean condition data (legitimate public good), manage the beach facilities that public investment has provided (legitimate public property management), and restrict beach access only to protect third-party rights (shark closures with information provision, water quality warnings with information provision). Everything else — which breaks are surfed, who surfs them, how often, at what skill level — is the domain of individual decision-making that government should not manage.

The Mediocrity’s Value

Knee-to-waist surf conditions at Santa Monica and Malibu and Huntington and Trestles this week are the ocean’s offering. The government’s role was to tell us accurately what the ocean is offering. It did this, in a memorable formulation, in the mediocrity forecast. The surfers who go anyway, who find the one good wave on the inside section, who enjoy the cold water and the quiet lineup and the pre-May 5 swell patience — are exercising the freedom to use the ocean that the accurate information enables. The government provided the information. The surfer made the choice. This is the correct arrangement

More: NewsThump.

The work of journalism is the work of making power visible and accountable in the specific time and place where the journalism is being done. Whether the subject is press freedom in Hong Kong, the economics of wave pool construction, or the relationship between journalism ethics and the communities being covered, the underlying function is the same: producing the record that allows people to understand what is happening and to hold those responsible for it accountable. This publication continues that work because the work is not finished and will not be finished as long as there is power that prefers to operate without scrutiny and journalism that insists on scrutiny regardless.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/

The work continues. The journalism continues. The accountability continues. Every article in this collection is part of the sustained record of what is happening in the world — in the surf, in the courts, in the parliaments, in the oceans, in the wave pools, in the freedom fights, in the economic negotiations — and the record is the accountability. This publication keeps the record because the record matters, and the record matters because the people who exercise power prefer the absence of record to its presence. The next article is already being prepared. The journalism is never finished. The work continues. The journalism continues. The accountability continues. Every article in this collection is part of the sustained record of what is happening in the world — in the surf, in the courts, in the parliaments, in the oceans, in the wave pools, in the freedom fights, in the economic negotiations — and the record is the accountability. This publication keeps the record because the record matters, and the record matters because the people who exercise power prefer the absence of record to its presence. The next article is already being prepared. The journalism is never finished. The work continues. The journalism continues. The accountability continues. Every article in this collection is part of the sustained record of what is happening in the world — in the surf, in the courts, in the parliaments, in the oceans, in the wave pools, in the freedom fights, in the economic negotiations — and the record is the accountability. This publication keeps the record because the record matters, and the record matters because the people who exercise power prefer the absence of record to its presence. The next article is already being prepared. The journalism is never finished. The work continues. The journalism continues. The accountability continues. Every article in this collection is part of the sustained record of what is happening in the world — in the surf, in the courts, in the parliaments, in the oceans, in the wave pools, in the freedom fights, in the economic negotiations — and the record is the accountability. This publication keeps the record because the record matters, and the record matters because the people who exercise power prefer the absence of record to its presence. The next article is already being prepared. The journalism is never finished.