[523] in libertarians
Re: Free Radio Berkeley
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kevin THEOBALD)
Wed Dec 21 11:24:53 1994
From: theobald@duke.cs.mcgill.ca (Kevin THEOBALD)
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 1994 11:23:48 -0500
In-Reply-To: Adam Dershowitz's message [Re: Free Radio Berkeley] as of Dec 21, 10:04
To: dersh@MIT.EDU (Adam Dershowitz), libertarians@MIT.EDU
In your message [Re: Free Radio Berkeley]
+------------------------------
| At 4:23 PM 12/20/94, Kevin THEOBALD wrote:
[...]
| >It's hard to know whether or not to support this guy. Some of his
| >rhetoric, such as equating FCC licenses with charging money to set up a
| >soap box, makes me wonder how he would act if radio frequencies were
| >allocated by a free market. Since radio frequencies would still cost
| >money, would he still complain about how only the wealthy have access?
| >
| > Kevin
|
|
| Wouldn't allocating them by free markey really mean no licenses at all?
| Anyone can transmit where and when they want. No cost except to buy your
| transmitter.
|
| --Adam
I believe most free-market advocates support some kind of property rights,
whereby frequencies are owned. If I own a frequency, you can't transmit
on that frequency without my permission. Ideally, frequencies should have
been allocated in the same way as land: if the land is unused, I can
grab it (by actually farming it; I can't just claim that 100,000 acres are
mine if I'm not actually using it. Given the way things evolved, probably
the best way to get out of the current system would be to auction off the
frequencies. The FCC would be reduced to simply policing the frequencies
(stopping trespassers) and would no longer regulate content.
Kevin
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"Don't I sometimes get called a Nazi? Yes, name-calling, in which
conservatives such as myself are loathe to indulge, is a favorite
tactic of the liberals. I have often been called a Nazi, and, although
it is unfair, I don't let it bother me. I don't let it bother me for
one simple reason. No one has ever had a fantasy about being tied to a
bed and sexually ravished by someone dressed as a liberal."
--- P. J. O'Rourke, "Give War A Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of
Mankind's Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice and Alcohol-Free Beer"
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