[524] in libertarians
Re: Free Radio Berkeley
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Vernon Imrich)
Wed Dec 21 14:46:45 1994
To: libertarians@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 1994 14:43:49 EST
From: Vernon Imrich <vimrich@MIT.EDU>
|> | 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.
Another principle, which would seem to apply here, is that of abandoned
property reverting to first come first served. The frequency this guy was
transmitting on was unused in the area of its range.
Also, though he talked about "low income people" not being able to get
licences, he's obviously got enough money to operate the receiver so
I doubt he'd be asking for a mandated channel. It is unclear what
a channel of such limited range would be worth on the open market. It
is similar to the FDA driving up drug costs through its procedures.
Someone making the argument that FDA is being discriminatory to low
income drug makers is not necessarily making a claim for a subsidy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Vernon Imrich | market failure, n. The inabilty of the |
| MIT OE, Rm 5-329b | market to recover from a blow by |
| Cambridge, MA 02139 | intervention. (The Exchange) |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
