From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rms2g@virginia.edu)
Date: Tue Aug 27 2002 - 09:48:25 MDT
Kevin Bluck wrote:
If you wish to adopt a thoroughly libertarian position on this issue, you
must also be willing to accept the natural consequences. If anybody can say
anything they want at any time on the airwaves, and the FCC has no business
regulating that, then the FCC *also* has no business allocating spectrum.
They have no business eliminating signal interference. They have no
business setting technical broadcast standards.
### Airwaves can be owned. The area owned can be precisely measured,
excludability applies, the standard ways of dealing with property can be
applied. Just as there is no need for the Department of Agriculture to
"allocate" farmland, there is no need to allocate spectrum . Spectrum can be
bought, auctioned, traded on the commodities market, even futures could be
offered, options to cause interference to specified levels can be exchanged.
The heavy-handed legal edifice with Orwellian undertones is unnecessary.
--------
Or, for that matter, Jerry
Falwell or similar religious fanatics acquiring their own high-power
transmitters in key markets and "stepping on" any episode with sentiments
they didn't like.
### I am sorry to say that, but you seemingly do not have the faintest idea
of libertarianism. The inviolability of private property is in much higher
esteem by libertarians than by the statists. Therefore, if Jerry Falwell
were to infringe on other people's airwaves in a more libertarian state, he
would be sued and fined, all the way to the hell where he belongs. As it is
now, he and other fanatics would only need to bend the ear of some FCC
commissioners to get broadcasts off the air, no need for investing in
expensive jamming gear.
-----
The raison d'etre of the FCC is the idea that the airwaves constitute a
public resource. They belong "to the people". In the US, the federal
government holds them in trust for all Americans, and through the FCC
administers their use in a manner that maximizes the public benefit --- in
theory, of course.
### It baffles me - why don't you suggest that the Department of Agriculture
hold farmland as a "public resource"? After all, this is what the Soviets
did. The arguments the Stalinists used in the 1930's while Ukraine was being
starved were eerily similar to yours.
How can the FCC find out what is the "maximal public benefit"? Through focus
groups?
------
But, think about it. Lots of companies are making very good money, as a
direct consequence of being allowed to monopolize a national resource.
### Do I hear jealousy? Lots of companies are making money, is that bad?
If you think you own the airwaves (debatable but let's not quibble), the FCC
is a very bad way of administering them. Auctioning off (preferably
time-limited) slices of your property to the highest bidder with the right
of unrestricted resale is the best way of helping you make some good money,
too, just ask any landowner or antiques dealer.
------
One aspect of this is
the general agreement that generally offensive or obscene broadcasts should
not be tolerated.
### Ah, yes, how sweet it is to able to tell the "others" to just shut up.
In general we all benefit if all of us restrain this natural tendency to use
force as an argument - remember, any time you say you want somebody to stop
being tolerated, somebody else will use the same argument against you. Moral
symmetry at work.
-------
They were trying to make a big splash to titillate
existing and attract new listeners, solely for the purpose of lining their
own pockets.
### Gee, this is the kind of statement that the Director of the Polish
People's Republic State TV could have made, word for word. Luckily, that
republic is no more. Solely to make a buck, now that's unconscionable, must
be curtailed forthwith.
-----
Personally, I think the FCC is far too lax in making companies live up to
their public-interest promises. It seems logical to declare that companies
should not be "required" to broadcast "opposing viewpoints" not in line
with their own institutional views,
### Eh, why not? After all they don't own the airwaves, you do - so you can
tell them what to say.
------
speechmaker's voice, under penalty of jail. What is more, our anointed
speechmaker is permitted --- nay, assisted --- to monopolize that zone more
or less in perpetuity. .
### I agree it is stupid to assign spectrum in perpetuity - only
time-limited leases should be sold but without any indefinable "public
interest" strings attached.
-------
It is one thing to guarantee "free speech".
### Yeah, back home in the formerly communist Poland I also had guaranteed
free speech - as long as it was not "against the public interest". I am not
playing at rhetoric here - this was the actual wording of the law.
-------
It is quite another to require
the people of America to supply megaphones to anybody who demands one,
particularly when the motive is not so much "freedom of speech" but rather
to make a buck.
### But what's wrong with making a buck or two? Aren't you trying to pull
down some? You are not going to work only to serve the public interest, are
you? (Yes, I know, I keep hammering the moral symmetry thing all the time)
Rafal
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