From: Tim Bates (tbates@karri.bhs.mq.edu.au)
Date: Sat Dec 26 1998 - 23:03:10 MST
Hal Finney asked what those who believe in absolutist notions of property
think about the following:
>the radio spectrum ... Spectrum will go to the highest bidder.
This is how spectrum is handled in New Zealand and also some cellular
spectrum in the USA etc.As an absolutist I think that this is fine.
The question is who receives the licence fees? I would like to see the
annual fees go direct to the citizens of the underlying countries.
Effectively we are creating a right to broadcast out of many people's
voluntary forgoing the right to originate EMF noise. the individuals
creating the right should receive the reward. this also gets rid of the
political influence problem.
>It's complicated, because there are a number of technical factors which
>have to be considered: frequency and bandwidth, power levels, location,
>modulation and antenna design, etc.
Not really. Just auction the spectrum. let the buyers figure out who has
what aerial and where abouts are the hills or clouds or whatever.
>Today, we mostly handle this by government regulation. This means that
>frequencies tend to go to those with political pull rather than to the
>most beneficial uses.
>A market would be a superior approach.
Absolutists would probably agree. Certainly I do.
cheers,
tim
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 14:50:06 MST