• Embed Doc
  • Copy Link
  • Readcast
  • Collections
  • CommentGo Back
Download
 
In Political Economy 
F r o m t h e L u d w i g v o n M i s e s I n s t i tu t e
 The Spectrum Should Be PrivateProperty: TheEconomics, History,and Future ofWireless Technology 
By B.K. Marcus
Is the radio spectrum a unique resource that belongsto the public, or can it be privately owned like any other good or service? Most people assume that publicownership is axiomatic—a starting point rather thanthe historical consequence of special interests pretendingto misunderstand economics. This is wholly incorrect.
 
Copyright © 2004 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, 518 West Magnolia Avenue, Auburn, Alabama36832-4528. All rights reserved. Written permission must be secured from the publisher to use orreproduce any part of 
Essays in Political Economy
, except for brief quotations in reviews or articles.B.K. Marcus is an independent scholar in Charlottesville, Virginia. His August 2004 article,“The Monetary Economics of Thurston Howell III,” became the most viewed article in the historyof Mises.org, while his article on election markets sparked a wide discussion of the relationship between prediction and pricing. See his website (www.bkmarcus.com), or send him mail
: bkmarcus
@mises.org).
 
The Spectrum Should Be PrivateProperty:TheEconomics, History, and FutureofWireless Technology 
B.K. Marcus
theories: the shallow theoristasks
cui bono
?—who benefits?—and then assumes the hidden beneficiaries were responsible;the deep theorist also asks
cuibono?
 but then looks for docu-mentary evidence that the bene-ficiaries really were pulling thestrings.“Scholarship,” Murray Roth- bard quipped, “is essentiallySo who benefits from theUnited States government’s cen-tral regulation of Americanradio spectrum? One answer isclearly that the federal govern-ment itself benefits. Wheneverallocation is moved from eco-nomic to political means, politi-cians will gain in a variety of ways: monetary and non-mon-etary, legal and extralegal. And central regulation of anycommunications mediummeans that censors benefit fromthe political control they’redenied under a private propertyregime. In 1974,
 FCC v. Pacifica Foundation
(better known as theGeorge Carlin “Seven DirtyWords” case) the Supreme Courtdecided in favor of “decency”restrictions in broadcasting,which for three decades now has“established the FCC as thelargest censorship body in theworld.”
3
(Of course, Janet Jack-son has replaced George Carlinas the icon of broadcast inde-cency.) Another beneficiary of regu-lation—obvious to free marketeconomists but surprising to
T
he human right of a freepress depends upon thehuman right of privateproperty in newsprint.”—Mur-ray N. Rothbard
1
Is the radio spectrum aunique resource that belongs tothe public, or can it be privatelyowned like any other good orservice? Most people assumethat public ownership isaxiomatic—a starting pointrather than the historical conse-quence of special interests pre-tending to misunderstand eco-nomics.This is wholly incorrect. Andgiven the mass clamor for wire-less services, the full-scale privati-zation of this resource is essential.In this essay, I will review, from aRothbardian perspective, the his-tory, economics, and potentialfuture of American wireless tech-nology, and explain why wemust abandon current policy.
T
HE
C
ONSPIRACY
Murray Rothbard made thefollowing distinction betweenshallow and deep conspiracyconfirming your early paranoiathrough a deeper factual analy-sis.”
2
Who benefits fromthe government’scentral regulation of theradio spectrum?The government itself.
1
Murray N. Rothbard,
 For a New  Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto
.1973.
2
From a lecture at Polytechnic Uni- versity in the 1970s on the economicsof labor and labor regulation. Iassume it was part of Rothbard’s reg-ular teaching duties for basic econom-ics. You can download the audio filehere (http://www.mises.org/multi-media/mp3/rothbard/R6-16m.mp3).
 
3
EFF “Legal Cases—
 FCC v Pacifica
(George Carlin ‘7 Dirty Words’ Case)” Archive (http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/FCC_v_Pacifica/).
of 00

Leave a Comment

You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...
You must be to leave a comment.
Submit
Characters: ...