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Another View of the FCC and Spectrum Scarcity
Bob_Robertson writes "Tim Swanson on the Ludwig von Mises Institute site is asking, has the FCC put itself out of a job by allowing the 47-49 MHz, 2.4 GHZ and other "open spectrum" frequencies, thus focusing innovation and development into making fantastic use of limited resources? The basis of the FCC's existence is "scarcity", so what happens when there isn't any scarcity any more? LVMI has looked into the FCC before."
prefer to think of it as "reducing the workload."
Note to mods: I'm probably being sarcastic.
Support your local pirate radio, much like http://www.freakradio.org/
"Simplify, simplify, simplify!" Thoreau
The article ignores the fact that the FCC is not a business. It is largely a regulatory agency there to ensure that the spectrums don't get abused and misused. As long as people are using the spectrums, the FCC will be there to regulate them.
Free market, you're my hero! You've rescued pensions and defeated the evil of public water in South America, saved the airlines and the public schools here in the US and done countless acts of good around the world! Now that you have set your sights on the public airwaves, I'm sure we will all have gigabit wireless within a few months.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
FDR's Thought Police: Still Alive, Still Censoring
The FCC might seem like it's putting itself out of business by deregulating some bandwidth but the nature of radio is that those frequencies are scarce. No matter how much digital encoding and adaptive technology that is used there will still be legit uses for wireless analog communications at high power. Therefore there will always be a need for some regulation of the wireless spectrum and a need for some governing body to decide what is allowed where and how much.
Now, the question is, will the FCC become irrelevant. Well, if current governmental trends continue then no. The current feds will NOT give up their current moral valve that the FCC provides. The FCC may become absorbed by the FTC or the Dept of Homeland Defense, or it's responsibilites split between them but be sure that the government will not give up it's eminent domain over the radio spectrum because they want to control availability and content.
Another thing to consider is all the other nations that have not given up their regulations over wireless communications. The brits still license TV recievers and most nations license their Ham Radio operators. The FCC will not disappear until there is no international need for them.
So sez KC2MMW.
73's
Oh, I see... there are fewer IPv6 addresses than grains of sand, except there are more. WTF?
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
So far it looks like the FCC's current regulation of radio frequencies is: 1) Make it impossible for small radio stations to exist on the FM band. 2) Make it easy for Mega-conglomerates to control all broadcasts on the FM band. 3) See above rules and swap FM for whatever band you are talking about. The reality is a pretty grim one. The FCC hasn't opened the small footprint radio station applications in many years, so smaller voices are not being given the opportunity to speak. I do not however think that the FCC should be shut down. The FCC needs to be about seeing that access to means of communication is not monopolized by a few commercial interests. What the FCC, and their "sponsors" don't seem to understand is that competition really is good for everybody.
I'm a happy pessimist. I expect and prepare for the worst, when it doesn't happen I am pleasantly surprised.
Seriously, it's a bad article that is not well thought out.
Considering if I pick up my 2.4Ghz telephone to take a call, it completely whacks out my 802.11 wireless internet signal... It doesn't seem at all clear to me that scarcity of the frequency was created by the FCC. Rather it was the FCC which was created to manage the already existing reality.
Now it's true that the FCC has gone beyond the boundaries of what otherwise rationale people would consider prudent. But that's not the focal point of this article.
It ain't easy though.
Here's a highly recommended book by the way, unfortunately out of print "No Way The Nature of the Impossible" by Philip J. Davis, David Park (ISBN 0716719665). It consists of a series of essays on the concept of "Impossible" in various fields such as physics, mathematics, biology, mountaineering and so forth.
It's relevant because in the essay on public policy, the writer points out that it is impossible to implement any policy a bureaucracy doesn't like, because the bureaucracy is your only means to implement it. One reason that the government grew so much under FDR (other than the war and the surplus of labor during the Depression) was that in order to make changes, he found it easier to create entire new bureaucracies rather than to try to change the old ones, which he left to slowly wither on the vine. It isn't just a liberal phenomenon either: my wife served (in an extremely lowly capacity) in the Reagan administration for a while, and the period was remarkable for the rate at which government and the various private entities that feed off of it grew. DC was busting at the seams after a couple of years. No surprise that deficits are through the roof these days and that we need a whole new cabinet level agency post 9/11 either.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Don't forget that the Bill of Rights was written to stop the new Federal government from infringing on the powers of the existing States.
The principles of the founding of the United States is one of "federalism". A weak central government of explicitly enumerated powers (article 1 section 8), separate from the several States, with their governments of general powers rather than enumerated.
That there were States with their own constitutions limiting their general powers is a testament to the fact that government at any level must be restrained or it will abuse its citizens.
The fact that certain states did indeed regulate speech, recognize religion(s), restrict firearms and all the other things that the Fed.Gov is prohibitted doing in the Bill Of Rights is just part of what the Founders lived with.
Some states were utterly against restricting the right of free speech, others utterly against having their power to restrict speech infringed upon. The compromise was to simply prohibit the Fed.Gov from interfering with the states one way or another at all.
Sounds like a great compromise to me. I wish we could all compromise by simply abolishing the power of government to make the decision for us. Whatever that decision is.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
I hope Mr. Swanson doesn't consider himself an RF Engineer - quotes like this one are laughable: The following quote is wrong on so many levels I don't know where to start.
- I'll wait for the actual 30Mbps, theoretical Mbps's are useless to me.
- Is that 1 Watt of power transmitting that theoretical 30Mbps EIRP, or the power at the transmitter? What antennas are specified? 1 Watt into a 30 dBi antenna is the same as 1 kW into a 0 dBi antenna.
- Excuse me? The FCC can't detect it? Huh? Even with 'normal' DSS, it's detectable. If your 'power-footprint' is so impressive, how can your receivers detect it?
- The FCC can't regulate it? Double huh? If it's between 9 kHz and 300 GHz, it's already regulated. It may not require a license, but it is regulated.
What a joke. Reminds me of the super-efficient modulation method VMSK debunked by Uber Nerd Phil Karn, KA9Q.Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
> Exposing kids to everything allows them to become well-rounded
> adults who are aware of everything.
You didn't have to say you weren't actually a parent, that boneheaded remark was enough to tell everyone that you not only aren't one, you have zero experience with them and that you probably had a screwed up childhood yourself, so you have no reference points. Hell, you have probably never even had to teach an adult anything if you can make that statement.
Yes, children need to be exposed to all sorts of things if they are to become responsible citizens when they grow up. But at the appropriate time. Children AREN'T just small adults. The higher reasoning skills take time to develop. Some concepts need to be taught after others are fully understood.
Example. C wouln't exactly be the first choice to teach someone to program who had never done any codeing at all, but a teacher doing so would be merely odd who did so. (Might be trying a radical new technique.) But if that teacher then extected said student to figure out the hairier bits of pointers in the first week they would be zarking mad.
Same with kids. Advanced concepts in love/romance/sexuality/relationships can't be properly understood without a good foundation in both teaching and experience dealing with simpler relationships among family and friends. Not to mention that their hardware isn't properly configured (both the obvious physical changes to the external hardware and the ones you obviously have no concept of in the ol wetware) until fairly close to the modern legal adult line. Most of the readers here on slashdot, hell the whole world, are adults still trying to figure this stuff out, expecting a five year old to understand is just idiocy.
Democrat delenda est
Wait—you're attempting to discredit an entire line of political and economic analysis by quoting an unrelated statement made by the emperor of Austria early in the last century? And pointing to the abysmal judgement of a political leader (an emperor, at that), as an argument for the virtues of top-down government control?
If only there were a "non-sequiturial, unintentionally ironic, ad hominem argument" moderation option.
Milton Friedman says that during Reagan's reign, government socialist activity dropped. Link here.
What can I say? I can't argue with an Authority like Friedman. All I can say is what my eyes saw, which was DC experiencing massive, explosive growth. Now depending on your definition of "government socialist activity", it may well have been reduced. But unless there was some other major industry exists in DC other than federal government and toadying to the federal government, I'd have to say in my unscientific mind it seems likely that the sum of the activities in those area increased. They can't all have been selling coke to Marion Barry.
By the way, I prefer to think of our presidents as "serving terms" rather than reigning. Small-r republican tastes I guess.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.