Can the Spectrum Be Private?

I promised someone on the Peter Schiff Show yesterday that I would link to an article on the radio spectrum. Here it is.

guest

I’ve read a similar assessment, and I haven’t fully read the linked article.
I disagree with the assessment (which I’m assuming to be sufficiently similar, for my purposes, based on what little I’ve read) because the utility of the spectrum comes from the use of wave emitting private property. You can own whatever comes out of your wave emitting machine, but you can’t own whatever comes out of mine.
Chris

Wow, excellently written and researched article !!!
Unfortunately, it had a very disquieting effect on me. I hope that the internet freedom we now experience will not look like the quaint interlude of freedom which the early radio days were experiencing.
Contrary to popular belief, I don’t think that government and the economically slumping mass media industries are just goning to roll over and die, ceding gracefully the stage to the populace.
2014

Ah, the wave-emitting-private-property ie: broadcasting radio. Utility of spectrum comes from use of radio. And this is why you can’t own the spectrum. Sorry but itk. how it follows.
If I have the road and you have a car – you’ll pay me for the service of using my road. What you say is – I can’t own the road because you have to use a car (it’s a highway ) to actually make use of it. Doesn’t make much sense.
You can’t own air “tunnel” either with this approach. You need a plane to use it. So you can own merely a plane not the air “tunnel” – rubbish ..
Anonymous

The article is fascinating and raises interesting questions dividing libertarians, namely the propriety of possession for use and the “Lockean Proviso” vs. hereditary title in perpetuity which Locke and other classical liberals associated with paternalistic state power. I differ with Rothbardians largely because I side with the classical liberals on this point and also because a right to life is fundamental in my way of thinking.

The article’s notion of “technological unit” is interesting in this context.

The technological unit of a communications channel is a bit of information. While I transmitting a bit over a channel, I use the channel. While I use a channel, I own it, because a channel cannot transmit two bits simultaneously.

“Channel” is an abstraction within Claude Shannon’s Information Theory rather than anything in the physical world. A radio frequency may not be a “channel” in this sense. If we transmit two bits simultaneously with one radio frequency, we make two channels from the frequency. Marcus makes this point in the article.

If I cease using a channel long enough for anyone else to transmit a bit, I have abandoned the channel, so the next person to transmit a bit over the channel owns it.

Marcus himself asserts the propriety of possession for use when he says, “If the Navy wants to keep a certain frequency range, then it has to use it. Neither direct nor indirect seizure is enough to claim it as property.” [My emphasis.]

I agree with Marcus on this point, but I don’t apply the principle only to the Navy. Homesteading a channel entitles me to exclude others from its use only only while I use the channel myself.

The owner of a channel may not rent it, because to rent it, the owner must cease using the channel himself. When he ceases using the channel himself, he has abandoned it, does not own it and is not entitled to any of its value.

Using a channel to transmit a bit does not decrease or increase its capacity to transmit another bit, so a strict principle of possession for use creates neither a tragedy of the commons nor a distribution of the value of a user’s labor without a market exchange.

What does the Lockean Proviso imply in this scenario? Marcus suggests that it implies a central authority dictating terms of use, but he’s either mistaken or speaking from both sides of his mouth. A central authority can enforce the Lockean Proviso, but a central authority can also enforce title in perpetuity. Central authorities have enforced title in perpetuity historically. Locke’s Second Treatise itself is historical evidence of this enforcement. Hereditary title is not “property” in Locke’s analysis. It is “paternal power”.

If you and I and others choose to respect the Lockean Proviso, we develop a system of time-division multiplexing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-division_multiplexing

Time-division multiplexing involves a protocol roughly as follows.

I may use the channel exclusively for a unit of time. After this unit of time, the Lockean Proviso requries me to cease using it only long enough for someone waiting to use it to begin using it. If no one begins using it, I may use it for another unit of time.

If more than one person waits for the channel, they form a queue. When I have used the channel for a unit of time and want to use it again, I enter the queue.

This protocol cannot be too difficult to implement, because everyone using the internet uses it routinely. No one must dictate this protocol to anyone else. We may all agree to use it, because we all find it useful to us.

If the unit of time is small (say a millisecond) and if the queue is never very long, many people sharing the channel seem to use it exclusively.

If the channel’s total capacity is X bits per unit of time, and if N users routinely wait in the queue, then each user experiences a channel transmitting X/N bits per unit of time.

Increasing demand for a channel decreases each user’s throughput and thus increases the cost of using the channel rather than a different channel. This increase in cost occurs without any owner receiving a rent. All users have an incentive to find other channels to reduce this cost, and no user has an incentive to seek rents parasitically.

Title in perpetuity, by contrast, requires an owner receiving a rent to achieve the same incentive, and rents generally create an incentive to seek rents (to use the political process to monopolize the use of resources simply to create a parasitic opportunity).
Anonymous

You can own anything that you can forcibly exclude others from using. The question is: when should I yield to your force when I could resist instead?
guest

If one doesn’t own something, he has no authority to restrict its use.
Therefore, the concept of “possession for use” is nonsensical.
Further, the concept of “title in perpetuity” does not require paternalistic state power, but rather is a logical extension of the principle of self-ownership (or, if preferred, the principle that no one has the right to claim ownership of another).
Aside: That alternative explanation is useful for when people object to the concept of “self-ownership” on the grounds that they think it requires one to maintain the logically impossible position that two versions of the same person exists: one to claim ownership of one’s self, and the other to be claimed.
You could have some fun with this by claiming the objection reduces to absurdity, in that if one doesn’t own one’s self, then someone else may “possess” that person “for use”; But that would be slavery.
Anonymous

Saying that one has authority to use something, or to restrict its use, when he owns it is simply a tautology. That’s what “ownership” means.

We’re discussing when someone owns something. Possession for use is the principle that a person owns a resource when he has a personal use for it and no other person does and further that ownership expires when a person no longer has a personal use for it, assuming that nothing of the person’s labor remains mixed with the resource.

When one has mixed one’s labor with a resource, restricting its use is defending the fruit of one’s labor. If I plow land, the land is more valuable for planting than if I hadn’t already plowed it. Locke says that a person may restrict use of land he has plowed for this reason, because the person rightfully governs the fruits of his labor.

Title in perpetuity, by contrast, says that the first person to claim (or to use) a resource owns it forever after. Title in perpetuity to a parcel of land involves paternalistic state power as a matter of historical fact. You only need to read Locke to see that.

Title in perpetuity does not follow logically from any concept of self-ownership. Selves are not perpetual, and neither are fruits of a person’s labor. The value of plowing land depreciates. If a person doesn’t continually maintain the land, weeds overtake it, and someone must plow it again.

While Rothbard does defend title in perpetuity, if you read the article, you’ll see that Rothbard himself approved of title to a radio frequency only during specified hours, like 4-5 on Wednesdays, because in his view, the “technological unit” of a radio frequency differs from the technological unit of the surface of the Earth.

Rothbard also rejected the idea that a man owning a parcel of land owns resources beneath the surface or the air above the land, because simply to claim a resource is not to own it, even if one claims the resource first.
guest

I didn’t say that one has authority to restrict something’s use when he owns it. I said the prerequisite for restricting something’s use is ownership.
And since there’s no magical outside force that can relieve someone of ownership of something, the “when” of ownership is perpetual, and begins at the moment of homesteading.
“Possession for use” requires non ownership: one simply has an arbitrarily defined scope of rights over something.
The theory that natural resources have value only because men ADD value to them is the Labor Theory of Value, as you say; But the theory that natural resources have value only because of men’s SUBJECTIVE value is not.
Resources, indeed, only have value because men value them; But different people value things differently, and depending on the capital that exists in different regions, resources will have different values to different people, such that the most that people would be willing to pay for a unit of a given resource will vary from person to person.
(In other words, there’s no such thing as a fair or moral price.)
No doubt you have enclosures in mind in your support of the concept of “ownership for use”.
Tom Woods has some resources on that issue:
Propaganda, Meet Modern Research
http://www.tomwoods.com/blog/anti-capitalist-propaganda-meet-modern-research/
“Ferrara, as I feared, has embarrassed himself by simply adopting the fact-free distributist interpretation of enclosures: the wicked capitalists brought about the privatization of the commons, and this led to a reduction in the number of people who could be profitably engaged in agriculture. These poor displaced souls, in turn, had no choice but to work in the factories. …”
Anonymous

Ownership is not a prerequiste for exclusive governance of a resource. “Exclusive governance of a resource” is the definition of “ownership”.

No magical outside force bestows ownership on anyone, and no magical outside force is necessary to relieve anyone of ownership.

Possession for use requires ownership during use.

Every assertion of ownership is “arbitrary” in your sense. Lockean propriety is not handed down by God on stone tablets. It’s handed down by Locke on paper. Rothardian propriety is handed down by Rothbard on paper. Your theory of propriety and mine are handed down by each of us through the ether.

If you imagine your theory of propriety unassailable, you’re simply out of touch with reality. If you think your assertion of propriety “right” in some universal sense, you think yourself like Moses. It’s only fair to warn you that I don’t take Moses very seriously.

I agree that resources, natural or otherwise, have only men’s subjective value (to men). Standards of propriety themselves are resources that men value subjectively.

If you prefer a communications network in which channels are owned in perpetuity and subject to rents and corresponding rent seeking, then you should have this network in my way of thinking, but your preference for this sort of network does not make a network in which channels are time-division multiplexed “wrong” in any universal sense.

What people pay for a given unit of a resource does vary in the time-division multiplexed channel, but the cost doesn’t take the form of a rent. It takes the form of a lower rate of transmission. If I don’t like the rate of transmission, I find another channel with a higher rate, by placing a transceiver somewhere so as to create a path around the crowded channel for example.

Charging other people a rent to use my transceiver does not create the same rent seeking problem that perpetual title to a radio frequency creates, because the transceiver is a depreciating product of human labor. On the other hand, a perpetual right to exclude others from producing transceivers (like a perpetual patent) does create a similar problem.

The fair price is the price that both buyer and seller accept. The fair contract is the contract that both parties to the contract accept. The fair law is the law that all persons subject to the law accept.

You doubt yourself too little in this case. I’m the one defending Locke vs. Rothbard here, and Locke is one of history’s leading proponents of enclosure of the land. I have no problem with this enclosure per se. I do have problems with title in perpetuity (hereditary title) to an enclosed parcel of land (and so did Locke). We can discuss how these problems might be resolved, but we’re straying from the point, and I prefer to stick with channels for now.

I nowhere ever assert that capitalist are wicked (they aren’t) or that they brought about the enclosure of the commons (they didn’t). Locke is pre-capitalist. He is a classically liberal reformer of feudalism preceding debates over “capitalism”. He never used or heard the word “capitalist”.

I also never assert that enclosure reduced the number of people engaging profitably in agriculture, though it did in fact. This reduction is a good thing in my way of thinking, because it occurs along with increased agricultural productivity, specialization and trade.

I also never assert that persons leaving agriculture for industrial employment were either displaced by enclosure (they weren’t) or were poorer after leaving agriculture (they weren’t) or that they had no choice (they did).

We have a fruitful discussion here, and I hope we will, but the discussion is more fruitful if you address my points rather than attributing to me points that I don’t make and then responding to those points.
guest

It may be helpful to say that it looks like we may be using different definitions of “title in perpetuity”. One’s descendants cannot own something simply by virtue of being descendants, but one may give his property to his children; And like any other gift, it becomes property of the receiver.
So, hereditary ownership is not what I am supporting.
You said that ownership is not a prerequisite for exclusive use of a resource, but then defended that idea by saying one may exclusively use it if someone who DOES own it contracts with them.
A lease is a right to exclusive use of something for a specific period of time, to be sure; But that right comes from the actual owner who has bestowed that right by contract.
The owner is the one excluding use, not the lessee.
So leases exemplify, rather than challenge, the idea that exclusive use requires ownership.
Further, if one doesn’t own a resource, he has no right to complain if someone else decides to try and use it at the same time. It may not be conducive its efficient use, but so what? Efficiency isn’t the issue.
If efficiency were the issue, then one would be justified in assuming exclusive ownership of a resource that was in current use simply by virtue that they would use it more efficiently.
Look, we both believe that the logic of ownership of the fruits of one’s labor comes from the mixing of one’s labor with an unowned resource.
That logic simply needs to be applied consistently – to the resource itself.
I maintain, contrary to your assertion that the article I referenced is a Strawman, that in order for you to hold the position you hold on resources, that you must also hold that resources are a public good.
So, while it’s true you didn’t say that capitalists are wicked, you nevertheless accept the logic behind such assertions.
And, indeed, once the premise is granted that resources are a public good, it follows logically that capitalists are wicked, in that they claim ownership of resources in perpetuity.
Which is why the principle behind the question of whether or not the spectrum can be owned is more important than specific applications of the principle; and why I haven’t addressed the spectrum issue in our thread.
But I did address the question in the OP, in another thread. My position is that since the utility of the spectrum consists in emitting waves with private property, that the machines themselves can be owned but not the spectrum.
Anonymous

Titles often pass to family members, and family relationships are a factor in common law when an owner dies without designating the next title holder, but “hereditary title” only means that the current owner selects the next owner, not that the next owner is genetically related to the current owner.

I said that “ownership” is a word denoting “exclusive governance of a resource”. Ownership is synonymous with exclusive governance of a resource, rather than a prerequisite for it. The owner decides who uses it, but he need not decide that he uses it himself.

If someone owns something, he may lease it to someone else. When someone ceases to own something, he may no longer lease it to someone else. If no one owns something, no one may lease the thing to someone else.

More to the point, an owner today need not be the owner tomorrow. If the owner of land dies without a designated heir, and if a probate court recognizes no one else in line for the title, then the land has no owner. If an owner forfeits ownership of land by murdering someone on the land, the land again may have no owner, even if the murder victim has no heirs.

Clearly, land once owned can have no owner. Even Rothbard discusses abandonment.

Hereditary title in perpetuity is one method of selecting the next owner, but it is neither natural nor logically necessary. In nature, the next “owner” of a territory is the first competitor to defeat the current “owner” in a contest for dominance. If any standard is “natural”, that one is, but natural territoriality is not property. Property is an artifact of human civilization. It is a choice that human beings make, and title in perpetuity is not the only possible choice.

Further, if one doesn’t own a resource, he has no right to complain if someone else decides to try and use it at the same time.

Right. If your unit of a time-division multiplexed channel has expired, you are no longer an owner, so you have no right to complain that someone else tries to use the channel. The current owner has this right, but you don’t.

Read the article. Rothbard himself advocated ownership of a radio frequency only at designated times, so the same frequency could have different owners at different times in the same region. There is no God-given, right answer to this question, but if we take Rothbard’s own prescription to its logical conclusion, we get a time-division multiplexed channel.

Look, we both believe that the logic of ownership of the fruits of one’s labor comes from the mixing of one’s labor with an unowned resource.

Yes. I am a Lockean in this regard, so I will associate with other Lockeans to make natural resources more useful to us; however, I don’t believe that Lockean propriety is natural or necessary. It is my choice, and I will associate with others sharing my choice. Others must be free to make different choices.

… you must also hold that resources are a public good.

No. I don’t argue that a channel must be a public good (unowned or owned in common by everyone). I rather argue that the technological unit of a radio frequency is the smallest unit of time that one can usefully employ the frequency, and when the frequency is employed as a channel for digital information, this unit of time is very small. A millisecond is enough time to send thousands, even millions, of bits these days.

No one may own an entire frequency simply by claiming it, any more than one man may own an entire continent by claiming it, even if he is the first man to set foot on it. Rothbard himself would tell you so, even if he claims to reject the Lockean Proviso.

And, indeed, once the premise is granted that resources are a public good, it follows logically that capitalists are wicked, in that they claim ownership of resources in perpetuity.

Rothbard himself would call the air a public good. Actually, he called it a “general condition of human action”, but that’s equivalent to “public good”. Even if I say that a channel is a public good (and I don’t), saying it doesn’t imply that capitalists are wicked.

The technological unit of air is a breath of air. I can own every breath I take, and you can own every breath you take. No one may own so much air that he owns even the air you breathe. That’s not (only) my idea or Marx’s. It’s Rothbard’s.

If you say that the machines may be owned but not the radio frequencies, you go even further than I go. I say that both may be owned but that the frequencies may be owned only for a millisecond at a time, and as technology improves, this unit of time may shrink.
guest

Hi, I didn’t see you guys down here.
You’ve mixed your labor with the road, so you own the road. Besides, we’re paying for the roads every time we buy gas, already; So, we’d be paying less to drive if the roads were privately owned (typically).
You can own an air tunnel only if make an actual tunnel in the sky. Otherwise, the sky remains a commons.
Scott

For what it’s worth, I found an updated version of this article (published a couple of years later in the Journal of Libertarian Studies) linked here: http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/20_2/20_2_2.pdf

As a newly-licensed amateur radio operator, I found it fascinating. I’ve been troubled at the FCC monopoly, but at the same time I could see that a “free for all” approach would never work. Right now, if my next-door neighbor takes his (unlicensed) CB radio and amplifies it from 4W to 1000W, chances are my TV or cordless phone reception will be impacted, etc. Hence the FCC’s “I’m with the Government and I’m here to help” rules seem to “help” me — keeping my neighbor from interfering with my own property rights — the right to be able to use a cordless phone in my own house.

As an amateur radio licensee, I’m given “rights” to transmit on quite a number of frequencies (no license required to receive). Nonetheless, these rights come with many restrictions — maximum transmit power, commercial use forbidden, encryption forbidden, etc. The last point is particularly troublesome — it means that even if I’m able to connect to the internet via packet radio technologies, I can’t send anything encrypted (like, say, my password on a website!).

This article goes a long way to describing a way to handle the situation without the heavy-handed “help” from the FCC. I’m still wondering about one thing, though. With the FCC “amateur” license, I’m able to communicate with other people throughout the world using a number of technologies, from those that have been around for decades to more recent “data mode” innovations. Under a more Rothbardian scheme, would there be a way for non-corporate users (i.e. without a big budget) to do something similar — i.e. communicate with other users across the world on various radio frequencies using technologies (and equipment) that might be decades old? In an emergency situation, would I be able to communicate with friends and family across the globe with the multi-mode transceiver on my shelf that was manufactured 20 years ago (and thus can’t operate on newly-developed wideband or other technologies designed to allow multiple users to communicate without interference).

Part of me would welcome the removal of FCC regulations on “amateur” operators (commercial use, encryption, frequency band restrictions) — but I’m still wondering how the market-based approach would allow for the sorts of things currently allowed for amateur operators — both local and long-distance communication using both new and old technologies to communicate with other individuals on a variety of frequency bands (thus facilitating both short- and long-distance operation under a variety of atmospheric and solar conditions).
Anonymous

Don’t assume that, in the absence of the U.S. government imposing rules on 300 million people in central North America, a neighbor would use radio frequencies to your detriment. Your neighbors have the same interest in orderly exploitation of the resource that you have, and you all can develop rules suited to your use of the resource without interference from the United States. Would most neighborhoods prohibit encryption? I strongly doubt it.