Mike Coslo writes:
Perhaps Hams and anyone who want to be a ham should have to pay for
the spectrum we want.
Pay who? Where is the owner?
Milton Friedman, in his work "Free to Choose", would argue that this
is a case, like the case of "clean air", which could properly be
assigned to government: there is a clear public interest in conserving
this resource, but no clear way to allocate costs.
He would probably propose a consumption tax, based on bandwidth,
power, duty cycle, etc., which automatically allocates bandwidth (in
the long run) according to its most profitable use: if the people
badly want a service which consumes piles of bandwidth over a vast
area for most of the time, then they would pay enough to offset the
immense consumption tax on the provider.
Of course, the effect is that hams will all start using CW. C'mon! You
can pay tax on 150 Hz, or pay over 20 times as much for SSB. CW wins,
hands down.
Regards,
Len.
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