> Does any of this make any sense to anyone? Yes. In your example, the government may decide to temporarily allow the rancher to keep grazing his cattle until

> Does any of this make any sense to anyone? Yes. In your example, the government may decide to temporarily allow the rancher to keep grazing his cattle until the rancher can reduce the size of his herd, because they don't want to force him to destroy good cattle, while requiring the rancher to pay the farmer for the use of his land and lost profit from the wheat he cannot grow. The alternative would be to force the rancher to cull half of his herd, which would not only be wasteful, but also cause a national beef shortage, while the world so far survived without the extra wheat. So the government does the pragmatic thing, even though it shouldn't, according to the permits it issued. Probably wouldn't happen with beef vs. wheat, but I could see it happen with beef vs. corn-for-ethanol, because food safety trumps ethanol production. The FCC might decide that existing aviation needs beat not-yet-established mobile phone needs. Whether the spectrum owners would actually be compensated fairly, or whether the government would the "you're getting screwed over because I like the rancher more, I've got the bigger guns, what'cha gonna do about it?", - that I don't know. But from the article, it sounds very much like the FCC isn't doing much except having told the farmer to wait a few months before plowing the greenest grazing land to keep the peace, and the FAA is telling the rancher "your not-your-own grazing land is gone so your cows might starve, deal with it".