5 ms·

I'm not going to speak on all libertarians, but my world view is pretty much that you can possess finite scarce goods and call them "yours" (things made of atom

by zanny 14y ago

I'm not going to speak on all libertarians, but my world view is pretty much that you can possess finite scarce goods and call them "yours" (things made of atoms) but with things that aren't scarce (information, once produced, is not scarce - we can easily order electrons to represent the super-majority of the information space) it is tragic and wrong to try to restrict them. Radios are scarce, but the range and ability to produce electromagnetic waves at certain frequencies is not scarce with said radio. Computers are scarce, but digital information is infinitely reproducible and millions of people will send you a copy for free (see: torrents). This kind of stuff shouldn't be limited or restricted by artificial government constructs. There is a difference between having a finite resource and artificially calling it "yours" and taking an infinite resource and calling it "yours. Ownership is a fundamental human right - to possess scarce resources you can call your own. It is only recently the bulk of humanity has had this right. I don't think it should be anyones right to own an infinite resource like an idea, though. Personal opinion. I write software and think trying to sell per-copy instances of infinite information is ridiculous. In computer terms, it is the flip side to the free software coin that makes open source a whole. If you distribute a black box you shouldn't be able to try to force people to treat it some certain way, after all, you freely gave it the first time, anyone else can do with it what they will. I still target open source since I'm not a dick and don't like giving someone a black box, but that is tangential.

jacques_chester 14y ago
Economists talk about rivalrousness and excludability when classifying goods. Rivalrous means that, to the extent I am using or possessing some good, you are not. Excludable means that I can, as a seller, prevent you from using it without payment. Most physical goods are rivalrous and excludable. I can keep an icecream to myself and while I am digesting it, you are not. The icecream truck can prevent you taking one without payment. This meets the definition of what people usually think of as "private property". Radio waves are rivalrous but not excludable; economists call these "common goods". These lead to -- you guessed it -- the tragedy of the commons, where individually optimal decisions lead to globally suboptimal outcomes. Commons can't work unless agents agree to constrain themselves, or are made to constrain themselves. The former can happen by agreement, the latter by regulation. In the case of radio, regulation has been the standard model because of the nature of the usage. Voice and vision have been analogue and the human nervous system is a poor demultiplexer, so they needed bands to themselves. Similarly for many other applications (radar, for example) , the amount of information put through a certain band has historically been low but the value high. So: regulation. Wireless networks are an example of a commons managed by agreement; or perhaps managed by emergent phenomena. Each wireless node blindly follows some simple rules (such as randomised exponential backoff) that, in practice, make a shared medium largely usable. edits: to clarify terms a bit
rayiner 14y ago
> I'm not going to speak on all libertarians, but my world view is pretty much that you can possess finite scarce goods and call them "yours" (things made of atoms) If ownership only extends to things made of atoms, then you'd agree that it's totally okay for me to build my house on your land so long as it hovers an inch over the dirt and grass that comprises your ownership. Otherwise, you're claiming ownership of an incorporeal thing--the geographic coordinates that encompass not just your land but the space above it. > Radios are scarce, but the range and ability to produce electromagnetic waves at certain frequencies is not scarce with said radio. Ownership of spectrum is not a monopoly on the right to produce electromagnetic waves of a certain frequency. It's a monopoly on the right to invade certain areas of space with electromagnetic waves of a certain frequency. The FCC doesn't care what frequencies you transmit on in a lead-lined room on your own property.
azernik 14y ago
> Radios are scarce, but the range and ability to produce electromagnetic waves at certain frequencies is not scarce with said radio. I work in the wireless networking field, and my and my coworkers' experience is actually the complete opposite in high-density environments: there is an abundance of radios, and a scarcity of frequency. Which, BTW, is one of the reasons wired networking consistently outperforms wireless - you have one and only one transmitter (in a full-duplex connection) on a given medium.
- zanny 14y ago
  The peak throughput in any region of space in terms of wave density is limited, but one of the reasons your coworkers are probably experiencing such scarcity is due to artificial constraints on the market. Frequency would be scarce in highly concentrated areas in an open-frequency region, but it would be less so than if you artificially restricted access. What would naturally follow is that the demand would distribute itself (within the realm of possibility, ultra low and high frequencies have either range or bandwidth disadvantages that make them ill suited for, say, digital packet signaling). I also wonder what kind of innovation you might see in an open band environment in terms of wifi - if you weren't limited to the few bands of 802.11, maybe routers would pop up that dynamically enable multiple transmitters (like how a modern router would have multiple antennas to transmit in parallel, maybe you would see many-hundred low power antenna radios to interface with devices over the largest clear possible frequency range available?)
  - sliverstorm 14y ago
    How exactly to you propose affordable consumer hardware is going to accommodate hundreds of radios covering the entire range of useful spectrum?
    - zanny 14y ago
      They won't have to. The market would naturally have big players find it in their best interest to organize spectrum interference around their usage, and would avoid ranges used by other big consistent players in a region. The average consumer should barely see any change, besides variable range on their devices as other hardware comes up and goes down in a frequency band they use. But for use cases that require consistent signaling, or really high throughput, enabling radios that utilize vast swaths of frequencies in parallel can increase the throughput.

by zanny 14y ago

jacques_chester 14y ago

Economists talk about rivalrousness and excludability when classifying goods. Rivalrous means that, to the extent I am using or possessing some good, you are not. Excludable means that I can, as a seller, prevent you from using it without payment. Most physical goods are rivalrous and excludable. I can keep an icecream to myself and while I am digesting it, you are not. The icecream truck can prevent you taking one without payment. This meets the definition of what people usually think of as "private property". Radio waves are rivalrous but not excludable; economists call these "common goods". These lead to -- you guessed it -- the tragedy of the commons, where individually optimal decisions lead to globally suboptimal outcomes. Commons can't work unless agents agree to constrain themselves, or are made to constrain themselves. The former can happen by agreement, the latter by regulation. In the case of radio, regulation has been the standard model because of the nature of the usage. Voice and vision have been analogue and the human nervous system is a poor demultiplexer, so they needed bands to themselves. Similarly for many other applications (radar, for example) , the amount of information put through a certain band has historically been low but the value high. So: regulation. Wireless networks are an example of a commons managed by agreement; or perhaps managed by emergent phenomena. Each wireless node blindly follows some simple rules (such as randomised exponential backoff) that, in practice, make a shared medium largely usable. edits: to clarify terms a bit

rayiner 14y ago

> I'm not going to speak on all libertarians, but my world view is pretty much that you can possess finite scarce goods and call them "yours" (things made of atoms) If ownership only extends to things made of atoms, then you'd agree that it's totally okay for me to build my house on your land so long as it hovers an inch over the dirt and grass that comprises your ownership. Otherwise, you're claiming ownership of an incorporeal thing--the geographic coordinates that encompass not just your land but the space above it. > Radios are scarce, but the range and ability to produce electromagnetic waves at certain frequencies is not scarce with said radio. Ownership of spectrum is not a monopoly on the right to produce electromagnetic waves of a certain frequency. It's a monopoly on the right to invade certain areas of space with electromagnetic waves of a certain frequency. The FCC doesn't care what frequencies you transmit on in a lead-lined room on your own property.

azernik 14y ago

> Radios are scarce, but the range and ability to produce electromagnetic waves at certain frequencies is not scarce with said radio. I work in the wireless networking field, and my and my coworkers' experience is actually the complete opposite in high-density environments: there is an abundance of radios, and a scarcity of frequency. Which, BTW, is one of the reasons wired networking consistently outperforms wireless - you have one and only one transmitter (in a full-duplex connection) on a given medium.

zanny 14y ago
The peak throughput in any region of space in terms of wave density is limited, but one of the reasons your coworkers are probably experiencing such scarcity is due to artificial constraints on the market. Frequency would be scarce in highly concentrated areas in an open-frequency region, but it would be less so than if you artificially restricted access. What would naturally follow is that the demand would distribute itself (within the realm of possibility, ultra low and high frequencies have either range or bandwidth disadvantages that make them ill suited for, say, digital packet signaling). I also wonder what kind of innovation you might see in an open band environment in terms of wifi - if you weren't limited to the few bands of 802.11, maybe routers would pop up that dynamically enable multiple transmitters (like how a modern router would have multiple antennas to transmit in parallel, maybe you would see many-hundred low power antenna radios to interface with devices over the largest clear possible frequency range available?)
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  How exactly to you propose affordable consumer hardware is going to accommodate hundreds of radios covering the entire range of useful spectrum?
  - zanny 14y ago
    They won't have to. The market would naturally have big players find it in their best interest to organize spectrum interference around their usage, and would avoid ranges used by other big consistent players in a region. The average consumer should barely see any change, besides variable range on their devices as other hardware comes up and goes down in a frequency band they use. But for use cases that require consistent signaling, or really high throughput, enabling radios that utilize vast swaths of frequencies in parallel can increase the throughput.