IP: re: Forbes (Karlgaard) article

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 10:48:24 -0500
> To: farber () cis upenn edu, ip-sub-1 () majordomo pobox com
> From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed () reed com>
>
> Anticipating the inevitable reaction from certain kinds of conservatives 
> (I call them 'synthetic property-rights conservatives') to the 
> Forbes/Karlgaard idea of treating spectrum as an ocean, I offer the 
> following points.
>
> First, though it may not be obvious, the "ocean" idea is compatible with 
> economics based on free and open markets.  The market in this case would 
> be for better and better radio systems, just as freedom of the seas 
> creates markets for innovative transportation systems over the seas.
>
> Second, there is no physical argument that can be made that "spectrum" is 
> a naturally scarce resource.  I have been arguing this in talks I've been 
> giving recently - I'm in the middle of drafting a version of these ideas 
> that makes sense to people who don't intuitively understand Maxwell's 
> equations and Shannon's channel capacity theorem (or Cover and el Gamal's 
> work on network channels).
>
> Thus, the true "scarce good" is the ability to innovate at all layers of 
> radio, to improve spectral efficiency (bits-meters/second/Hz/meters^2), to 
> allow the most desirable applications for customers to win their attention 
> and $, etc.
>
> IMO, the FCC presides over a dramatically broken, dramatically 
> monopolistic market.  The monopoly "owners" try to look like entrepreneurs 
> because they like money, but in fact most of them spend most of their time 
> lobbying for favors from government, rather than innovating.  It's easy to 
> see this - compare Andy Grove's attitude toward business (Only the 
> Paranoid Survive) with the attitudes of top management at any RBOC or 
> broadcaster (make sure you hire the regulators when they retire).
>
> Well, maybe Forbes wouldn't go that far...

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