Firstly, it's not 'my point'; I was presenting that argument as an answer to the parent post's question of how else interference could be prevented. Secondly, the ownership of entire cellphone bands isn't the only kind of property right over spectrum that could exist.
Ownership of entire cellphone bands would actually be somewhat unlikely. For a court following 'Tribune Co. v. Oak Leaves Broadcasting Station' to consider an entire spectrum across the entire nation as property in court, the transmitting organisation would have to show that it was and had been using that entire spectrum to transmit content across every part of the nation. Such a situation would be unlikely, as the organisation would likely have faced competition for spectrum use before it could expand its own spectrum use over the entire country.
The problem with the "treat spectrum as property" argument is that it's effectively what we have now. Make it even more of a free market and you would expect to see much as what you see with agricultural land in the US: A small handful of companies own the large majority. Put spectrum on the market and AT&T will buy it, and they have more money than you (for any value of "you" that is not a similarly sized corporation). You end up with the status quo.
The idea is it would have only come onto the market slowly as companies were able to progressively utilise more and more of the spectrum in various areas. Ownership hence would have been more diversified from the beginning, preventing the development of a continental monopoly capable of buying it all, similar to how no monopoly has been able to buy up all the country's land.
Agriculture is the US is incredibly subsidised, and as such things tend to benefit large incumbents the situation could be quite different if no subsidies took place.
> The idea is it would have only come onto the market slowly as companies were able to progressively utilise more and more of the spectrum in various areas. Ownership hence would have been more diversified from the beginning, preventing the development of a continental monopoly capable of buying it all, similar to how no monopoly has been able to buy up all the country's land.
But they have bought up all of the land. I mean not "all" as in 100% obviously (AT&T and Verizon don't own 100% of the spectrum either), but a small handful of large agribusiness corporations own the large majority of the farmland in the US.
And it doesn't really matter how it starts. A hundred years ago there were quite a lot of family farms that have since been subsumed into ConAgra et al.
Large corporations have economies of scale. All else equal, the rich get richer and large corporations get larger. Eventually they tend to become mismanaged and die, but not all at the same time, so their carcasses are eaten by their other large competitors, which makes them even larger.
Competition doesn't come from rational self-interest. Rational self-interest for powerful people and corporations is to get together and collude with each other. Competition comes from changing circumstances that modify who has power and create uncertainty as to who existing interests should collude with. People bet on different horses when they're not sure which is going to win. Nobody bets on the locally owned hardware store against Lowes and Home Depot.
I'm not American and not particularly familiar with the economics of the agriculture industry there, so I don't really feel qualified to comment. I'll just point out that government actions often favour such large corporations, preventing for instance the collapse of certain banks and auto manufacturers during the GFC. I do know that farm subsidies in the US are quite extensive.
If the government had decided 70 years ago that it owned all the nations farmland, and had auctioned it off to four large corporations, making it law that nobody else could own farmland, would the farmland situation would be better or worse than it is now? I'd argue for worse.
First off, by bringing up / presenting "a libertarian argument against government ownership of the airwaves" it becomes your point even if you don't agree with it. Also, so saying their not owned by the government does make your point moot.
At a more basic level, before technology improved the high frequency bands where directly worthless but that would not have stopped people squatting them just like with DNS. Secondly, unlike radio cellphones need to broadcast so you need a setup that does not break down as people move around the country thus at least the protocol needs to be national for a given frequency.* Simply giving a free for all to the first people to use a given spectrum is horribly inefficient and effectively just a first come first served auction.
*Radio and TV are examples of this where the protocol does not change even if different people are using the same frequency in different areas, but if it's unregulated they could in theory do whatever they want.
There's a difference between making an argument and presenting an argument; I was doing the latter, but an argument as a 'point' generally refers to the former. The 'point' is analogous to the point of a weapon; the most effective part. But that only makes sense in the context of an offense of some sort. (For reference, I do not in fact support that position, I just find it an interesting argument.)
If the high frequency bands were 'directly worthless' then people could not have 'squatted' them under the kind of judicial reasoning behind 'Tribune Co. v. Oak Leaves Broadcasting Station', as property was only granted for use. If someone was 'squatting' an airwave, that implies they're not using it for any significant business activities, and hence they couldn't be granted ownership.
There is no international regulation binding all countries in terms cellphone frequency standardisation, but that doesn't stop a phone bought in one country from working in others.
A 'first come first served' auction (or at least, 'first use first served') is how much of the property in the US originally came into ownership (excluding that acquired by violent conquest). The first person to strike oil owns it. The first person to discover gold owns it. The first person to patent an idea owns it. While this may not necessarily be efficient, in the current social context it's quite accepted, so if it's okay to acquire ownership of such resources this way then the same could apply to spectrum.
'There is no international regulation binding all countries in terms cellphone frequency standardisation, but that doesn't stop a phone bought in one country from working in others.' Countries have not standardized so cellphone in country A often does not work in country B. Often there is a choice where some of the cellphones sold in country A work in country B.
More importantly people are far less mobile between countries than they are between city's so the interference caused by non standard cellphones is minimal but still exists.
As to squatting, all it takes is setting up a radio station which is vary cheap. The issue fig leaf economic activity is inefficient, more importantly the having courts decide ownership is vary expensive for everyone involved.
PS: "point" references pointing such as with a finger. Bringing up an idea is often referred to as pointing out something even if no finger is involved. Swapping that which does the pointing to that which was pointed to is how you get from a 'something that is pricked' to a zero dimensional mathematical idea aka location.
Ah, I'd always assumed point was meant in the sense of 'pointy'.
I've never encountered trouble with cellphones traveling internationally, but I've only traveled in Asia/Oceania so I suppose that's not necessarily representative of the global situation.
Having the courts decide ownership may be expensive, but those costs should be weighed against the costs from having only 4 organisations owning pretty much the entire spectrum across the entire country, as is currently the case. If a court-based system resulted in for instance 20 companies now owning various parts of the spectrum and competing vigorously, the benefits of that might make up for any extra legal costs.
