Tom Hazlett is regrettably right to issue his bipartisan condemnation – most appropriate in an election year – of the spectrum allocation policy in the US for the past 56 years, since the ill-fated television spectrum allocation of 1952. He is, indeed, generous to a fault because he does not consider any of the mishaps in the first round of spectrum allocation that took place in the days of radio during the 1920s.

There is little reason to rehearse the foibles of these individual spectrum allocation descriptions. But it is worth noting yet again the one root cause that has led to all these machinations: the want of a system of well-defined property rights in the spectrum. The standard FCC licence confers on an individual licensee the exclusive right to use spectrum, so that these licences bear some faint resemblance to property, which also stresses the right to exclude others from the use of a resource. But the emphasis on exclusion elevates one element of property rights to the derogation of others that are equally important. From Roman time onward (although not with the spectrum) a well-defined system of property rights included the rights of use and disposition so long as neither interfered with the like use of others. In this context, interference means broadcasting on someone else’s spectrum so that his signal cannot get through. It does not mean competition by a superior economic rival. Within these modest constraints, all use and disposition decisions are left to the property owner.