In 1995, Congress decided it was time for Americans to shift from analog
to digital television. This required a new set of broadcast frequencies,
and Congress obligingly gave them — free of charge — to the same
media companies to which it had previously given analog frequencies free
of charge. Senator Bob Dole, the Republican leader, declared: “It makes
no sense that Congress would create a giant corporate welfare program. .
. . The bottom line is that the spectrum is just as much a national resource
as our national forests. That means it belongs to every American equally.” But,
as they had before, the media companies got their free airwaves anyway.
If an accounting could be made, private appropriations of the commons
in America alone would be worth trillions of dollars. The plot
is almost always
the same: when a commons acquires commercial value, someone tries
to grab it. In the old days, that meant politically connected individuals;
nowadays,
it means politically powerful corporations. What’s astonishing
about these takings isn’t that they occur, but how unaware
of them the average citizen is. As former Secretary of the Interior
Walter Hickel said, “If
you steal $10 from a man’s wallet, you’re likely
to get into a fight, but if you steal billions from the commons,
co-owned
by him
and his descendants, he may not even notice.” ... read
the whole chapter