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
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