Freedom of speech is not private property

Consider this:

If we treated sound waves the way we treat radio waves, then by federal law, nobody else could speak in the same frequency range as my voice.

I could also buy all the sound frequencies I want, and nobody else, by federal law, would be ever allowed to speak when I am near, even if I am silent.

The reality is that when you buy radio bandwidth, you're not just buying yourself a megaphone, you're also buying away a piece of everyone else's right to speak. Real government forces, with guns, enforce that gag on the public for you.

So if this were a true free market, you could broadcast, but you wouldn't expect the taxpayers/government to stop everyone else from broadcasting just to preserve your monopoly of a frequency band.

Of course we need boundaries between frequencies, but we should stop fooling ourselves that the right to speak can be sold, without using oppression to create artificial scarcity.

A Long Time Ago

  

  My stepbrother and I were kids, and when we cut through a yard in his neighborhood in suburban Greenville NC, we encountered something amazing: an entire tiny city created from clay, with beehive-shaped skyscrapers, highways, cars, parks, and statues.  All made from fired and clear-glazed ceramic.  

  

  A woman came out of the house when she saw us two boys staring at this oddity.  She said that it was her husband's work, and that he got to play all day for a living.  

  

  Before we left, she gave us both lumps of clay, and when I got home I did everything I could to try to rebuild a piece of the city I had seen.  This city of clay has repeated itself throughout my life without my even remembering where it started.