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by steinystein
3352 days ago
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Roads aren't free because they aren't free.
That isn't a tautology, it's a statement of fact: Roads have a dollar value. In nature. In nature it's got a price. Because men will trade, or pay, or war for it.
Therefore, to allocate it efficiently, we should allow it to trade at that value. This is how roads make the most number of people happy.
That may sound like right-wing pablum, but it's a subject that has been well trod by great thinkers for a very, very long time. [1]
[1] Coase, to mention just one |
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Notably, wireless deployments differ from road use in that using a wireless spectrum assignment requires significant deployment time and capital investment, meaning when a frequency range is assigned it's reasonable to expect and allow a single entity to control that range for an extended period. With roads, on the other hand, a single use can be as short as a few minutes, meaning a similar auction would need to re-occur hundreds or thousands of times a day.
Further, if wireless spectrum ranges are not pre-assigned, it becomes quite difficult for multiple entities trying to use the same range to coordinate to avoid interference that would render the range useless to both. Roads, on the other hand, can be reasonably shared by multiple users without any coordination ahead of time.
Because of these practical difficulties, and the lack of an inherent need for usage assignments, most roads are not tolled or auctioned, and the result is heavy congestion in highly-sought-after routes at peak times.