[maister]

> What service does ham radio actually provide to society?

Ham radio allows the public to use slices of the radio spectrum.

If someone wanted to "hack" on RF projects, what should this person do if the entire spectrum was given to companies and governments + militaries instead?

If you are arguing against ham radio you are basically arguing against hacking, tinkering and experimenting.

[livueta]

You're proposing a false dilemma because there's a third option: make some of it ISM. Today, way more hacking, tinkering and experimenting happens on ISM bands than on HAM bands. I've written about this before so won't spam the thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36714225

[vvanders]

The ISM bands are much, much more limited in other countries(eg duty cycle). I agree that really interesting stuff is happening in ISM space however reallocating ham allocations doesn't seem like the right path forward.

FWIW I think repealing the symbol rate restrictions and opening up bands a bit more would go a long way towards the spirit that ham was started with. The hobby seems pretty ossified these days and it would be great to see more advancements in digital modes and stuff closer to the state of the art.

[livueta]

Oh yeah, I'd be happy with saner HAM rules. The problem is that the community is sufficiently ossified that it actively resists such changes under the umbrella of "defending" HAM, so reallocation seems like a more practical method of change.

[stjohnswarts]

Or we could just leave it alone and not worry about the demands of 0.000001% who want to accumulate yet more wealth at 0 benefit to society, unlike ham operators who can help during emergencies and natural disastors when all other means are down.

[livueta]

The point I'm trying to make is that hobbyists vs. .0001%ers is a false framing because less restrictive rules would benefit a much wider set of users than just HFTs. If you compare the degree of open-source project activity between ISM and HAM bands the difference is night and day. Stuffing all that vibrancy into a few narrow bands while HAM activity above HF is practically dead is the opposite of a public good.

Re disaster support: complete and utter LARP to an embarrassing degree. I've been familiar with a variety of clubs all my life through participating family members and this simply doesn't happen in a way that has any practical benefit to anyone. Again, opening it up would improve disaster comms quality by incentivizing development of better protocols and by getting access to those methods out of the hands of the unqualified gatekeepers of clubs.