Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the Austrian school is considered legitimate school of economics though, right? It's not like these are amateur economists or anything.
@wavefunction I can't comment on your last message (I guess to prevent flamewars?), hopefully this doesn't get too confusing to follow. My understanding of the argument is that EM frequencies in a geography are a limited resource and therefore are best treated as property with "homesteading" giving the initial claim to that property. (Which re-reading what you wrote, I think you understand) The first time I heard tha…
I don't personally subscribe to the homesteading concept due to the frequent historical problems with real-world examples of 'homesteading' resources.
On the one hand, I can recognize that the freedom to stake a claim on 'public' resources drove a huge amount of innovation and productivity in the American West. With it though came plenty of degradation, destruction and misuse as well. And one might even argue that it was only there to be homesteaded because the original inhabitants and their traditional cultures had been suppressed with force.
And the US Federal government has privatized public lands for things like military bases and Land Grant Universities just as it has with bands of the EM spectrum for emergency responders or other governmental uses. For the closest analog to public parks I'd look at the shortwave bands or ham radio operators. Even there, as in public parks, there are regulations on behavior.
It's an interesting discussion and in a more egalitarian world I might be more amenable to the view expressed by the original article. But today I look with deep suspicion on folks advancing the view that public goods should be privatized, due to what I consider a very irrational minority of people whose interests are purely selfish despite their claims to the contrary. Some folks wrap themselves in an ideology but really only seek to serve themselves.