Squad up homies. Yall still so mad. I don't get it. I never admitted or even tried to key up the local repeater. Don't know where you fools got that from. The only thing I ever keyed up is my nose. Sorry I don't got a call sign to end my post with. I support the rules of law, but you all are SHEEP. I would never rat or snitch on nobody that's my only problem with HAM.
I'm Tryna get a ham antenna for my car, which one do yall recommend?
Yeah, a tangent about licenses for public goods. The airwaves can be seen as the same as land or water, a common resource. How do we manage common use of these things? It's a rhetorical question in a way. We've assigned stewardship of it to the government so like roads use of them is subject to whatever laws to which we agree to abide, implicitly or explicitly. I'd prefer not to get a government driver's license or ham license or any of it.
But I'm under no illusion that if we did in fact privatize control of common resources someone would need or want to control access, for one to pay for it but also, just as now, to prevent chaos. Roads would likely require tolls and some entrance criteria, for example. We already have private groups that have rules controlling access to some things. You can't just enter SCORE races or do SCCA events or ride the Tour d'France without demonstrating competency. Racing licenses in almost all cases are privately issued. This extends all the way down amateur racing. Even races without a sanctioning body there are insurance and liability requirements.
I don't know exactly what it would look like without FCC and WARC authority, but I am reasonably certain that in any case, public or private, you'd have to demonstrate a functional understanding of RF and EMI/EMC to operate a radio and honestly I think the guts of it would have the same functions being performed, some sort of rules/licensing/enforcement. If there's not central authority then a lot of lawsuits over interference would result in a de-facto standard.
Unlike roads there's not much preventing more than one person attempting to use the same frequencies. When you buy a tract of land and build a road, it's more or less impossible for someone else to do the same. Maybe building an elevated road over yours, but practically speaking it's owned by one person or group without much question. Without someone organizing the airwaves then you have a power race, the biggest stomps on the weaker. Like the free-for-all that CB has become, with 1kW linears and echo mics dominating.
How do you propose to make the system work without FCC licenses? I'm really interested. There are a few compelling libertarian ideas for privatizing public goods like roads but never really heard a good way to control access to air, radio and light. These are everywhere and generally a little impact goes a long way and affects a lot of people. One person with a radio essentially controls a frequency plus some bandwidth for tens of square miles and with HF that could be hundreds or thousands of square miles. In the city one ham might control the airwaves covering thousands of people. Who gets to use it and when? When you consider that there are relatively few ideal frequencies, a combination of range and antenna length means 2m and 70cm are HIGHLY coveted, how do we agree to get along? There is a legitimate argument that in the backcountry the need for licensing a relatively low power mobile station is by-and-large unnecessary. But who gets to decide when the population is sparse enough to justify no licenses and when you need to have someone in control?
There is already some mechanism for doing this within the ham bands. The FCC just allocates chunks of spectrum to amateur radio, how it's divided up within is by gentlemen's agreement among hams, clubs and the ARRL. They are called Band Plans. You don't have to abide by them legally, the FCC could care less, but if you don't you create a mess. Some hams like to see how far they can talk on small amount of power, so we all agree that certain frequencies are dedicated to them. Others like to talk to satellites or bounce their signals off the Moon, so we agree not to interrupt their use. Others like to talk simplex, others use repeaters, so we carve out chunks for each. Some people like to use Morse Code, use AM or SSB or digital modes like RTTY, so we agree some frequencies are for that. So even where there no FCC license, there is a completely private group that tries to organize things.