Do governments really assign and enforce property rights? Despite the fact that Registries of Deeds now record land ownership of every square inch of North American territory, it is obvious: hat these rights have not always existed. [1] In 1785, the U.S. Congress was busily assigning unclaimed land to the construction of public schools in the Northwest Territory; later to the construction of railroads in the West. Today, most land is claimed, but national governments and international agencies alike are busily creating new rights in other types of scarce resources such as the electromagnetic spectrum or the geostationary arc.
[2] The electromagnetic spectrum, popularly called the airwaves, is an immense range of frequencies (radio waves, microwaves, visible light, X-rays, gamma rays, and more) that are converted by many for voice communication, navigation, data transmission, and the like. Almost all currently available frequencies are being used by someone, and the unchecked arrival of new users would lead to serious overcrowding and bad reception for all. But new arrivals keep coming and thus create an airwaves gridlock. These would-be users include the obvious: AM and FM radio stations as well as VHF and UHF television companies. They include people engaged in airplane, boat, car, and railroad communications, and others building cellular phone companies and satellite navigation systems. [3] They also include energy companies wanting to relay safety information from remote pipeline monitors, makers of high-definition television, and scientists with radio telescopes waiting for messages from extraterrestrials. Most of all, they include the users of millions of gadgets, such as baby monitors, cordless phones, garage door openers, pagers, TV remote controls, and ultrasonic denture cleaners. The jammed airwaves problem came to a head in 1990 when UPS, the largest private package carrier in the United States, decided to outfit its 55,000 trucks with radio receivers and transmitters so customers could be given up-to-the-second information about deliveries. The Federal Communications Commission allocated a frequency to UPS that had been used by ham radio operators, which caused many problems. The 170,000 member American Radio Relay League picketed federal buildings in major cities across the land. It deluged the FCC, the Congress, and the White House with angry letters, and it challenged the FCC action in court. Two congressmen quickly introduced the Emerging Telecommunications Technology Act. It would take 200 megahertz of spectrum from the military (in light of the end of the Cold War) and distribute this “peace dividend” to civilian users. President Bush, in turn, chided the FCC for practically giving away scarce frequencies and included in the 1991 budget $3 billion of revenue from selling a portion of the airwaves to would-be owners. [4] While the FCC had been charging favored recipients nominal annual license fees, the average sales price of AM and FM radio stations in the 1980s came to $1.24 million, that of VHF and UHF television stations was $21.52 million. Sixty percent of these prices were attributable solely to the FCC license.
1. The subject of this passage may be said to be _____.
2. In Paragraph 1, the word “spectrum” means “_____”.
3. If the author were delivering this passage orally, his or her tone of voice would probably be _____.
4. Which of these statements would the author support?
5. The last sentence in Paragraph 1 (“Today, most...”) suggests that the author’s purpose is to _____.
