Yes, that was somewhat unfair of me -- but only somewhat. Economists generally espouse a notion of value that is weighted by wealth (for a company, "purchasing power" might be more appropriate), and it adds a rather severe unstated bias to nearly every claim they make. By this special, biased metric of theirs I'd expect spectrum ownership to be wildly successful as it is effectively one mechanism for extracting rent that supports another mechanism for extracting rent.

Of course, that's unfair again, because rent itself is an economic concept and economics brings us the tools to identify it and, if we so choose, look to minimize, but that's not exactly a route towards getting paid to evangelize a particular opinion. Promoting new opportunities to extract rent is a route towards getting paid to evangelize an opinion, so many economists do it, and that's the source of the animosity you saw in my previous post.

Well the concept of economic rents was created by economists to describe reality, but I think most economists view the majority of rents as being 'bad'. I also think you are overestimating how 'free-market oriented' and self-interested most economists are, and would recommend that you look at a "Survey of Americans and Economists on the Economy".

The current system is really optimized to maximally benefit the FCC; it gives them huge revenues without much cost to administer. Existing mobile carriers are also probably beneficiaries of the current system, but it's hard to blame them for that, as they've structured themselves to conform with the government's system.

Paid (or unpaid!) apologists are much more visible and attention-drawing than their more in-touch peers, so I probably overestimate their prevalence in the overall population of economists, but by the very same yardstick they have an outsized effect on economic discussions. They earn every bit of the ire I throw in their direction, but I could probably do a better job of specifically targeting it.

> Existing mobile carriers are also probably beneficiaries of the current system, but it's hard to blame them for that

Only to the extent that they played no part in making or encouraging the system that we agree is bad.

I am not really sure which apologists you have developed an ire for; I've only ever heard economists say that the auction system is better than the previous, arbitrary licensing system. Do you have any specific examples of these groups of apologists?

I don't especially like rent-seeking, but in this case, it's more like begging than anything else; the government is the one responsible for this mess.