Yeah, Who DOES Need the FCC?

[Commentary] I think that most people, even many who work at the Federal Communications Commission, will admit that some of the FCC’s work is unnecessary, either because the regulatory initiatives weren’t a good idea in the first place, or because the world has changed and they are no longer necessary. Some of the more egregious examples, like the comparative hearing process, have been eliminated, but others remain. Even a fan of the regulatory state should be able to admit that there are ill-advised, outdated or unnecessary FCC regulations that can and should be jettisoned. But in the spirit of fairness, I’ll take the three core functions of the FCC which Mitchell highlighted in his post as my focus here.

1. Licensing: There’s no reason why the licensing function of the FCC could not be replaced by a private ownership of spectrum rights, which would be analogous to private ownership of real estate.
2. Technical Rules: There are specialized courts which handle bankruptcy, immigration, military, patents and other technical and complex issues -- surely there could be one to adjudicate radio interference issues (particularly if Congress would fully fund the Courts).
3. International Treaty Negotiations: By narrowly circumscribing the authority of a department within an agency (like the State Department) through clearly limited delegation of power, we could ideally prevent the gradual accretion of power that can occur in a stand-alone independent agency.