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From the former chief economist of the FCC, a remarkable history of the U.S. government's regulation of the airwaves Popular legend has it that before the Federal Radio Commission was established in 1927, the radio spectrum was in chaos, with broadcasting stations blasting powerful signals to drown out rivals. In this fascinating and entertaining history, Thomas Winslow Hazlett, a distinguished scholar in law and economics, debunks the idea that the U.S. government stepped in to impose necessary order. Instead, regulators blocked competition at the behest of incumbent interests and, for nearly a century, have suppressed innovation while quashing out-of-the-mainstream viewpoints. Hazlett details how spectrum officials produced a "vast wasteland" that they publicly criticized but privately protected. The story twists and turns, as farsighted visionaries-and the march of science-rise to challenge the old regime. Over decades, reforms to liberate the radio spectrum have generated explosive progress, ushering in the "smartphone revolution," ubiquitous social media, and the amazing wireless world now emerging. Still, the author argues, the battle is not even half won.

A novel theory of antitrust law may be tested in the case of Federal Trade Commission (FTC) v. Facebook. It focuses on how pricing might be monopolistic even when the goods delivered to end users are zero-priced. While there is considerable political momentum behind a regulatory push to toughen antitrust sanctions on digital platforms in general and Facebook in particular, the economic theory behind the Government's antitrust case is shown to be uncompelling. That does not mean it will necessarily be rejected by a given court, but the chances of the case succeeding and then surviving the full gamut of appeals is low. However, that predicted outcome may well calibrate the considerable space between the existing legal equilibrium and an emerging electoral policy equilibrium. If so, the expected outcome may well fuel the populist movement pushing legislation to fundamentally alter the antitrust statutes.

The connection between property rights and free-speech rights has most often surfaced in conflicts between the two. In his classic formulation of the problem, journalist A. J. Liebling mocked the First Amendment's free-press clause by noting that ownership of a printing press was required in order to actually enjoy the constitutional protection. In an important case decided in 1980,Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a group wishing to circulate political petitions at a shopping center had a constitutional right to do so. There the Court found that such governmentally enforced access to private property did "not amount to an unconstitutional infringement of [the shopping center owners'] property rights under the Taking Clause of the Fifth Amendment…."