| | I disagree with this in so many ways.
Firstly, there's no contradiction in the definition of the fences. Look again at the full list of dimensions I provided for defining the fences: frequency, location, power, polarisation, and an exclusivity/time dimension (you could add to that unwanted emission limts, but the list is long enough for now).
What I'm saying is that you can define two property rights for the same frequency if you use different points in the polarity dimension, if the equipment is up to it. Likewise you can have dual use in the polarity dimension if you have different points in the frequency dimension (e.g. two transmitters with horizontal polarity will not interfere with each other if they operate with a wide enough gap between two separate frequencies).
Your example with dual use of the building fits my definition of property right fences, since you are just talking about different points in the exclusivity/time dimension (which I included in my list). Radio frequency licences can (and do) specify transmission during certain hours (e.g. some AM frequency licensees are required to reduce their transmitting power at night-time, or even shut down altogether because the signal would carry too far at night and would interfere with someone else). Or licences can specify non-exclusive use at a single point in time (e.g. shared bands for trucking companies) or exclusive use at all times.
Time is just another dimension in which the property right is defined. No big deal there.
Secondly, it is incorrect to say we have no definitions of property rights for radio waves. Governments have been defining the fences for property rights for decades. That's what they do when they define and protect a licence to transmit.
The fences work fine, its the method of allocating those rights and the legal rules around what you can do with them that have been the problem. Governments have been moving to address those problems by making the rights long-term, using auctions to allocate the rights, and and allowing them to be tradable, mortgagable, varied (i.e. you can adjust the fences if there's spare room around you), and so on.
Thirdly, you are espousing a common myth about the early NZ auctions. There is a common misconception that those auctions were a failure because some licences (as in one or two) went very cheap due to the lack of depth in the bidding market and the second-price bid rule. But the "optimisation" of income is not a valid objective in the sale of spectrum rights. The Government is effectively a monopoly seller of the rights, so if profit maximisation were the objective the government should just rip off the market through a process of mis-information, changing the rules, etc.
No, the object of the auctions is to get the property rights out of government hands and into private hands in a clear and transparent way. The income earned is a mere by-product (and one which the government has no moral right to in the first place). What I would call a failure is the UK govt's sale of mobile telephone bands, where they fleeced £22 billion out of the telecoms industry, and handicapped the industry from the outset.
Fourthly, I don't agree that anarchy would be the way to go. What the Government should have done is simply draw up property rights that when people signed up for use of the spectrum, along with some use-it-or-lose-it provisions, and have done with it. Drawing up the fences isn't the problem in that process, its dealing with the thorny issues around the initial allocation that are complex. But those same issues apply with land, so you may as well focus on the complexities of the homesteading of land, rather than try to argue that there is something inherently difficult about radio spectrum that makes property rights impossible to define.
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