License to have licenses

Because people suck and they can’t be trusted to use common sense.

• License to fish: prevents over fishing
• license to bike: for road safety (mopeds and cars in the UK are on the provisional license so that’s a none issue)
• lisense to use a radio: some frequencies are restricted usage for airports, military, ect, and high powered radios can be used to create interference.
• license to exist: Your NeuroLink Subscription Will Expire in Seven Days After Which You Will Cease To Exist and Your Body Will Be Recycled into Nutrients.

Reasons for a license to fish (from a German perspective and with common sense):

• You want people who fish to know when they can and cannot fish due to the fish’s [Edit: re pro]creation periods.
• You want people to know which kinds of fish they should and should not catch, in general.
• You want people to know how big a certain kind of fish needs to be before it can be extracted.
• You want a general overview of the number of people fishing in a general area to monitor overfishing.

License to have a dog:

• Costs a certain amount of money each month. This funds public cleaning of dog poop and free dog poop bags.

License for a GMRS radio:

• To prevent too many people from crowding in the same channel.
• To be able to identify assholes who jam a channel with their broadcasts.

License for biking:

• To know the rules of the road

Where do you need a licence to ride a bike?

The fish license is to control fish population and prevent overfishing as well as funding the wildlife and parks departments.

When the State licenses things like that, it’s usually because whatever activity is being licensed utilizes shared resources, and the State has an interest in making sure those resources are used in the common interest.

Radio licenses are essential because the RF spectrum is a common resource. The State wants to make sure that certain frequencies are only used for certain purposes, and that those who use them have the proper training.

Some communities use pet licensing as a tool to make sure all pets are properly vaccinated, to reduce the spread of rabies (which really is a horrible way to go…)

Hunting and fish licenses are a way to help control the overall wild animal population, and make sure they are not overharvested and preserve rhe availability for future seasons.

You didn’t mention the TV license (UK)

Much of license requirements are based on the fact that operating without proper knowledge can cause issues. You mentioned radio, which is a perfect example of this: emergency frequencies is one thing, but there are a lot of other frequencies that should be left alone. And learning which frequency ranges should and shouldn’t be used for certain activities is part of the process of obtaining a license.

Source: I have a GOC (unrestricted maritime radio certificate).

Real life example that I stumbled across as part of my job a few years ago.

1. Customer calls in needing help with his VHF radio.
2. It worked fine but his DSC calls were often traced to the wrong position.
3. Turns out some little dinghy had an incorrectly programmed radio: The owner had bought it, and when faced with question about MMSI, he had just input numbers that vaguely resembled a valid MMSI, and started using it.
4. Oops, this “bogus” MMSI belonged to our customer.

He was fined a lot for operating without a license. If he was licensed (He didn’t need the full GOC… just the one day course would’ve been enough for his use case) he would’ve known that he could have gotten his own MMSI for 20$ equivalent.

Other licenses are often based on covering costs, reducing popularity, or both. Hunting licenses here are issued based on how much moose and deer is in the area. This also covers the cost of building infrastructure to prevent them from running across roads where they really shouldn’t, and repairing farmers’ fences that have been “traversed” by moose.
Fishing in the river that runs through my town is also licensed in a similar manner: The amount (and price) of licenses is based on how much salmon there is.

Don’t forget about poetic license. They regulate everything these days.

People abuse things.

There are plenty of activities that are perfectly harmless when done by one person, but need to be managed when a bunch of people try to do them at once.

So you understand the rules, regulations, and hazards of doing those activities.

No idea about bike licenses.

High power radios in the hands of people who don’t know what they’re doing can cause a lot of issues. FRS/GMRS radios under 2 Watts in the U.S. don’t need a license. Licensing is a way to make sure people using them know how to do so effectively, and provides for stiffer penalties if someone unlicensed causes issues.

There are 14 GMRS frequencies. How soon do you think they would become unusable if even 10,000 casual users in a metro area all went and bought 50W radios?

Imagine hundreds of thousands of uneducated users, even 5 year old children, who could just “punch numbers in” - this is what the Baofeng debacle opened up.

I suppose all activities you need a license for are activities where you must have a higher-than-usual level of responsibility. (Except for the TV license, that’s a misnomer and should be called a tax or a due)