Ham radio is a hobby. Its not meant to cover them cost of subsidizing a station to exist, its to offset the cost of confirming a voluntary contact on the radio.
Who says? It may be so in the US, but it's a big world and it doesn't play by our rules.
Do you have the faintest idea about what ham regulations look like in other countries?
I've been to a few. There
is no Part 97 or anything like it in the places I have been. Not even close.
In one rent-a-shack I went to, the owner gave me the entire "rule book". It fit on 2/3 of an 8 and a half by 11 sheet of paper. It was 100 per cent about frequency allocations and power levels for the ham bands. There wasn't even a distinction between license classes in what I received. I could transmit on SSB at 7.040 MHz if I felt like it. One hundred percent legal. In fact, I did so. To be sure, European, American, and Japanese band plans and allocations were known and affected actual choices. But I didn't
have to follow any US rules. I could do any mode on any allowed frequency.
There was not a
single word about "pecuniary interest". There wasn't even anything about two way communication. Now, in some countries, some legal things are done by custom and not written down. But
as a matter of legal formality, there was nothing and I wasn't told about any unwritten rules, either. I wasn't referred to some national ham organization (whatever the ARRL equivalent was) for anything, including some sort of spirit of amateurism. They didn't even point to the DX Code of Conduct.
Just "here's the bands and power levels in our country, have at it." That was all I got. Certainly, there is nothing at all implied or suggested as to what my QSL practices might be, since QSLing had nothing to do with what RF poured out of my station. It was pretty clear that what came out of my radio was all the authorities were interested in. It was also clear that my host didn't care about my QSLing practices, either. So, there wasn't any obvious, local "this is how we behave" either. It was all pretty informal, by our standards.
And, again, "hobby" is not a magic incantation that changes the economics.
If you want to argue "station X is 'gouging' and I won't pay," I'm with you 100 per cent. That's ordinary capitalism. But if you want to argue that a "hobby" means someone else in another country must follow a "break even" cost model, then I'm sorry, hobby or not, that
is the very impulse behind socialism.
And
that's they way it is being argued.
You don't know what it costs to put up or maintain a station in some of these places. If they are rare, it means a thousand things you take for granted are intermittent and more expensive. It is frankly arrogant to
presume there is a big markup and even more to
presume that it is any of our business if there
is one.
Our job is to make the QSO and decide if we want to pay for the confirmation. Full stop.
If you really want to be "principled" about it, you should lobby for a ham universe where stations participate by the "buro" plus LOTW, and not grudgingly, or we blacklist them and refuse to work them. See how far
that gets you. Anything else is just lobbying for a cheaper price.
Until you admit to a regime of that kind (which is
still a form of socialism), then your "principles" are honored in the breach anyhow.
"I will pay depending on what I think someone else's costs are" is a valid choice. But, it
is a socialist one in every essential. The capitalist choice is to pay based on
the value I receive.