It does not mean that things are messed up. It is simply a fact that a very
effective way to motivate people to do something that they don't want to do
is to tie it to a privilege that they very much want. Parents do it all the
time.


It's one thing for parents to do that sort of thing, but the FCC
isn't our parents. What does the FCC get out of requiring
element 1 nowadays? The treaty requirement is gone, and
no other service uses Morse code anymore. Radio equipment
is more reliable today than 50 years ago. Stuff that took
20 vacuum tubes to do are now on a few ICs, and usually it's the
batteries that crap out before anything else goes out. The
old argument that code equipment is simple and thus more
reliable doesn't really mean much today as it did 50 years
ago.

If we want to attract younger people to ham radio, it
would be counter productive to require stuff no longer
relevant to get the license. There's many other activities
that don't require licenses that one could do, and they
could do exactly the interesting parts and ignore the
parts not interesting.